A Word Based Universe
No time for a deep dive? Guggenheim Bilbao. On budget. On time. Unlike the Scottish Parliament Building. The container outshines the contents. Still successful. Only into its second year of publication, an article in the September / October 1997 edition of the glorious Wallpaper* magazine under the mastery of Tyler Brûlé is worth quoting. Almost in its entirety. Andrew Tuck’s 48 Hours in Bilbao sums up the excitement of that era, “A decade ago Bilbao seemed to be heading for a slow but sure death. After centuries at the heart of Spain’s shipbuilding and steel industries, it found that it could no longer compete with rivals in the Fat East, and neither could it attract the young pioneers of new technologies to the city. Bilbao simply lacked the lifestyle and culture that would make anyone want to move there.”
“The city’s leaders started looking for ways of reinvigorating Bilbao, just as the board of New York’s Guggenheim Museum was planning satellite museums around the world (the Guggenheim was facing Bilbao’s crisis in reverse: it had too much art and no chance of expanding at either its main Manhattan home or tiny Venice outpost). In 1991, after a year of courting, a union was announced that would bring together Basque taxpayers and the Solomon Guggenheim Foundation to build a vast $100 million contemporary art museum on the banks of the Nervión River in the heart of the city’s declining docks.”
“The next move was to sign up an architect and after a restricted competition Frank Gehry won the day. Famed for his numerous international projects, Gehry has developed a complex style of non linear architecture in which flowing shapes fit together to create buildings that, while extraordinarily dramatic, blend perfectly into any cityspace. His fluid style was also perfect for dealing with a triangular site that is dissected by one of Bilbao’s busiest traffic bridges, the Puente de la Salve.”
“Now, just six years later, Gehry’s greatest building, and one of the wonders of modern architecture, is preparing to open its doors on 18 October, with a display of 20th century art from Cubism to multimedia installations, as well as the work of Basque artists. What’s more, the museum will be opening on budget and on time. The Guggenheim in Bilbao contains 18 galleries that vary from small classic and intimate spaces to the main gallery that, at 130 metres long and 30 metres wide, is bigger than a football pitch, and with doors that are large enough to let lorries through to deliver vast sculptures (such as the 170 tonnes of metal contained in Richard Serra’s work that is already in position). The central atrium is 55 metres tall and is ringed by walkways designed by Gehry to pay homage to Frank Lloyd Wright’s 1959 Guggenheim in New York.”
“But it’s the outside of the building that has won over the people of Bilbao: the exteriors of the galleries which house the photography and two dimensional painting collection are covered in limestone, but the spaces that will display more radical work and installations are covered in interlocking plates of titanium which recall the city’s shipbuilding traditions. It’s a metal that never blinds you on a sunny day and even at night reflects a soothing glow.”
“Confident that culture and architecture can jumpstart Bilbao, the city has found funding to pay for a metro system designed by Sir Norman Foster, a footbridge across across the Nervión and a revamped airport both by Santiago Calatrava. The city is rerouting roads, building new apartments, parks, offices and a concert hall and cleaning up the polluted river. When the work is done, Bilbao hopes to become Europe’s new cultural capital. Mixed in with the new is style and luxury from the old days. Then there’s the chance to eat Basque food and tap into the region’s Celtic soul. In short, it’s time you dropped by.”
It’s time to unpack, rewind but nor relax – there’s too much to discuss. Back to the present. Frank Gehry died last year aged 96. He never retired. Born Frank Goldberg, he had a working class Jewish upbringing in Toronto. The architect changed his surname in the 1950s to protect his children from antisemitism. A sign of things to come – trailblazing deconstructivism – was the transformation of his bungalow in Santa Monica by adding layers of corrugated metal, plywood and chain link fencing. It didn’t do down well with the neighbours. But it was Frank’s harnessing of computer technology intended for the design of aircraft to buildings that set him apart from his contemporaries, eroding the line between architecture and sculpture.
“I want buildings that have passion in them,” he said in 1997, “that make people feel something – even if they get mad at them.” It was a good year to make that comment: the newly completed Guggenheim is filled to the skylights with passion. Later, he would apply a rationalised form of his trademark sinuous style to residential and commercial buildings. The following year came the RheinHafen Arts and Media Centre on Düsseldorf’s Am Handels and in 2022 the apartment block Prospect Place at Battersea Power Station, London. Despite their idiosyncratic volumes, both these developments use standardised windows unlike Enric Miralles Benedetta Tagliabue’s Scottish Parliament Building.
It’s easy, very easy, to get distracted by the billowing waves of cool silvery titanium – a sea of giant anchovies – but look closer and the Guggenheim Museum is materially anchored to the earth by warm yellowy Spanish limestone. Two components are picked out in colour: the hot blue administration block and the burnt red bridge. Across the river is the comforting proximity of vast villas, three dimensional reminders that Bilbao was once Spain’s richest city.
The complexity of the exterior is only matched by the intricacy of the interior. Three floors of enfilade free galleries offer three experiences: regular shaped rooms; irregular shaped rooms; and open spaces around the central limestone panelled and white painted plaster atrium. Big architecture needs big art. Andy Warhol’s 150 Multicoloured Marilyns, 1979, is the right scale for the permanent collection. The Pop Art mantra that image matters more than experience may seem a little dated now but then this is a (late) 20th century container of (mainly) 20th century contents. Jenny Holzer’s Installation of Bilbao, 1997, off the atrium is also suitably large. This site specific LED artwork consisting of nine signboards filled with scrolling texts rising up their 12 metre height is colourful, insightful and interactive.
Deep dive on one of the biggest architectural splashes of 20th century architecture and design over.
