Architectural Wonders -

The Guggenheim Museum

Bilbaoby: Kenny Slaught

Architectural Wonders - The Guggenheim Museum BilbaoAs with any artistic discipline, only a very few architects ever become famous in their own time. Even most winners of the Pritzker Prize, considered the most prestigious award in the field, are unknown to the average layperson, and while their buildings may be locally or nationally recognized, only a few truly capture the public imagination. Some notable exceptions to this rule are I. M. Pei and his Louvre Pyramids, and Frank Gehry and his Guggenheim Museum Bilbao.

With its flowing metal and glass, intersecting and interacting at often surprising angles, Gehry's deconstructivist style is a deliberate refutation of the formal utilitarianism of modernism and post-modernism. Indeed, Gehry's architectural masterpieces often seem to follow their own dream logic, one that other architects and critics have described as "transcendent" and "like an explosion." The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao is his undisputed masterpiece, a structure that echoes the neighboring river in its wavering ripples of titanium. This masterpiece might never have been built had Gehry not made similar waves with his own private home in Santa Monica.

Frank Gehry's Journey from Unknown to Architecture StardomBorn in Canada in 1929, Gehry moved to California in 1947 and finished his education at the College of Architecture at the University of Southern California in 1954. Following a stint in the U.S. Army and further education at Harvard University, he moved to Paris and studied Jasper Johns’ and Robert Rauschenberg’s works, which inspired his design for his own home in Santa Monica. An excitingly artistic structure that incorporated unusual materials like chain-link fencing, it was this home that brought Gehry to the attention of other architects. By the 1970s, he had become a fellow of the American Institute of Architects and received the major architectural prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

According to Gehry, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao has its roots in a fish-shaped centerpiece he contributed to an Italian fashion show in 1985. The astounding sense of movement he saw in his sculptural work inspired him to cut away fishy signifiers and seek a moving, minimalist architecture, a quest that would eventually meet the limits of conventional architecture. Luckily, Gehry's partner, Jim Glymph, assisted him in repurposing a sophisticated computer drafting program used to design airplanes in order to realize previously impossible designs. In a few short years, these techniques would result in a building that remains breathtakingly daring today, nearly 20 years after its completion.

A Museum Rises in BilbaoIn the late 1980s, Bilbao, a city in the Basque region of Spain best known for its steel mills and shipyards, was experiencing considerable slowdown. The Basque government, seeking to revitalize the city, decided to embark on a project that would refashion the town in the image of Europe's cultural capitals, including the construction of world-class museums. By 1991, the government had persuaded the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation to accept $20 million in fees and additional annual subsidies in order to create a new branch of the internationally famous museum. Shortly thereafter, Gehry won a small competition to serve as the project's architect, and construction began in 1993.

Situated on an abandoned wharf on the Nervión River, the 265,000 square feet of the museum Guggenheim Museum Bilbao is clad in more than 33,000 titanium sheets and includes some 19 galleries, all of which were constructed in sleepy Bilbao. The museum’s 1997 opening featured a Richard Serra installation consisting of undulating steel sheets titled "Snake,” located in the museum's largest gallery, which Gehry dubbed "The Boat."

Gehry's Post-Guggenheim LegacyGehry's museum took the architecture world by storm. In a 2010 survey of over 50 prominent architects and critics, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao was overwhelmingly regarded as the most important architectural work since 1980. In recognition of this and other works, Gehry received numerous awards in the late 1990s and early 2000s, including the Royal Institute of British Architects' Gold Medal, the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada's Gold Medal for the arts, and the French Republic's Ordre National de la Legion d'Honneur.

Gehry did not rest on his laurels, though, after this achievement. Instead, he continued to design daring buildings that captured the attention of his peers and the public. Among these are the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, a steel-clad echo of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao; the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris' Bois de Boulogne; and the Ohr-O'Keefe Museum of Art in Mississippi. Today, Gehry continues to involve himself in new projects, such as a new plan for the Los Angeles River and a playful new building at the University of Technology, Sydney.