Staff Reporter
SINCE creating a cultural masterpiece with the Guggenheim, Bilbao has been busy transforming the rest of the city for the post industrial era, writes Guy Shackle
“I went over the hill and saw it shining there. I thought: ‘What the f*ck have I done to these people?’” prophetic words from its architect Frank O Gehry, when he visited his creation a month before the Guggenheim museum’s formal opening in 1997.
The inspiring building would make him and the city deservedly world-famous.
The visionary template was set by Frank Lloyd Wright who designed the original Guggenheim museum in New York in 1959. Its gentle circular curving concrete ramps leading up to the home of the modernist art collection of Solomon Guggenheim, bought with wealth derived from mining.
So in the 1990’s when the idea of expanding the franchise was floated the Guggenheim Board turned to another visionary architect named ‘Frank’ to provide a new setting for the new millennium.
His work was included in the Deconstructivist Architecture exhibition held in 1988 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
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The word is an amalgam of heroic Constructivism from the early Soviet Union and fragmentation of forms, or ‘deconstruction’ derived from the work of French philosopher Jacques Derrida.
Unsurprisingly like most creative artists Frank Gehry (he has dropped the O) refuses to be typecast by a label of architectural historians.
On my first visit to Spain, in the late 1980’s, I was advised to bypass Bilbao. I was told it was ‘too industrial’ and so I took the slow train straight on past neighbouring San Sebastian to Madrid.
Carriages were full of the smoke from Ducados cigs and signs warned of the dangers of injecting; as at the time there was a huge number of heroin users, a la Trainspotting.
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Black and white photographs documenting industrial decline along the banks of the river Nervion, echo similar shifts in Liverpool, Rotterdam and Hamburg.
Most visitors arrive in Bilbao on a bus from the airport across the majestic height and span of La Salve Bridge, built in the 1970’s; replacing river crossings destroyed by Franco during the Spanish Civil War.
The museum buildings extend under this structure and terminate in the west with a pair of stone clad vertical follies, perhaps two dancers embracing, but whose steel support structure is clearly visible.
Long titanium-clad interlocking curved forms stretch alongside the river and the connection with water, the life blood of this city, is accentuated by a shallow lake that separates the museum from the riverside walk, reflecting the polished metallic surfaces.
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The main entrance is set amid traditional stone forms but this being Gehry you arrive to an enormous puppy covered in flowers, the work of artist Jeff Koons.
From here, you descend down a generous flight of external steps into the main volume of the museum; this orientates the visitor and contains the main vertical circulation of lifts and stairs and the servant spaces of cafes and the ubiquitous gift shop.
In this space the skill of the architect is first revealed as the rational forms accentuate the fragmented curves and a huge vertical glazed wall connects the visitor with the river and city behind.
The space references the circular volume created by the architect’s namesake in New York, this building follows a tradition where the art of the architecture dominates the visitor’s experience, clad in a rich material palette.
The museum has a wealth of rational artificially lit spaces to display works from its incredible permanent collection supplemented by regular blockbuster exhibitions.
A key space is the huge hall (131 metres long x 24 metres wide) echoing the form of an upturned boat that now houses ‘The Matter of Time’ a work by Richard Serra; curving sheets of pre-rusted Corten steel fill this volume and echo the memory of shipbuilding and heavy industry that once occupied this same site.
The building gave birth to the “Bilbao effect” whereby the boost from 4 million additional visitors in its first three years of operation added €500 million to the local economy. This, in turn generated €100 million in tax revenue, covering the initial capital and also running costs for its first 20 years.
Many other cities have since tried to recreate this amazing achievement. And Bilbao was wise not to rest on its laurels having created a new cultural masterpiece fit for the 21st century and has been busy transforming the rest of the city for the post industrial era.
Highlights include the minimalist high tech designs of British architect Norman Foster below ground in the ever expanding Metro system whose curved glass entrances at pavement level echo the familiar identity of the Paris underground.
It has been described as one of the most architecturally impressive in Europe
The famous stadium of The Athletic Club, San Memes or ‘the Cathedral’ has been rebuilt on part of the same site in the heart of the city and so creating a generous urban plaza to absorb the crowds on match days.
On opening it was clear that the translucent roof did not extend far enough to protect the crowds from the ubiquitous northern Spanish rain so an additional structure was added that echoes the elegant form of the original.
The eponymously named glass clad Iberdrola Tower, by celebrated César Pelli, houses the Basque utility company providing an elegant addition to what is generally a low rise city
Not to be overshadowed by the Guggenheim, the city’s original 20th century art gallery, the Bilbao’s Fine Arts Museum housed in an elegant low rise building that originate from the 1940’s, has invited back Foster to provide new gallery spaces to the rear of the existing building which are due to open this year (2025).
