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Arts & Activities, Jan, 2004 by Guy Hubbard

Frank Gehry (American; b. 1929). The Guggenheim Museum, 1997, Bilbao, Spain.

ABOUT THIS BUILDING

Before introducing The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, readers need to know something about the Guggenheim Museum in New York. It was designed in 1960 by Frank Lloyd Wright. When it was originally constructed it was a revolutionary design and in many ways, still is. The interior is a hollow shell where the galleries line the outer wall and visitors view the collection as they descend a sloping ramp. The exterior reflects the internal design so the building looks like part of an inverted cone with the top being broader than the base. Words alone cannot describe the building very well, however. Students need to see photographs of different views of the interior and exterior. Or, better still, they should visit the museum themselves.

Since the first Guggenheim Museum was constructed, branches of the museum have been built in Berlin, Germany and Venice, Italy; and each of them are extremely creative. It was only natural, therefore, for the leaders of the Guggenheim Foundation to search for the most creative architect they could find to design the branch of the Guggenheim Museum to be built in the northern Spanish city of Bilbao.

When important buildings are to be built, it is quite common for some of the best architects in the world to be invited to compete with each other and send in their ideas to be judged. For this building, not only the Guggenheim leaders, but also the leaders of the city of Bilbao made the decision. Once Frank Gehry's design had been accepted, large numbers of sketches and finished designs were submitted and a permanent staff of architects was sent to work in Bilbao.

At the very beginning of the design process, Gehry scribbles his ideas quickly and without any detail. He and his staff then make many more drawings with a computer to show the original idea more clearly. Eventually, handmade models are produced to present the finished building in detail, because a building is three-dimensional and needs to be seen that way as soon as possible. It then becomes possible to look at the idea from all possible positions, including from above.

Until recently buildings were usually made up of flat surfaces. Now, computers can be used to tell architects every possible shape that construction materials can be made into. Accordingly, creative architects have begun to experiment with very unusual shapes, with Gehry being among the most creative. Some of the shapes that have attracted Gehry and his staff are curved and frequently look like leaves, or parts of fish and snakes. To other people, the ideas for his buildings seem to come from sails on a boat. Some people think that the Bilboa museum is shaped like a boot. But, whatever his designs seem to look like, all of them are more like pieces of sculpture than ordinary, square-shaped buildings.

From the very beginning of his career, when Frank Gehry was designing homes and small buildings, he used materials in ways that were revolutionary: they did not look like anything ever done before. This museum in Spain continues his unique uses of materials. Walls curve in all directions rather than being flat. The vertical framework that supports the building is made of heavy piping that is bent to make the silhouette of the building. This enables the design to flow and not look stiff and square like most buildings. On the other hand, straight girders are used for such horizontal surfaces as floors.

Near to the ground, the walls are made of local stone but most of the building is covered with sheets of the extremely strong metal called "titanium." Although the shiny titanium is extremely thin--like aluminum wrap--and bulges in places, it is very strong compared with other kinds of roofing material. It is so strong, in fact, that it is guaranteed to last 100 years before needing repairs. It is also very lightweight so that the roof does not need massive walls to support it.

The original site for the building was some distance from the present one. But, instead of being in the center of the city, it is on the curve of the Nervim River that flows through Bilbao. Here, the curving shapes of the museum fit in better than if it had been next to the more ordinary kinds of buildings in the city center and on straight streets.

The site is cut in two by a main highway bridge in and out of the city. Dividing the museum site into two parts, the bridge presented a problem for the architect that was solved by placing the main museum on one side and a tower on the other side. As a result, everyone who drives over the bridge cannot help but see the museum, whereas the original site would have made the museum difficult to see.

Most people might have decided that the riverside site was very ugly because it was filled with old, broken-down warehouses. But, Gehry and his team of architects recognized the artistry of the curving riverbank. They saw the arching highway bridge that spanned the river as an opportunity to be creative with the kinds of curves they loved, but might have been out of place in the city center. They probably decided that local people would not be upset by an unusual building on such an awkward and unusual site compared with a square block of land next to other traditional buildings. As it turned out, the museum galleries fit nicely on the larger of the two pieces of land, while a distinctive tower fit well on the smaller space on the opposite side of the bridge.