Hello ttc,
An enormously complex structure, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilboa is
also a very complex subject, but I hope that my answer will at least
give you a good start on comprehending and appreciating this building,
which seems to be considered one of the great buildings of the 20th
Century, by almost global consensus.
First, a little about the city in which it is located. Bilboa is an
industrial port city in the Basque country of Spain. The ?river? on
which the building is located (the Nervion) is actually an estuary of
the Atlantic. Bilboa is a medium-size city (350,000 population) and
the largest in the Basque region of Spain. Both city and region must
have visionary leadership. Not only did they succeed in persuading the
Guggenheim to locate a ?branch? there, but the leadership endorsed and
supported the daring vision of the museum and its architect for a
building that would be as startlingly and radically different as was
the Guggenheim?s home museum in New York City, designed by Frank Lloyd
Wright., in the 1950s. Certainly the city?s boldness has been
vindicated. It has been a major factor in the economic revival of the
city, both because of tourist dollars attracted to the city as never
before and because of the new fame, status, and cachet the building
has given to a rather obscure and economically-depressed Spanish city
located in a region that in for many years has been bedeviled by a
violent separatist movement. Incidentally, the city has continued to
commission leading architects to design projects there, including
Santiago Calatrava who designed a footbridge crossing the Nervion
(also known as the Bilboa river).
Let me take the parts of your question in the order you presented them.
THE SITE
The museum is located in central Bilboa in a riverside area formerly
dedicated to warehousing and port activities. (The port of Bilboa is
now located directly on the Bay of Biscay.) The building is approached
from its eastern end, where the size of the building (it is VERY
large: 24,000 square meters on a site of 32,500 square meters) is not
so apparent. The design seeks not to overwhelm its historic
surroundings and the way it avoids doing this is well described in The
Museum?s own website:
http://www.guggenheim-bilbao.es/ingles/home.htm
?People coming from the calle Iparraguirre, one of the main streets
bisecting the center of Bilbao diagonally, are led directly to the
main entrance; the idea was to bring the city right to the doors of
the building. A broad flight of steps takes pedestrians down to the
Museum hall although descending flights of stairs are not a frequent
feature of institutional buildings. This is an inspired response to
the differences in height between the level of the river and the level
of the city center. It also enables a building with a surface area of
24,000 square meters and more than 50 meters high to be slotted into
the city landscape without it towering over the neighboring
buildings.?
The Wilkepedia entry agrees with this assessment: ?Also important is
while the museum is a spectacular monument from the river, on street
level it is quite modest and does not overwhelm its traditional
surroundings.?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guggenheim_Museum_Bilbao
Go to this address in order to see an excellent image of how the
building looks as one approaches it down one of the city?s main
streets. (Note that the hills in the distance which are usually
greener than this, in this very rainy city.)
http://www.artdreamguide.com/adg/adg_ESP/ba_ESP/bilba_ba/m_gugge/507.htm
And go here for a view of the main entrance and plaza from another
angle: http://www.virtourist.com/europe/bilbao/04.htm
It is ONLY from across the river that the full elevation and the size
of the building can be well seen, as is shown in these two photos:
http://www.artlex.com/ArtLex/m/museum.html
http://www.barcelona-photo.com/architektur/Bilbao-Guggenheim-Museum.html
The first of these photographs is especially good in helping us to get
oriented to this building and its relationship to the site. To the
right is the plaza and main entrance, to the left is the Puente de la
Salve which as the Museum?s website says actually ?pierces? the site
and which is integrated into the site by Gehry's ?sculptural tower,?
and a broad staircase leading up to it: ?The broad flight of stairs
that goes up to the sculptural tower, conceived as a device to absorb
and integrate the Puente de La Salve into the overall architectural
scheme of the building, is also a public access way that connects
pedestrians with the rest of the city.?
This site has two good images:
http://www.nanis-seseiten.de/Spanien/page_1.html
A. The first is a helpful from-the-river image that shows that ?broad
flight of stairs? and the very beautiful pedestrian esplanade that
curves between the riverbank and a moat-like expanse of water
overlooked by a pavilion, and
B. The same, but viewed from the stairs.
The city map on the city? website, incidentally, uses the word
?muelle?, the Spanish word for ?dock,? to describe this area, but
clearly the area is now being put to a purely aesthetic use.
http://www.bilbao.net/WebBilbaonet/padre000.jsp?idioma=c&padres=vts&puntomenus=pla&indicador=0&otros=n&nov=n&tm=s&paginaactual=n
****************
STRUCTURAL AND CONSTRUCTION IDEAS
First let?s consider the extraordinary shape of the building. The
building was completed in 1997 and a writer in the Washington Post was
among the many who were utterly captivated by it at the time:
Here is part is what he had to say about the form of the building:
?Gehry's masterpiece has been likened to a metallic flower, to the
hulls of ships, and to Frank Lloyd Wright's renowned spiral rotunda of
the Guggenheim's flagship on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Its
overlapping forms seem inspired by Futurist sculpture, conveying a
sense of centripetal motion, like an arrested implosion of the Tower
of Babel. It is like nothing we have seen before.?
http://www.jasonkaufman.com/articles/gehrys_guggenheim_bilbao.htm
Gehry himself has described the building as a metal flower set in the
bank of the river. And another observer has seen no lack of allusions
to the city and its history. The river and the city?s shipbuilding
and industrial past are, this writer thinks, all integral to Gehry?s
vision.
http://www.architectsonline.com/publications/bilbao/
A word here about Gehry in general. At this site you will find a good
account of what makes Gehry such a unique and compelling architect:
? In the large-scale public commissions he has received since he
converted to a deconstructive aesthetic, Gehry has explored the
classical architecture themes. In these works he melds formal
compositions with an exploded aesthetic. Most recently, Gehry has
combined sensuous curving forms with complex deconstructive massing,
achieving significant new results.?
http://www.greatbuildings.com/architects/Frank_Gehry.html
Certainly the adjectives ?sculptural,? ?exploded? and ?deconstructed?
are all terms that can be validly applied to the Guggenheim Bilboa.
Its seemingly chaotic mingling of forms expresses for many the quality
of modern life. Yet out of all of this chaos emerges a harmony of a
new kind.
*********************
MATERIALS
The third part of your question has to do with ?materials and attitudes?.
It?s interesting to note that this very modern building relied on very
modern technology to be realized. Although the design work itself was
not computer-assisted (Gehry used traditional physical modeling),
computer assistance was needed to fabricate the titanium panels that
clad much of the building?s steel structure and with the other many
technical challenges of this construction project. A French software
program called CAITA, used in the construction of airplanes, made
possible the highly precise fabrication of the panels.
This site-- http://www.culturevulture.net/ArtandArch/Bilbao.htm-- has
an excellent account of this aspect of the building: ?Composed of a
group of free flowing volumes that seem to have met in a train crash,
the building shows sections of its steel skeleton, but mostly is
clothed in tissue-paper thin titanium (from whence the startlingly
beautiful effects of reflected light, the source of the welcoming
gleam from afar), warm limestone, and glass. From the three main
materials, paneling of unique sizes and shapes (details generated from
computer design, manufactured by computer commanded robots) was
created, thus allowing for the organically irregular and curved shapes
of the mass. It's like a mutated kind of shingling, taking that
technique to places it has never been before. (Critic Paul Goldberger
noted that changes in architecture have already moved ahead of Gehry;
while Gehry designs in his head and implements with the computer, a
new generation has adopted the computer itself as the generator of
design. Still, Gehry's work could not be implemented without the use
of computers.)?
The reflective nature of the skin of the building contributes in no
small part to the beauty of the building, in all kinds of light, even
under the frequently grey skies of this city by the Atlantic.
***********************************
SYMBOLIC AND HISTORICAL ASSOCIATIONS
We have already touched upon this. One can say that the titanium
panels pay tribute to Bilboa?s industrial heritage, especially its
shipbuilding. Further, the sail-like shapes can be seen as reference
to the city?s history as an important Atlantic port. (Though both of
these elements are also typical of Gehry?s work far from Bilboa. Using
fish-scale-like panels as the skin of a building is an idea that dates
back to early in his career. And the sail-like shapes are also a Gehry
trademark, seen again in the recently completed Walt Disney Concert
Hall in Los Angeles.)
SPATIAL ORGANIZATION AND CHARACTER
The Museum?s own website says that one can see from the outside how
the building is composed of two kinds of galleries. The building has a
total of 19 galleries organized around the central atrium. ?Ten of
these galleries have an almost classical orthogonal look and can be
identified from outside by their stone finishes. Nine other,
irregularly-shaped galleries present a remarkable contrast, and can be
identified from outside by their unusual architecture and the covering
of titanium.?
The biggest gallery is 130 meters long (!). It is ?free of columns and
with flooring specially prepared to cope with the comings and going of
visitors and museum staff, as well as the sheer weight of the works on
display there. Seen from the outside, this gallery slides underneath
the Puente de La Salve and runs up against the end of the tower that
embraces the bridge and brings it into the building.? It is this
gallery where large works like the sculptures of Richard Serra are
displayed.
As for movement through the building, the museum website says that,
contrary to the outside appearance, all is easy and clear
inside:?There is a harmonius tie between the architectural shapes and
the contents of each gallery. Undoubtedly, this simplifies the tour
inside the Museum while the atrium, in its very center, and the
walkways that link one gallery with another - showing different
perspectives of the exhibitional spaces - facilitate the location of
galleries and services at any time. As visitors enter the Museum they
learn that under the external complex appearance of the architectural
shapes, there lies a neat, clear world where it is easy to find one's
way around.?
http://www.guggenheim-bilbao.es/ingles/home.htm
Here is what another commentator has to say about the interior
organization and flow of the building: ?The interior organization
returns the visitor to the central atrium over and over again. From
this space the visitor can see back to the main entrance as well as
out to the river. While the galleries provide an appropriate mix of
exotic spaces and more traditional ones, they are containers for art -
that is, closed and inward looking. But the transition from gallery to
gallery or floor to floor always returns to the atrium space. Here,
you are immediately re-oriented within the building. Equally
important, the city becomes part of the permanent exhibit, yet forever
changing with time and light.?
http://www.architectsonline.com/publications/bilbao/
And here is what another site has to say about the ?program? of the building:
?Inside the gallery spaces are comprised of three different types:
conservative for permanent collections; a more dramatic, elongated
rectangular space extending toward the Puente de la Slave Bridge for
temporary exhibits; and seven distinct galleries of unique spatial
quality for selected living artists. This programmatics is evident on
the exterior of the buildings as limestone-clad rectilinear volumes
enclose permanent collections; the fish-like extension houses the
temporary exhibits in one grand, linear space; while the grouped forms
around the apex form the spaces for the living artists. Looking at the
Guggengeim in this manner it is evident how Gehry works, from a plan
that satisfies programmatic requirements out to a formal expression of
the spaces.?
http://www.archidose.org/Jul99/071299.html
*************************
I hope I have not exhausted you with this answer! I know that I HAVE
exhausted myself, but it is a fascinating subject,and doing this
research has reinforced my determination to some day see this
remarkable building in person. Perhaps I will run into you there!
Scribe_ga
An enormously complex structure, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilboa is
also a very complex subject, but I hope that my answer will at least
give you a good start on comprehending and appreciating this building,
which seems to be considered one of the great buildings of the 20th
Century, by almost global consensus.
First, a little about the city in which it is located. Bilboa is an
industrial port city in the Basque country of Spain. The ?river? on
which the building is located (the Nervion) is actually an estuary of
the Atlantic. Bilboa is a medium-size city (350,000 population) and
the largest in the Basque region of Spain. Both city and region must
have visionary leadership. Not only did they succeed in persuading the
Guggenheim to locate a ?branch? there, but the leadership endorsed and
supported the daring vision of the museum and its architect for a
building that would be as startlingly and radically different as was
the Guggenheim?s home museum in New York City, designed by Frank Lloyd
Wright., in the 1950s. Certainly the city?s boldness has been
vindicated. It has been a major factor in the economic revival of the
city, both because of tourist dollars attracted to the city as never
before and because of the new fame, status, and cachet the building
has given to a rather obscure and economically-depressed Spanish city
located in a region that in for many years has been bedeviled by a
violent separatist movement. Incidentally, the city has continued to
commission leading architects to design projects there, including
Santiago Calatrava who designed a footbridge crossing the Nervion
(also known as the Bilboa river).
Let me take the parts of your question in the order you presented them.
1. The site.
The museum is located in central Bilboa in a riverside area formerly
dedicated to warehousing and port activities. (The port of Bilboa is
now located directly on the Bay of Biscay.) The building is approached
from its eastern end, where the size of the building (it is VERY
large: 24,000 square meters on a site of 32,500 square meters) is not
so apparent. The design seeks not to overwhelm its historic
surroundings and the way it avoids doing this is well described in The
Museum?s own website: http://www.guggenheim-bilbao.es/ingles/home.htm
?People coming from the calle Iparraguirre, one of the main streets
bisecting the center of Bilbao diagonally, are led directly to the
main entrance; the idea was to bring the city right to the doors of
the building. A broad flight of steps takes pedestrians down to the
Museum hall although descending flights of stairs are not a frequent
feature of institutional buildings. This is an inspired response to
the differences in height between the level of the river and the level
of the city center. It also enables a building with a surface area of
24,000 square meters and more than 50 meters high to be slotted into
the city landscape without it towering over the neighboring
buildings.?
The Wilkepedia entry agrees with this assessment: ?Also important is
while the museum is a spectacular monument from the river, on street
level it is quite modest and does not overwhelm its traditional
surroundings.?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guggenheim_Museum_Bilbao
Go to this image bank address in order to see an excellent image of
how the building looks as one approaches it down one of the city?s
main streets. (Note the hills in the distance which are usually
greener than this, in this very rainy city.)
http://www.artdreamguide.com/adg/adg_ESP/ba_ESP/bilba_ba/m_gugge/507.htm
And go here for a view of the main entrance and plaza from another
angle: http://www.virtourist.com/europe/bilbao/04.htm
It is only from across the river that the full elevation and the size
of the building can be well seen, as is shown in these two photos:
http://www.artlex.com/ArtLex/m/museum.html
http://www.barcelona-photo.com/architektur/Bilbao-Guggenheim-Museum.html
The first of these photographs is especially good in helping us to
get oriented to this building and its relationship to the site. To the
right is the plaza and main entrance, to the left is the Puente de la
Salve which as the Museum?s website says actually ?pierces? the site
and whioch is integrated into it by the ?sculptural tower,? and a
broad staircase leading up to it: ?The broad flight of stairs that
goes up to the sculptural tower, conceived as a device to absorb and
integrate the Puente de La Salve into the overall architectural scheme
of the building, is also a public access way that connects pedestrians
with the rest of the city.?
This site has two good images:
http://www.nanis-reiseseiten.de/Spanien/page_1.html
1. A helpful from-the-river image that shows that ?broad flight of
stairs? and the very beautiful pedestrian esplanade that curves
between the riverbank and a moat-like expanse of water overlooked by a
pavilion, and
2. The same, but viewed from the stairs.
The city map on the city? website uses the word ?muelle?, the Spanish
word for ?dock,? to describe this area, but clearly the area is now
being put to a purely aesthetic use.
****************
2. The second part of your question had to do with ?structural and
construction ideas.?
First let?s consider the extraordinary shape of the building. The
building was completed in 1997 and a writer in the Washington Post was
among the many who were utterly captivated by it:
http://www.jasonkaufman.com/articles/gehrys_guggenheim_bilbao.htm
Here is part is what he had to say about the form of the building:
?Gehry's masterpiece has been likened to a metallic flower, to the
hulls of ships, and to Frank Lloyd Wright's renowned spiral rotunda of
the Guggenheim's flagship on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Its
overlapping forms seem inspired by Futurist sculpture, conveying a
sense of centripetal motion, like an arrested implosion of the Tower
of Babel. It is like nothing we have seen before.?
Gehry himself has described the building as a metal flower set in the
bank of the river. And another observer has seen no lack of allusions
to the city and its history.
http://www.architectsonline.com/publications/bilbao/
The river and the city?s
shipbuilding and industrial past are, this writer thinks, all integral
to Gehry?s vision.
A word here about Gehry in general. At this site you will find a good
account of what makes Gehry such a unique and compelling architect:
http://www.greatbuildings.com/architects/Frank_Gehry.html
Here?s what they have to say: ? In the large-scale public commissions
he has received since he converted to a deconstructive aesthetic,
Gehry has explored the classical architecture themes. In these works
he melds formal compositions with an exploded aesthetic. Most
recently, Gehry has combined sensous curving forms with complex
deconstructive massing, achieving significant new results.?
Certainly the adjectives ?sculptural,? ?exploded? and ?deconstructed?
are all terms that can be validly applied to the Guggenheim Bilboa.
The seemingly chaotic mingling of forms expresses for many the quality
of modern life. Yet out of all of this chaos emerges a harmony of a
new kind.
*********************
3. The third part of your question has to do with ?materials and attitudes?.
It?s interesting to note that this very modern building relied on very
modern technology to be realized. Although the design work itself was
not computer-assisted?Gehry used traditional physical
modeling--computer assistance was needed to fabricate the titanium
panels that clad much of the building?s steel structure. A French
software program called CAITA, used in the construction of airplanes,
made possible the highly precise fabrication of the panels.
This site-- http://www.culturevulture.net/ArtandArch/Bilbao.htm-- has
an excellent account of this aspect of the building: ?Composed of a
group of free flowing volumes that seem to have met in a train crash,
the building shows sections of its steel skeleton, but mostly is
clothed in tissue-paper thin titanium (from whence the startlingly
beautiful effects of reflected light, the source of the welcoming
gleam from afar), warm limestone, and glass. From the three main
materials, paneling of unique sizes and shapes (details generated from
computer design, manufactured by computer commanded robots) was
created, thus allowing for the organically irregular and curved shapes
of the mass. It's like a mutated kind of shingling, taking that
technique to places it has never been before. (Critic Paul Goldberger
noted that changes in architecture have already moved ahead of Gehry;
while Gehry designs in his head and implements with the computer, a
new generation has adopted the computer itself as the generator of
design. Still, Gehry's work could not be implemented without the use
of computers.)?
The reflective nature of the skin of the building contributes in no
small part to the beauty of the building, in all kinds of light, even
the under the frequently grey skies of this city by the Atlantic.
4. Symbolic and historic association of the work
We have already touched upon this. One can say that the titanium
panels pay tribute to Bilboa?s industrial heritage, especially its
shipbuilding. Further, the sail-like shapes can be seen as reference
to the city?s history as an important Atlantic port. (Though both are
also typical of Gehry?s work far from Bilboa. Using fish-scale-like
panels as the skin of a building is an idea that dates back to early
in his career. And the sail-like shapes are also a Gehry trademark,
seen again in the recently completed Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los
Angeles.)
5. Spatial organization and character
The first thing to be said on this subject, in my view, is that the
building discloses very little of how it is organized, when viewed
from outside. But the Museum?s own website says that one can see from
the outside how the building is composed of two kinds of galleries.
The building has a total of 19 galleries organized around the central
atrium. ?Ten of these galleries have an almost classical orthogonal
look and can be identified from outside by their stone finishes. Nine
other, irregularly-shaped galleries present a remarkable contrast, and
can be identified from outside by their unusual architecture and the
covering of titanium.?
The biggest gallery is 130 meters long (!). It is ?free of columns and
with flooring specially prepared to cope with the comings and going of
visitors and museum staff, as well as the sheer weight of the works on
display there. Seen from the outside, this gallery slides underneath
the Puente de La Salve and runs up against the end of the tower that
embraces the bridge and brings it into the building.? It is this
gallery where large works like those of Richard Serra are displayed.
As for movement through the building, the museum website says that,
contrary to the outside appearance, all is easy and clear
inside:?There is a harmonius tie between the architectural shapes and
the contents of each gallery. Undoubtedly, this simplifies the tour
inside the Museum while the atrium, in its very center, and the
walkways that link one gallery with another - showing different
perspectives of the exhibitional spaces - facilitate the location of
galleries and services at any time. As visitors enter the Museum they
learn that under the external complex appearance of the architectural
shapes, there lies a neat, clear world where it is easy to find one's
way around.?
http://www.guggenheim-bilbao.es/ingles/home.htm
Here is what Mr. Modigliani has to say about the interior organization
and flow of the building: ?The interior organization returns the
visitor to the central atrium over and over again. From this space the
visitor can see back to the main entrance as well as out to the river.
While the galleries provide an appropriate mix of exotic spaces and
more traditional ones, they are containers for art - that is, closed
and inward looking. But the transition from gallery to gallery or
floor to floor always returns to the atrium space. Here, you are
immediately re-oriented within the building. Equally important, the
city becomes part of the permanent exhibit, yet forever changing with
time and light.?
http://www.architectsonline.com/publications/bilbao/
And here is what another site has to say about the ?program? of the building:
?Inside the gallery spaces are comprised of three different types:
conservative for permanent collections; a more dramatic, elongated
rectangular space extending toward the Puente de la Slave Bridge for
temporary exhibits; and seven distinct galleries of unique spatial
quality for selected living artists. This programmatics is evident on
the exterior of the buildings as limestone-clad rectilinear volumes
enclose permanent collections; the fish-like extension houses the
temporary exhibits in one grand, linear space; while the grouped forms
around the apex form the spaces for the living artists. Looking at the
Guggengeim in this manner it is evident how Gehry works, from a plan
that satisfies programmatic requirements out to a formal expression of
the spaces.? http://www.archidose.org/Jul99/071299.html
*************************
I hope I have not exhausted you with this answer! I know that I HAVE
exhausted myself, but it is a fascinating subject,and doing this
research has reinforced my determination to some day see this
remarkable building in person. Perhaps I will run into you there!
Scribe_ga
An enormously complex structure, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilboa is
also a very complex subject, but I hope that my answer will at least
give you a good start on comprehending and appreciating this building,
which seems to be considered one of the great buildings of the 20th
Century, by almost global consensus.
First, a little about the city in which it is located. Bilboa is an
industrial port city in the Basque country of Spain. The ?river? on
which the building is located (the Nervion) is actually an estuary of
the Atlantic. Bilboa is a medium-size city (350,000 population) and
the largest in the Basque region of Spain. Both city and region must
have visionary leadership. Not only did they succeed in persuading the
Guggenheim to locate a ?branch? there, but the leadership endorsed and
supported the daring vision of the museum and its architect for a
building that would be as startlingly and radically different as was
the Guggenheim?s home museum in New York City, designed by Frank Lloyd
Wright., in the 1950s. Certainly the city?s boldness has been
vindicated. It has been a major factor in the economic revival of the
city, both because of tourist dollars attracted to the city as never
before and because of the new fame, status, and cachet the building
has given to a rather obscure and economically-depressed Spanish city
located in a region that in for many years has been bedeviled by a
violent separatist movement. Incidentally, the city has continued to
commission leading architects to design projects there, including
Santiago Calatrava who designed a footbridge crossing the Nervion
(also known as the Bilboa river).
Let me take the parts of your question in the order you presented them.
1. The site.
The museum is located in central Bilboa in a riverside area formerly
dedicated to warehousing and port activities. (The port of Bilboa is
now located directly on the Bay of Biscay.) The building is approached
from its eastern end, where the size of the building (it is VERY
large: 24,000 square meters on a site of 32,500 square meters) is not
so apparent. The design seeks not to overwhelm its historic
surroundings and the way it avoids doing this is well described in The
Museum?s own website: http://www.guggenheim-bilbao.es/ingles/home.htm
?People coming from the calle Iparraguirre, one of the main streets
bisecting the center of Bilbao diagonally, are led directly to the
main entrance; the idea was to bring the city right to the doors of
the building. A broad flight of steps takes pedestrians down to the
Museum hall although descending flights of stairs are not a frequent
feature of institutional buildings. This is an inspired response to
the differences in height between the level of the river and the level
of the city center. It also enables a building with a surface area of
24,000 square meters and more than 50 meters high to be slotted into
the city landscape without it towering over the neighboring
buildings.?
The Wilkepedia entry agrees with this assessment: ?Also important is
while the museum is a spectacular monument from the river, on street
level it is quite modest and does not overwhelm its traditional
surroundings.?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guggenheim_Museum_Bilbao
Go to this image bank address in order to see an excellent image of
how the building looks as one approaches it down one of the city?s
main streets. (Note the hills in the distance which are usually
greener than this, in this very rainy city.)
http://www.artdreamguide.com/adg/adg_ESP/ba_ESP/bilba_ba/m_gugge/507.htm
And go here for a view of the main entrance and plaza from another
angle: http://www.virtourist.com/europe/bilbao/04.htm
It is only from across the river that the full elevation and the size
of the building can be well seen, as is shown in these two photos:
http://www.artlex.com/ArtLex/m/museum.html
http://www.barcelona-photo.com/architektur/Bilbao-Guggenheim-Museum.html
The first of these photographs is especially good in helping us to
get oriented to this building and its relationship to the site. To the
right is the plaza and main entrance, to the left is the Puente de la
Salve which as the Museum?s website says actually ?pierces? the site
and whioch is integrated into it by the ?sculptural tower,? and a
broad staircase leading up to it: ?The broad flight of stairs that
goes up to the sculptural tower, conceived as a device to absorb and
integrate the Puente de La Salve into the overall architectural scheme
of the building, is also a public access way that connects pedestrians
with the rest of the city.?
This site has two good images:
http://www.nanis-reiseseiten.de/Spanien/page_1.html
1. A helpful from-the-river image that shows that ?broad flight of
stairs? and the very beautiful pedestrian esplanade that curves
between the riverbank and a moat-like expanse of water overlooked by a
pavilion, and
2. The same, but viewed from the stairs.
The city map on the city? website uses the word ?muelle?, the Spanish
word for ?dock,? to describe this area, but clearly the area is now
being put to a purely aesthetic use.
****************
2. The second part of your question had to do with ?structural and
construction ideas.?
First let?s consider the extraordinary shape of the building. The
building was completed in 1997 and a writer in the Washington Post was
among the many who were utterly captivated by it:
http://www.jasonkaufman.com/articles/gehrys_guggenheim_bilbao.htm
Here is part is what he had to say about the form of the building:
?Gehry's masterpiece has been likened to a metallic flower, to the
hulls of ships, and to Frank Lloyd Wright's renowned spiral rotunda of
the Guggenheim's flagship on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Its
overlapping forms seem inspired by Futurist sculpture, conveying a
sense of centripetal motion, like an arrested implosion of the Tower
of Babel. It is like nothing we have seen before.?
Gehry himself has described the building as a metal flower set in the
bank of the river. And another observer has seen no lack of allusions
to the city and its history.
http://www.architectsonline.com/publications/bilbao/
The river and the city?s
shipbuilding and industrial past are, this writer thinks, all integral
to Gehry?s vision.
A word here about Gehry in general. At this site you will find a good
account of what makes Gehry such a unique and compelling architect:
http://www.greatbuildings.com/architects/Frank_Gehry.html
Here?s what they have to say: ? In the large-scale public commissions
he has received since he converted to a deconstructive aesthetic,
Gehry has explored the classical architecture themes. In these works
he melds formal compositions with an exploded aesthetic. Most
recently, Gehry has combined sensous curving forms with complex
deconstructive massing, achieving significant new results.?
Certainly the adjectives ?sculptural,? ?exploded? and ?deconstructed?
are all terms that can be validly applied to the Guggenheim Bilboa.
The seemingly chaotic mingling of forms expresses for many the quality
of modern life. Yet out of all of this chaos emerges a harmony of a
new kind.
*********************
3. The third part of your question has to do with ?materials and attitudes?.
It?s interesting to note that this very modern building relied on very
modern technology to be realized. Although the design work itself was
not computer-assisted?Gehry used traditional physical
modeling--computer assistance was needed to fabricate the titanium
panels that clad much of the building?s steel structure. A French
software program called CAITA, used in the construction of airplanes,
made possible the highly precise fabrication of the panels.
This site-- http://www.culturevulture.net/ArtandArch/Bilbao.htm-- has
an excellent account of this aspect of the building: ?Composed of a
group of free flowing volumes that seem to have met in a train crash,
the building shows sections of its steel skeleton, but mostly is
clothed in tissue-paper thin titanium (from whence the startlingly
beautiful effects of reflected light, the source of the welcoming
gleam from afar), warm limestone, and glass. From the three main
materials, paneling of unique sizes and shapes (details generated from
computer design, manufactured by computer commanded robots) was
created, thus allowing for the organically irregular and curved shapes
of the mass. It's like a mutated kind of shingling, taking that
technique to places it has never been before. (Critic Paul Goldberger
noted that changes in architecture have already moved ahead of Gehry;
while Gehry designs in his head and implements with the computer, a
new generation has adopted the computer itself as the generator of
design. Still, Gehry's work could not be implemented without the use
of computers.)?
The reflective nature of the skin of the building contributes in no
small part to the beauty of the building, in all kinds of light, even
the under the frequently grey skies of this city by the Atlantic.
4. Symbolic and historic association of the work
We have already touched upon this. One can say that the titanium
panels pay tribute to Bilboa?s industrial heritage, especially its
shipbuilding. Further, the sail-like shapes can be seen as reference
to the city?s history as an important Atlantic port. (Though both are
also typical of Gehry?s work far from Bilboa. Using fish-scale-like
panels as the skin of a building is an idea that dates back to early
in his career. And the sail-like shapes are also a Gehry trademark,
seen again in the recently completed Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los
Angeles.)
5. Spatial organization and character
The first thing to be said on this subject, in my view, is that the
building discloses very little of how it is organized, when viewed
from outside. But the Museum?s own website says that one can see from
the outside how the building is composed of two kinds of galleries.
The building has a total of 19 galleries organized around the central
atrium. ?Ten of these galleries have an almost classical orthogonal
look and can be identified from outside by their stone finishes. Nine
other, irregularly-shaped galleries present a remarkable contrast, and
can be identified from outside by their unusual architecture and the
covering of titanium.?
The biggest gallery is 130 meters long (!). It is ?free of columns and
with flooring specially prepared to cope with the comings and going of
visitors and museum staff, as well as the sheer weight of the works on
display there. Seen from the outside, this gallery slides underneath
the Puente de La Salve and runs up against the end of the tower that
embraces the bridge and brings it into the building.? It is this
gallery where large works like those of Richard Serra are displayed.
As for movement through the building, the museum website says that,
contrary to the outside appearance, all is easy and clear
inside:?There is a harmonius tie between the architectural shapes and
the contents of each gallery. Undoubtedly, this simplifies the tour
inside the Museum while the atrium, in its very center, and the
walkways that link one gallery with another - showing different
perspectives of the exhibitional spaces - facilitate the location of
galleries and services at any time. As visitors enter the Museum they
learn that under the external complex appearance of the architectural
shapes, there lies a neat, clear world where it is easy to find one's
way around.?
http://www.guggenheim-bilbao.es/ingles/home.htm
Here is what Mr. Modigliani has to say about the interior organization
and flow of the building: ?The interior organization returns the
visitor to the central atrium over and over again. From this space the
visitor can see back to the main entrance as well as out to the river.
While the galleries provide an appropriate mix of exotic spaces and
more traditional ones, they are containers for art - that is, closed
and inward looking. But the transition from gallery to gallery or
floor to floor always returns to the atrium space. Here, you are
immediately re-oriented within the building. Equally important, the
city becomes part of the permanent exhibit, yet forever changing with
time and light.?
http://www.architectsonline.com/publications/bilbao/
And here is what another site has to say about the ?program? of the building:
?Inside the gallery spaces are comprised of three different types:
conservative for permanent collections; a more dramatic, elongated
rectangular space extending toward the Puente de la Slave Bridge for
temporary exhibits; and seven distinct galleries of unique spatial
quality for selected living artists. This programmatics is evident on
the exterior of the buildings as limestone-clad rectilinear volumes
enclose permanent collections; the fish-like extension houses the
temporary exhibits in one grand, linear space; while the grouped forms
around the apex form the spaces for the living artists. Looking at the
Guggengeim in this manner it is evident how Gehry works, from a plan
that satisfies programmatic requirements out to a formal expression of
the spaces.? http://www.archidose.org/Jul99/071299.html
*************************
I hope I have not exhausted you with this answer! I know that I HAVE
exhausted myself, but it is a fascinating subject,and doing this
research has reinforced my determination to some day see this
remarkable building in person. Perhaps I will run into you there!
Scribe_ga
An enormously complex structure, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilboa is
also a very complex subject, but I hope that my answer will at least
give you a good start on comprehending and appreciating this building,
which seems to be considered one of the great buildings of the 20th
Century, by almost global consensus.
First, a little about the city in which it is located. Bilboa is an
industrial port city in the Basque country of Spain. The ?river? on
which the building is located (the Nervion) is actually an estuary of
the Atlantic. Bilboa is a medium-size city (350,000 population) and
the largest in the Basque region of Spain. Both city and region must
have visionary leadership. Not only did they succeed in persuading the
Guggenheim to locate a ?branch? there, but the leadership endorsed and
supported the daring vision of the museum and its architect for a
building that would be as startlingly and radically different as was
the Guggenheim?s home museum in New York City, designed by Frank Lloyd
Wright., in the 1950s. Certainly the city?s boldness has been
vindicated. It has been a major factor in the economic revival of the
city, both because of tourist dollars attracted to the city as never
before and because of the new fame, status, and cachet the building
has given to a rather obscure and economically-depressed Spanish city
located in a region that in for many years has been bedeviled by a
violent separatist movement. Incidentally, the city has continued to
commission leading architects to design projects there, including
Santiago Calatrava who designed a footbridge crossing the Nervion
(also known as the Bilboa river).
Let me take the parts of your question in the order you presented them.
1. The site.
The museum is located in central Bilboa in a riverside area formerly
dedicated to warehousing and port activities. (The port of Bilboa is
now located directly on the Bay of Biscay.) The building is approached
from its eastern end, where the size of the building (it is VERY
large: 24,000 square meters on a site of 32,500 square meters) is not
so apparent. The design seeks not to overwhelm its historic
surroundings and the way it avoids doing this is well described in The
Museum?s own website: http://www.guggenheim-bilbao.es/ingles/home.htm
?People coming from the calle Iparraguirre, one of the main streets
bisecting the center of Bilbao diagonally, are led directly to the
main entrance; the idea was to bring the city right to the doors of
the building. A broad flight of steps takes pedestrians down to the
Museum hall although descending flights of stairs are not a frequent
feature of institutional buildings. This is an inspired response to
the differences in height between the level of the river and the level
of the city center. It also enables a building with a surface area of
24,000 square meters and more than 50 meters high to be slotted into
the city landscape without it towering over the neighboring
buildings.?
The Wilkepedia entry agrees with this assessment: ?Also important is
while the museum is a spectacular monument from the river, on street
level it is quite modest and does not overwhelm its traditional
surroundings.?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guggenheim_Museum_Bilbao
Go to this image bank address in order to see an excellent image of
how the building looks as one approaches it down one of the city?s
main streets. (Note the hills in the distance which are usually
greener than this, in this very rainy city.)
http://www.artdreamguide.com/adg/adg_ESP/ba_ESP/bilba_ba/m_gugge/507.htm
And go here for a view of the main entrance and plaza from another
angle: http://www.virtourist.com/europe/bilbao/04.htm
It is only from across the river that the full elevation and the size
of the building can be well seen, as is shown in these two photos:
http://www.artlex.com/ArtLex/m/museum.html
http://www.barcelona-photo.com/architektur/Bilbao-Guggenheim-Museum.html
The first of these photographs is especially good in helping us to
get oriented to this building and its relationship to the site. To the
right is the plaza and main entrance, to the left is the Puente de la
Salve which as the Museum?s website says actually ?pierces? the site
and whioch is integrated into it by the ?sculptural tower,? and a
broad staircase leading up to it: ?The broad flight of stairs that
goes up to the sculptural tower, conceived as a device to absorb and
integrate the Puente de La Salve into the overall architectural scheme
of the building, is also a public access way that connects pedestrians
with the rest of the city.?
This site has two good images:
http://www.nanis-reiseseiten.de/Spanien/page_1.html
1. A helpful from-the-river image that shows that ?broad flight of
stairs? and the very beautiful pedestrian esplanade that curves
between the riverbank and a moat-like expanse of water overlooked by a
pavilion, and
2. The same, but viewed from the stairs.
The city map on the city? website uses the word ?muelle?, the Spanish
word for ?dock,? to describe this area, but clearly the area is now
being put to a purely aesthetic use.
****************
2. The second part of your question had to do with ?structural and
construction ideas.?
First let?s consider the extraordinary shape of the building. The
building was completed in 1997 and a writer in the Washington Post was
among the many who were utterly captivated by it:
http://www.jasonkaufman.com/articles/gehrys_guggenheim_bilbao.htm
Here is part is what he had to say about the form of the building:
?Gehry's masterpiece has been likened to a metallic flower, to the
hulls of ships, and to Frank Lloyd Wright's renowned spiral rotunda of
the Guggenheim's flagship on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Its
overlapping forms seem inspired by Futurist sculpture, conveying a
sense of centripetal motion, like an arrested implosion of the Tower
of Babel. It is like nothing we have seen before.?
Gehry himself has described the building as a metal flower set in the
bank of the river. And another observer has seen no lack of allusions
to the city and its history.
http://www.architectsonline.com/publications/bilbao/
The river and the city?s
shipbuilding and industrial past are, this writer thinks, all integral
to Gehry?s vision.
A word here about Gehry in general. At this site you will find a good
account of what makes Gehry such a unique and compelling architect:
http://www.greatbuildings.com/architects/Frank_Gehry.html
Here?s what they have to say: ? In the large-scale public commissions
he has received since he converted to a deconstructive aesthetic,
Gehry has explored the classical architecture themes. In these works
he melds formal compositions with an exploded aesthetic. Most
recently, Gehry has combined sensous curving forms with complex
deconstructive massing, achieving significant new results.?
Certainly the adjectives ?sculptural,? ?exploded? and ?deconstructed?
are all terms that can be validly applied to the Guggenheim Bilboa.
The seemingly chaotic mingling of forms expresses for many the quality
of modern life. Yet out of all of this chaos emerges a harmony of a
new kind.
*********************
3. The third part of your question has to do with ?materials and attitudes?.
It?s interesting to note that this very modern building relied on very
modern technology to be realized. Although the design work itself was
not computer-assisted?Gehry used traditional physical
modeling--computer assistance was needed to fabricate the titanium
panels that clad much of the building?s steel structure. A French
software program called CAITA, used in the construction of airplanes,
made possible the highly precise fabrication of the panels.
This site-- http://www.culturevulture.net/ArtandArch/Bilbao.htm-- has
an excellent account of this aspect of the building: ?Composed of a
group of free flowing volumes that seem to have met in a train crash,
the building shows sections of its steel skeleton, but mostly is
clothed in tissue-paper thin titanium (from whence the startlingly
beautiful effects of reflected light, the source of the welcoming
gleam from afar), warm limestone, and glass. From the three main
materials, paneling of unique sizes and shapes (details generated from
computer design, manufactured by computer commanded robots) was
created, thus allowing for the organically irregular and curved shapes
of the mass. It's like a mutated kind of shingling, taking that
technique to places it has never been before. (Critic Paul Goldberger
noted that changes in architecture have already moved ahead of Gehry;
while Gehry designs in his head and implements with the computer, a
new generation has adopted the computer itself as the generator of
design. Still, Gehry's work could not be implemented without the use
of computers.)?
The reflective nature of the skin of the building contributes in no
small part to the beauty of the building, in all kinds of light, even
the under the frequently grey skies of this city by the Atlantic.
4. Symbolic and historic association of the work
We have already touched upon this. One can say that the titanium
panels pay tribute to Bilboa?s industrial heritage, especially its
shipbuilding. Further, the sail-like shapes can be seen as reference
to the city?s history as an important Atlantic port. (Though both are
also typical of Gehry?s work far from Bilboa. Using fish-scale-like
panels as the skin of a building is an idea that dates back to early
in his career. And the sail-like shapes are also a Gehry trademark,
seen again in the recently completed Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los
Angeles.)
5. Spatial organization and character
The first thing to be said on this subject, in my view, is that the
building discloses very little of how it is organized, when viewed
from outside. But the Museum?s own website says that one can see from
the outside how the building is composed of two kinds of galleries.
The building has a total of 19 galleries organized around the central
atrium. ?Ten of these galleries have an almost classical orthogonal
look and can be identified from outside by their stone finishes. Nine
other, irregularly-shaped galleries present a remarkable contrast, and
can be identified from outside by their unusual architecture and the
covering of titanium.?
The biggest gallery is 130 meters long (!). It is ?free of columns and
with flooring specially prepared to cope with the comings and going of
visitors and museum staff, as well as the sheer weight of the works on
display there. Seen from the outside, this gallery slides underneath
the Puente de La Salve and runs up against the end of the tower that
embraces the bridge and brings it into the building.? It is this
gallery where large works like those of Richard Serra are displayed.
As for movement through the building, the museum website says that,
contrary to the outside appearance, all is easy and clear
inside:?There is a harmonius tie between the architectural shapes and
the contents of each gallery. Undoubtedly, this simplifies the tour
inside the Museum while the atrium, in its very center, and the
walkways that link one gallery with another - showing different
perspectives of the exhibitional spaces - facilitate the location of
galleries and services at any time. As visitors enter the Museum they
learn that under the external complex appearance of the architectural
shapes, there lies a neat, clear world where it is easy to find one's
way around.?
http://www.guggenheim-bilbao.es/ingles/home.htm
Here is what Mr. Modigliani has to say about the interior organization
and flow of the building: ?The interior organization returns the
visitor to the central atrium over and over again. From this space the
visitor can see back to the main entrance as well as out to the river.
While the galleries provide an appropriate mix of exotic spaces and
more traditional ones, they are containers for art - that is, closed
and inward looking. But the transition from gallery to gallery or
floor to floor always returns to the atrium space. Here, you are
immediately re-oriented within the building. Equally important, the
city becomes part of the permanent exhibit, yet forever changing with
time and light.?
http://www.architectsonline.com/publications/bilbao/
And here is what another site has to say about the ?program? of the building:
?Inside the gallery spaces are comprised of three different types:
conservative for permanent collections; a more dramatic, elongated
rectangular space extending toward the Puente de la Slave Bridge for
temporary exhibits; and seven distinct galleries of unique spatial
quality for selected living artists. This programmatics is evident on
the exterior of the buildings as limestone-clad rectilinear volumes
enclose permanent collections; the fish-like extension houses the
temporary exhibits in one grand, linear space; while the grouped forms
around the apex form the spaces for the living artists. Looking at the
Guggengeim in this manner it is evident how Gehry works, from a plan
that satisfies programmatic requirements out to a formal expression of
the spaces.? http://www.archidose.org/Jul99/071299.html
*************************
I hope I have not exhausted you with this answer! I know that I HAVE
exhausted myself, but it is a fascinating subject,and doing this
research has reinforced my determination to some day see this
remarkable building in person. Perhaps I will run into you there!
Scribe_ga
An enormously complex structure, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilboa is
also a very complex subject, but I hope that my answer will at least
give you a good start on comprehending and appreciating this building,
which seems to be considered one of the great buildings of the 20th
Century, by almost global consensus.
First, a little about the city in which it is located. Bilboa is an
industrial port city in the Basque country of Spain. The ?river? on
which the building is located (the Nervion) is actually an estuary of
the Atlantic. Bilboa is a medium-size city (350,000 population) and
the largest in the Basque region of Spain. Both city and region must
have visionary leadership. Not only did they succeed in persuading the
Guggenheim to locate a ?branch? there, but the leadership endorsed and
supported the daring vision of the museum and its architect for a
building that would be as startlingly and radically different as was
the Guggenheim?s home museum in New York City, designed by Frank Lloyd
Wright., in the 1950s. Certainly the city?s boldness has been
vindicated. It has been a major factor in the economic revival of the
city, both because of tourist dollars attracted to the city as never
before and because of the new fame, status, and cachet the building
has given to a rather obscure and economically-depressed Spanish city
located in a region that in for many years has been bedeviled by a
violent separatist movement. Incidentally, the city has continued to
commission leading architects to design projects there, including
Santiago Calatrava who designed a footbridge crossing the Nervion
(also known as the Bilboa river).
Let me take the parts of your question in the order you presented them.
1. The site.
The museum is located in central Bilboa in a riverside area formerly
dedicated to warehousing and port activities. (The port of Bilboa is
now located directly on the Bay of Biscay.) The building is approached
from its eastern end, where the size of the building (it is VERY
large: 24,000 square meters on a site of 32,500 square meters) is not
so apparent. The design seeks not to overwhelm its historic
surroundings and the way it avoids doing this is well described in The
Museum?s own website: http://www.guggenheim-bilbao.es/ingles/home.htm
?People coming from the calle Iparraguirre, one of the main streets
bisecting the center of Bilbao diagonally, are led directly to the
main entrance; the idea was to bring the city right to the doors of
the building. A broad flight of steps takes pedestrians down to the
Museum hall although descending flights of stairs are not a frequent
feature of institutional buildings. This is an inspired response to
the differences in height between the level of the river and the level
of the city center. It also enables a building with a surface area of
24,000 square meters and more than 50 meters high to be slotted into
the city landscape without it towering over the neighboring
buildings.?
The Wilkepedia entry agrees with this assessment: ?Also important is
while the museum is a spectacular monument from the river, on street
level it is quite modest and does not overwhelm its traditional
surroundings.?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guggenheim_Museum_Bilbao
Go to this image bank address in order to see an excellent image of
how the building looks as one approaches it down one of the city?s
main streets. (Note the hills in the distance which are usually
greener than this, in this very rainy city.)
http://www.artdreamguide.com/adg/adg_ESP/ba_ESP/bilba_ba/m_gugge/507.htm
And go here for a view of the main entrance and plaza from another
angle: http://www.virtourist.com/europe/bilbao/04.htm
It is only from across the river that the full elevation and the size
of the building can be well seen, as is shown in these two photos:
http://www.artlex.com/ArtLex/m/museum.html
http://www.barcelona-photo.com/architektur/Bilbao-Guggenheim-Museum.html
The first of these photographs is especially good in helping us to
get oriented to this building and its relationship to the site. To the
right is the plaza and main entrance, to the left is the Puente de la
Salve which as the Museum?s website says actually ?pierces? the site
and whioch is integrated into it by the ?sculptural tower,? and a
broad staircase leading up to it: ?The broad flight of stairs that
goes up to the sculptural tower, conceived as a device to absorb and
integrate the Puente de La Salve into the overall architectural scheme
of the building, is also a public access way that connects pedestrians
with the rest of the city.?
This site has two good images:
http://www.nanis-reiseseiten.de/Spanien/page_1.html
1. A helpful from-the-river image that shows that ?broad flight of
stairs? and the very beautiful pedestrian esplanade that curves
between the riverbank and a moat-like expanse of water overlooked by a
pavilion, and
2. The same, but viewed from the stairs.
The city map on the city? website uses the word ?muelle?, the Spanish
word for ?dock,? to describe this area, but clearly the area is now
being put to a purely aesthetic use.
****************
2. The second part of your question had to do with ?structural and
construction ideas.?
First let?s consider the extraordinary shape of the building. The
building was completed in 1997 and a writer in the Washington Post was
among the many who were utterly captivated by it:
http://www.jasonkaufman.com/articles/gehrys_guggenheim_bilbao.htm
Here is part is what he had to say about the form of the building:
?Gehry's masterpiece has been likened to a metallic flower, to the
hulls of ships, and to Frank Lloyd Wright's renowned spiral rotunda of
the Guggenheim's flagship on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Its
overlapping forms seem inspired by Futurist sculpture, conveying a
sense of centripetal motion, like an arrested implosion of the Tower
of Babel. It is like nothing we have seen before.?
Gehry himself has described the building as a metal flower set in the
bank of the river. And another observer has seen no lack of allusions
to the city and its history.
http://www.architectsonline.com/publications/bilbao/
The river and the city?s
shipbuilding and industrial past are, this writer thinks, all integral
to Gehry?s vision.
A word here about Gehry in general. At this site you will find a good
account of what makes Gehry such a unique and compelling architect:
http://www.greatbuildings.com/architects/Frank_Gehry.html
Here?s what they have to say: ? In the large-scale public commissions
he has received since he converted to a deconstructive aesthetic,
Gehry has explored the classical architecture themes. In these works
he melds formal compositions with an exploded aesthetic. Most
recently, Gehry has combined sensous curving forms with complex
deconstructive massing, achieving significant new results.?
Certainly the adjectives ?sculptural,? ?exploded? and ?deconstructed?
are all terms that can be validly applied to the Guggenheim Bilboa.
The seemingly chaotic mingling of forms expresses for many the quality
of modern life. Yet out of all of this chaos emerges a harmony of a
new kind.
*********************
3. The third part of your question has to do with ?materials and attitudes?.
It?s interesting to note that this very modern building relied on very
modern technology to be realized. Although the design work itself was
not computer-assisted?Gehry used traditional physical
modeling--computer assistance was needed to fabricate the titanium
panels that clad much of the building?s steel structure. A French
software program called CAITA, used in the construction of airplanes,
made possible the highly precise fabrication of the panels.
This site-- http://www.culturevulture.net/ArtandArch/Bilbao.htm-- has
an excellent account of this aspect of the building: ?Composed of a
group of free flowing volumes that seem to have met in a train crash,
the building shows sections of its steel skeleton, but mostly is
clothed in tissue-paper thin titanium (from whence the startlingly
beautiful effects of reflected light, the source of the welcoming
gleam from afar), warm limestone, and glass. From the three main
materials, paneling of unique sizes and shapes (details generated from
computer design, manufactured by computer commanded robots) was
created, thus allowing for the organically irregular and curved shapes
of the mass. It's like a mutated kind of shingling, taking that
technique to places it has never been before. (Critic Paul Goldberger
noted that changes in architecture have already moved ahead of Gehry;
while Gehry designs in his head and implements with the computer, a
new generation has adopted the computer itself as the generator of
design. Still, Gehry's work could not be implemented without the use
of computers.)?
The reflective nature of the skin of the building contributes in no
small part to the beauty of the building, in all kinds of light, even
the under the frequently grey skies of this city by the Atlantic.
4. Symbolic and historic association of the work
We have already touched upon this. One can say that the titanium
panels pay tribute to Bilboa?s industrial heritage, especially its
shipbuilding. Further, the sail-like shapes can be seen as reference
to the city?s history as an important Atlantic port. (Though both are
also typical of Gehry?s work far from Bilboa. Using fish-scale-like
panels as the skin of a building is an idea that dates back to early
in his career. And the sail-like shapes are also a Gehry trademark,
seen again in the recently completed Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los
Angeles.)
5. Spatial organization and character
The first thing to be said on this subject, in my view, is that the
building discloses very little of how it is organized, when viewed
from outside. But the Museum?s own website says that one can see from
the outside how the building is composed of two kinds of galleries.
The building has a total of 19 galleries organized around the central
atrium. ?Ten of these galleries have an almost classical orthogonal
look and can be identified from outside by their stone finishes. Nine
other, irregularly-shaped galleries present a remarkable contrast, and
can be identified from outside by their unusual architecture and the
covering of titanium.?
The biggest gallery is 130 meters long (!). It is ?free of columns and
with flooring specially prepared to cope with the comings and going of
visitors and museum staff, as well as the sheer weight of the works on
display there. Seen from the outside, this gallery slides underneath
the Puente de La Salve and runs up against the end of the tower that
embraces the bridge and brings it into the building.? It is this
gallery where large works like those of Richard Serra are displayed.
As for movement through the building, the museum website says that,
contrary to the outside appearance, all is easy and clear
inside:?There is a harmonius tie between the architectural shapes and
the contents of each gallery. Undoubtedly, this simplifies the tour
inside the Museum while the atrium, in its very center, and the
walkways that link one gallery with another - showing different
perspectives of the exhibitional spaces - facilitate the location of
galleries and services at any time. As visitors enter the Museum they
learn that under the external complex appearance of the architectural
shapes, there lies a neat, clear world where it is easy to find one's
way around.?
http://www.guggenheim-bilbao.es/ingles/home.htm
Here is what Mr. Modigliani has to say about the interior organization
and flow of the building: ?The interior organization returns the
visitor to the central atrium over and over again. From this space the
visitor can see back to the main entrance as well as out to the river.
While the galleries provide an appropriate mix of exotic spaces and
more traditional ones, they are containers for art - that is, closed
and inward looking. But the transition from gallery to gallery or
floor to floor always returns to the atrium space. Here, you are
immediately re-oriented within the building. Equally important, the
city becomes part of the permanent exhibit, yet forever changing with
time and light.?
http://www.architectsonline.com/publications/bilbao/
And here is what another site has to say about the ?program? of the building:
?Inside the gallery spaces are comprised of three different types:
conservative for permanent collections; a more dramatic, elongated
rectangular space extending toward the Puente de la Slave Bridge for
temporary exhibits; and seven distinct galleries of unique spatial
quality for selected living artists. This programmatics is evident on
the exterior of the buildings as limestone-clad rectilinear volumes
enclose permanent collections; the fish-like extension houses the
temporary exhibits in one grand, linear space; while the grouped forms
around the apex form the spaces for the living artists. Looking at the
Guggengeim in this manner it is evident how Gehry works, from a plan
that satisfies programmatic requirements out to a formal expression of
the spaces.? http://www.archidose.org/Jul99/071299.html
*************************
I hope I have not exhausted you with this answer! I know that I HAVE
exhausted myself, but it is a fascinating subject,and doing this
research has reinforced my determination to some day see this
remarkable building in person. Perhaps I will run into you there!
Scribe_ga
An enormously complex structure, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilboa is
also a very complex subject, but I hope that my answer will at least
give you a good start on comprehending and appreciating this building,
which seems to be considered one of the great buildings of the 20th
Century, by almost global consensus.
First, a little about the city in which it is located. Bilboa is an
industrial port city in the Basque country of Spain. The ?river? on
which the building is located (the Nervion) is actually an estuary of
the Atlantic. Bilboa is a medium-size city (350,000 population) and
the largest in the Basque region of Spain. Both city and region must
have visionary leadership. Not only did they succeed in persuading the
Guggenheim to locate a ?branch? there, but the leadership endorsed and
supported the daring vision of the museum and its architect for a
building that would be as startlingly and radically different as was
the Guggenheim?s home museum in New York City, designed by Frank Lloyd
Wright., in the 1950s. Certainly the city?s boldness has been
vindicated. It has been a major factor in the economic revival of the
city, both because of tourist dollars attracted to the city as never
before and because of the new fame, status, and cachet the building
has given to a rather obscure and economically-depressed Spanish city
located in a region that in for many years has been bedeviled by a
violent separatist movement. Incidentally, the city has continued to
commission leading architects to design projects there, including
Santiago Calatrava who designed a footbridge crossing the Nervion
(also known as the Bilboa river).
Let me take the parts of your question in the order you presented them.
1. The site.
The museum is located in central Bilboa in a riverside area formerly
dedicated to warehousing and port activities. (The port of Bilboa is
now located directly on the Bay of Biscay.) The building is approached
from its eastern end, where the size of the building (it is VERY
large: 24,000 square meters on a site of 32,500 square meters) is not
so apparent. The design seeks not to overwhelm its historic
surroundings and the way it avoids doing this is well described in The
Museum?s own website: http://www.guggenheim-bilbao.es/ingles/home.htm
?People coming from the calle Iparraguirre, one of the main streets
bisecting the center of Bilbao diagonally, are led directly to the
main entrance; the idea was to bring the city right to the doors of
the building. A broad flight of steps takes pedestrians down to the
Museum hall although descending flights of stairs are not a frequent
feature of institutional buildings. This is an inspired response to
the differences in height between the level of the river and the level
of the city center. It also enables a building with a surface area of
24,000 square meters and more than 50 meters high to be slotted into
the city landscape without it towering over the neighboring
buildings.?
The Wilkepedia entry agrees with this assessment: ?Also important is
while the museum is a spectacular monument from the river, on street
level it is quite modest and does not overwhelm its traditional
surroundings.?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guggenheim_Museum_Bilbao
Go to this image bank address in order to see an excellent image of
how the building looks as one approaches it down one of the city?s
main streets. (Note the hills in the distance which are usually
greener than this, in this very rainy city.)
http://www.artdreamguide.com/adg/adg_ESP/ba_ESP/bilba_ba/m_gugge/507.htm
And go here for a view of the main entrance and plaza from another
angle: http://www.virtourist.com/europe/bilbao/04.htm
It is only from across the river that the full elevation and the size
of the building can be well seen, as is shown in these two photos:
http://www.artlex.com/ArtLex/m/museum.html
http://www.barcelona-photo.com/architektur/Bilbao-Guggenheim-Museum.html
The first of these photographs is especially good in helping us to
get oriented to this building and its relationship to the site. To the
right is the plaza and main entrance, to the left is the Puente de la
Salve which as the Museum?s website says actually ?pierces? the site
and whioch is integrated into it by the ?sculptural tower,? and a
broad staircase leading up to it: ?The broad flight of stairs that
goes up to the sculptural tower, conceived as a device to absorb and
integrate the Puente de La Salve into the overall architectural scheme
of the building, is also a public access way that connects pedestrians
with the rest of the city.?
This site has two good images:
http://www.nanis-reiseseiten.de/Spanien/page_1.html
1. A helpful from-the-river image that shows that ?broad flight of
stairs? and the very beautiful pedestrian esplanade that curves
between the riverbank and a moat-like expanse of water overlooked by a
pavilion, and
2. The same, but viewed from the stairs.
The city map on the city? website uses the word ?muelle?, the Spanish
word for ?dock,? to describe this area, but clearly the area is now
being put to a purely aesthetic use.
****************
2. The second part of your question had to do with ?structural and
construction ideas.?
First let?s consider the extraordinary shape of the building. The
building was completed in 1997 and a writer in the Washington Post was
among the many who were utterly captivated by it:
http://www.jasonkaufman.com/articles/gehrys_guggenheim_bilbao.htm
Here is part is what he had to say about the form of the building:
?Gehry's masterpiece has been likened to a metallic flower, to the
hulls of ships, and to Frank Lloyd Wright's renowned spiral rotunda of
the Guggenheim's flagship on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Its
overlapping forms seem inspired by Futurist sculpture, conveying a
sense of centripetal motion, like an arrested implosion of the Tower
of Babel. It is like nothing we have seen before.?
Gehry himself has described the building as a metal flower set in the
bank of the river. And another observer has seen no lack of allusions
to the city and its history.
http://www.architectsonline.com/publications/bilbao/
The river and the city?s
shipbuilding and industrial past are, this writer thinks, all integral
to Gehry?s vision.
A word here about Gehry in general. At this site you will find a good
account of what makes Gehry such a unique and compelling architect:
http://www.greatbuildings.com/architects/Frank_Gehry.html
Here?s what they have to say: ? In the large-scale public commissions
he has received since he converted to a deconstructive aesthetic,
Gehry has explored the classical architecture themes. In these works
he melds formal compositions with an exploded aesthetic. Most
recently, Gehry has combined sensous curving forms with complex
deconstructive massing, achieving significant new results.?
Certainly the adjectives ?sculptural,? ?exploded? and ?deconstructed?
are all terms that can be validly applied to the Guggenheim Bilboa.
The seemingly chaotic mingling of forms expresses for many the quality
of modern life. Yet out of all of this chaos emerges a harmony of a
new kind.
*********************
3. The third part of your question has to do with ?materials and attitudes?.
It?s interesting to note that this very modern building relied on very
modern technology to be realized. Although the design work itself was
not computer-assisted?Gehry used traditional physical
modeling--computer assistance was needed to fabricate the titanium
panels that clad much of the building?s steel structure. A French
software program called CAITA, used in the construction of airplanes,
made possible the highly precise fabrication of the panels.
This site-- http://www.culturevulture.net/ArtandArch/Bilbao.htm-- has
an excellent account of this aspect of the building: ?Composed of a
group of free flowing volumes that seem to have met in a train crash,
the building shows sections of its steel skeleton, but mostly is
clothed in tissue-paper thin titanium (from whence the startlingly
beautiful effects of reflected light, the source of the welcoming
gleam from afar), warm limestone, and glass. From the three main
materials, paneling of unique sizes and shapes (details generated from
computer design, manufactured by computer commanded robots) was
created, thus allowing for the organically irregular and curved shapes
of the mass. It's like a mutated kind of shingling, taking that
technique to places it has never been before. (Critic Paul Goldberger
noted that changes in architecture have already moved ahead of Gehry;
while Gehry designs in his head and implements with the computer, a
new generation has adopted the computer itself as the generator of
design. Still, Gehry's work could not be implemented without the use
of computers.)?
The reflective nature of the skin of the building contributes in no
small part to the beauty of the building, in all kinds of light, even
the under the frequently grey skies of this city by the Atlantic.
4. Symbolic and historic association of the work
We have already touched upon this. One can say that the titanium
panels pay tribute to Bilboa?s industrial heritage, especially its
shipbuilding. Further, the sail-like shapes can be seen as reference
to the city?s history as an important Atlantic port. (Though both are
also typical of Gehry?s work far from Bilboa. Using fish-scale-like
panels as the skin of a building is an idea that dates back to early
in his career. And the sail-like shapes are also a Gehry trademark,
seen again in the recently completed Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los
Angeles.)
5. Spatial organization and character
The first thing to be said on this subject, in my view, is that the
building discloses very little of how it is organized, when viewed
from outside. But the Museum?s own website says that one can see from
the outside how the building is composed of two kinds of galleries.
The building has a total of 19 galleries organized around the central
atrium. ?Ten of these galleries have an almost classical orthogonal
look and can be identified from outside by their stone finishes. Nine
other, irregularly-shaped galleries present a remarkable contrast, and
can be identified from outside by their unusual architecture and the
covering of titanium.?
The biggest gallery is 130 meters long (!). It is ?free of columns and
with flooring specially prepared to cope with the comings and going of
visitors and museum staff, as well as the sheer weight of the works on
display there. Seen from the outside, this gallery slides underneath
the Puente de La Salve and runs up against the end of the tower that
embraces the bridge and brings it into the building.? It is this
gallery where large works like those of Richard Serra are displayed.
As for movement through the building, the museum website says that,
contrary to the outside appearance, all is easy and clear
inside:?There is a harmonius tie between the architectural shapes and
the contents of each gallery. Undoubtedly, this simplifies the tour
inside the Museum while the atrium, in its very center, and the
walkways that link one gallery with another - showing different
perspectives of the exhibitional spaces - facilitate the location of
galleries and services at any time. As visitors enter the Museum they
learn that under the external complex appearance of the architectural
shapes, there lies a neat, clear world where it is easy to find one's
way around.?
http://www.guggenheim-bilbao.es/ingles/home.htm
Here is what Mr. Modigliani has to say about the interior organization
and flow of the building: ?The interior organization returns the
visitor to the central atrium over and over again. From this space the
visitor can see back to the main entrance as well as out to the river.
While the galleries provide an appropriate mix of exotic spaces and
more traditional ones, they are containers for art - that is, closed
and inward looking. But the transition from gallery to gallery or
floor to floor always returns to the atrium space. Here, you are
immediately re-oriented within the building. Equally important, the
city becomes part of the permanent exhibit, yet forever changing with
time and light.?
http://www.architectsonline.com/publications/bilbao/
And here is what another site has to say about the ?program? of the building:
?Inside the gallery spaces are comprised of three different types:
conservative for permanent collections; a more dramatic, elongated
rectangular space extending toward the Puente de la Slave Bridge for
temporary exhibits; and seven distinct galleries of unique spatial
quality for selected living artists. This programmatics is evident on
the exterior of the buildings as limestone-clad rectilinear volumes
enclose permanent collections; the fish-like extension houses the
temporary exhibits in one grand, linear space; while the grouped forms
around the apex form the spaces for the living artists. Looking at the
Guggengeim in this manner it is evident how Gehry works, from a plan
that satisfies programmatic requirements out to a formal expression of
the spaces.? http://www.archidose.org/Jul99/071299.html
*************************
I hope I have not exhausted you with this answer! I know that I HAVE
exhausted myself, but it is a fascinating subject,and doing this
research has reinforced my determination to some day see this
remarkable building in person. Perhaps I will run into you there!
Scribe_ga
An enormously complex structure, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilboa is
also a very complex subject, but I hope that my answer will at least
give you a good start on comprehending and appreciating this building,
which seems to be considered one of the great buildings of the 20th
Century, by almost global consensus.
First, a little about the city in which it is located. Bilboa is an
industrial port city in the Basque country of Spain. The ?river? on
which the building is located (the Nervion) is actually an estuary of
the Atlantic. Bilboa is a medium-size city (350,000 population) and
the largest in the Basque region of Spain. Both city and region must
have visionary leadership. Not only did they succeed in persuading the
Guggenheim to locate a ?branch? there, but the leadership endorsed and
supported the daring vision of the museum and its architect for a
building that would be as startlingly and radically different as was
the Guggenheim?s home museum in New York City, designed by Frank Lloyd
Wright., in the 1950s. Certainly the city?s boldness has been
vindicated. It has been a major factor in the economic revival of the
city, both because of tourist dollars attracted to the city as never
before and because of the new fame, status, and cachet the building
has given to a rather obscure and economically-depressed Spanish city
located in a region that in for many years has been bedeviled by a
violent separatist movement. Incidentally, the city has continued to
commission leading architects to design projects there, including
Santiago Calatrava who designed a footbridge crossing the Nervion
(also known as the Bilboa river).
Let me take the parts of your question in the order you presented them.
The site.
The museum is located in central Bilboa in a riverside area formerly
dedicated to warehousing and port activities. (The port of Bilboa is
now located directly on the Bay of Biscay.) The building is approached
from its eastern end, where the size of the building (it is VERY
large: 24,000 square meters on a site of 32,500 square meters) is not
so apparent. The design seeks not to overwhelm its historic
surroundings and the way it avoids doing this is well described in The
Museum?s own website: http://www.guggenheim-bilbao.es/ingles/home.htm
?People coming from the calle Iparraguirre, one of the main streets
bisecting the center of Bilbao diagonally, are led directly to the
main entrance; the idea was to bring the city right to the doors of
the building. A broad flight of steps takes pedestrians down to the
Museum hall although descending flights of stairs are not a frequent
feature of institutional buildings. This is an inspired response to
the differences in height between the level of the river and the level
of the city center. It also enables a building with a surface area of
24,000 square meters and more than 50 meters high to be slotted into
the city landscape without it towering over the neighboring
buildings.?
The Wilkepedia entry agrees with this assessment: ?Also important is
while the museum is a spectacular monument from the river, on street
level it is quite modest and does not overwhelm its traditional
surroundings.?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guggenheim_Museum_Bilbao
Go to this image bank address in order to see an excellent image of
how the building looks as one approaches it down one of the city?s
main streets. (Note the hills in the distance which are usually
greener than this, in this very rainy city.)
http://www.artdreamguide.com/adg/adg_ESP/ba_ESP/bilba_ba/m_gugge/507.htm
And go here for a view of the main entrance and plaza from another
angle: http://www.virtourist.com/europe/bilbao/04.htm
It is only from across the river that the full elevation and the size
of the building can be well seen, as is shown in these two photos:
http://www.artlex.com/ArtLex/m/museum.html
http://www.barcelona-photo.com/architektur/Bilbao-Guggenheim-Museum.html
The first of these photographs is especially good in helping us to
get oriented to this building and its relationship to the site. To the
right is the plaza and main entrance, to the left is the Puente de la
Salve which as the Museum?s website says actually ?pierces? the site
and whioch is integrated into it by the ?sculptural tower,? and a
broad staircase leading up to it: ?The broad flight of stairs that
goes up to the sculptural tower, conceived as a device to absorb and
integrate the Puente de La Salve into the overall architectural scheme
of the building, is also a public access way that connects pedestrians
with the rest of the city.?
This site has two good images:
http://www.nanis-reiseseiten.de/Spanien/page_1.html
1. A helpful from-the-river image that shows that ?broad flight of
stairs? and the very beautiful pedestrian esplanade that curves
between the riverbank and a moat-like expanse of water overlooked by a
pavilion, and
2. The same, but viewed from the stairs.
The city map on the city? website uses the word ?muelle?, the Spanish
word for ?dock,? to describe this area, but clearly the area is now
being put to a purely aesthetic use.
****************
Structural and construction ideas.
First let?s consider the extraordinary shape of the building. The
building was completed in 1997 and a writer in the Washington Post was
among the many who were utterly captivated by it:
http://www.jasonkaufman.com/articles/gehrys_guggenheim_bilbao.htm
Here is part is what he had to say about the form of the building:
?Gehry's masterpiece has been likened to a metallic flower, to the
hulls of ships, and to Frank Lloyd Wright's renowned spiral rotunda of
the Guggenheim's flagship on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Its
overlapping forms seem inspired by Futurist sculpture, conveying a
sense of centripetal motion, like an arrested implosion of the Tower
of Babel. It is like nothing we have seen before.?
Gehry himself has described the building as a metal flower set in the
bank of the river. And another observer has seen no lack of allusions
to the city and its history.
http://www.architectsonline.com/publications/bilbao/
The river and the city?s
shipbuilding and industrial past are, this writer thinks, all integral
to Gehry?s vision.
A word here about Gehry in general. At this site you will find a good
account of what makes Gehry such a unique and compelling architect:
http://www.greatbuildings.com/architects/Frank_Gehry.html
Here?s what they have to say: ? In the large-scale public commissions
he has received since he converted to a deconstructive aesthetic,
Gehry has explored the classical architecture themes. In these works
he melds formal compositions with an exploded aesthetic. Most
recently, Gehry has combined sensous curving forms with complex
deconstructive massing, achieving significant new results.?
Certainly the adjectives ?sculptural,? ?exploded? and ?deconstructed?
are all terms that can be validly applied to the Guggenheim Bilboa.
The seemingly chaotic mingling of forms expresses for many the quality
of modern life. Yet out of all of this chaos emerges a harmony of a
new kind.
Materials and attitudes
It?s interesting to note that this very modern building relied on very
modern technology to be realized. Although the design work itself was
not computer-assisted?Gehry used traditional physical
modeling--computer assistance was needed to fabricate the titanium
panels that clad much of the building?s steel structure. A French
software program called CAITA, used in the construction of airplanes,
made possible the highly precise fabrication of the panels.
This site-- http://www.culturevulture.net/ArtandArch/Bilbao.htm-- has
an excellent account of this aspect of the building: ?Composed of a
group of free flowing volumes that seem to have met in a train crash,
the building shows sections of its steel skeleton, but mostly is
clothed in tissue-paper thin titanium (from whence the startlingly
beautiful effects of reflected light, the source of the welcoming
gleam from afar), warm limestone, and glass. From the three main
materials, paneling of unique sizes and shapes (details generated from
computer design, manufactured by computer commanded robots) was
created, thus allowing for the organically irregular and curved shapes
of the mass. It's like a mutated kind of shingling, taking that
technique to places it has never been before. (Critic Paul Goldberger
noted that changes in architecture have already moved ahead of Gehry;
while Gehry designs in his head and implements with the computer, a
new generation has adopted the computer itself as the generator of
design. Still, Gehry's work could not be implemented without the use
of computers.)?
The reflective nature of the skin of the building contributes in no
small part to the beauty of the building, in all kinds of light, even
the under the frequently grey skies of this city by the Atlantic.
Symbolic and historic association of the work
We have already touched upon this. One can say that the titanium
panels pay tribute to Bilboa?s industrial heritage, especially its
shipbuilding. Further, the sail-like shapes can be seen as reference
to the city?s history as an important Atlantic port. (Though both are
also typical of Gehry?s work far from Bilboa. Using fish-scale-like
panels as the skin of a building is an idea that dates back to early
in his career. And the sail-like shapes are also a Gehry trademark,
seen again in the recently completed Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los
Angeles.)
Spatial organization and character
The first thing to be said on this subject, in my view, is that the
building discloses very little of how it is organized, when viewed
from outside. But the Museum?s own website says that one can see from
the outside how the building is composed of two kinds of galleries.
The building has a total of 19 galleries organized around the central
atrium. ?Ten of these galleries have an almost classical orthogonal
look and can be identified from outside by their stone finishes. Nine
other, irregularly-shaped galleries present a remarkable contrast, and
can be identified from outside by their unusual architecture and the
covering of titanium.?
The biggest gallery is 130 meters long (!). It is ?free of columns and
with flooring specially prepared to cope with the comings and going of
visitors and museum staff, as well as the sheer weight of the works on
display there. Seen from the outside, this gallery slides underneath
the Puente de La Salve and runs up against the end of the tower that
embraces the bridge and brings it into the building.? It is this
gallery where large works like those of Richard Serra are displayed.
As for movement through the building, the museum website says that,
contrary to the outside appearance, all is easy and clear
inside:?There is a harmonius tie between the architectural shapes and
the contents of each gallery. Undoubtedly, this simplifies the tour
inside the Museum while the atrium, in its very center, and the
walkways that link one gallery with another - showing different
perspectives of the exhibitional spaces - facilitate the location of
galleries and services at any time. As visitors enter the Museum they
learn that under the external complex appearance of the architectural
shapes, there lies a neat, clear world where it is easy to find one's
way around.?
http://www.guggenheim-bilbao.es/ingles/home.htm
Here is what Mr. Modigliani has to say about the interior organization
and flow of the building: ?The interior organization returns the
visitor to the central atrium over and over again. From this space the
visitor can see back to the main entrance as well as out to the river.
While the galleries provide an appropriate mix of exotic spaces and
more traditional ones, they are containers for art - that is, closed
and inward looking. But the transition from gallery to gallery or
floor to floor always returns to the atrium space. Here, you are
immediately re-oriented within the building. Equally important, the
city becomes part of the permanent exhibit, yet forever changing with
time and light.?
http://www.architectsonline.com/publications/bilbao/
And here is what another site has to say about the ?program? of the building:
?Inside the gallery spaces are comprised of three different types:
conservative for permanent collections; a more dramatic, elongated
rectangular space extending toward the Puente de la Slave Bridge for
temporary exhibits; and seven distinct galleries of unique spatial
quality for selected living artists. This programmatics is evident on
the exterior of the buildings as limestone-clad rectilinear volumes
enclose permanent collections; the fish-like extension houses the
temporary exhibits in one grand, linear space; while the grouped forms
around the apex form the spaces for the living artists. Looking at the
Guggengeim in this manner it is evident how Gehry works, from a plan
that satisfies programmatic requirements out to a formal expression of
the spaces.? http://www.archidose.org/Jul99/071299.html
*************************
I hope I have not exhausted you with this answer! I know that I HAVE
exhausted myself, but it is a fascinating subject,and doing this
research has reinforced my determination to some day see this
remarkable building in person. Perhaps I will run into you there!
Scribe_ga
An enormously complex structure, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilboa is
also a very complex subject, but I hope that my answer will at least
give you a good start on comprehending and appreciating this building,
which seems to be considered one of the great buildings of the 20th
Century, by almost global consensus.
First, a little about the city in which it is located. Bilboa is an
industrial port city in the Basque country of Spain. The ?river? on
which the building is located (the Nervion) is actually an estuary of
the Atlantic. Bilboa is a medium-size city (350,000 population) and
the largest in the Basque region of Spain. Both city and region must
have visionary leadership. Not only did they succeed in persuading the
Guggenheim to locate a ?branch? there, but the leadership endorsed and
supported the daring vision of the museum and its architect for a
building that would be as startlingly and radically different as was
the Guggenheim?s home museum in New York City, designed by Frank Lloyd
Wright., in the 1950s. Certainly the city?s boldness has been
vindicated. It has been a major factor in the economic revival of the
city, both because of tourist dollars attracted to the city as never
before and because of the new fame, status, and cachet the building
has given to a rather obscure and economically-depressed Spanish city
located in a region that in for many years has been bedeviled by a
violent separatist movement. Incidentally, the city has continued to
commission leading architects to design projects there, including
Santiago Calatrava who designed a footbridge crossing the Nervion
(also known as the Bilboa river).
Let me take the parts of your question in the order you presented them.
The site.
The museum is located in central Bilboa in a riverside area formerly
dedicated to warehousing and port activities. (The port of Bilboa is
now located directly on the Bay of Biscay.) The building is approached
from its eastern end, where the size of the building (it is VERY
large: 24,000 square meters on a site of 32,500 square meters) is not
so apparent. The design seeks not to overwhelm its historic
surroundings and the way it avoids doing this is well described in The
Museum?s own website: http://www.guggenheim-bilbao.es/ingles/home.htm
?People coming from the calle Iparraguirre, one of the main streets
bisecting the center of Bilbao diagonally, are led directly to the
main entrance; the idea was to bring the city right to the doors of
the building. A broad flight of steps takes pedestrians down to the
Museum hall although descending flights of stairs are not a frequent
feature of institutional buildings. This is an inspired response to
the differences in height between the level of the river and the level
of the city center. It also enables a building with a surface area of
24,000 square meters and more than 50 meters high to be slotted into
the city landscape without it towering over the neighboring
buildings.?
The Wilkepedia entry agrees with this assessment: ?Also important is
while the museum is a spectacular monument from the river, on street
level it is quite modest and does not overwhelm its traditional
surroundings.?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guggenheim_Museum_Bilbao
Go to this image bank address in order to see an excellent image of
how the building looks as one approaches it down one of the city?s
main streets. (Note the hills in the distance which are usually
greener than this, in this very rainy city.)
http://www.artdreamguide.com/adg/adg_ESP/ba_ESP/bilba_ba/m_gugge/507.htm
And go here for a view of the main entrance and plaza from another
angle: http://www.virtourist.com/europe/bilbao/04.htm
It is only from across the river that the full elevation and the size
of the building can be well seen, as is shown in these two photos:
http://www.artlex.com/ArtLex/m/museum.html
http://www.barcelona-photo.com/architektur/Bilbao-Guggenheim-Museum.html
The first of these photographs is especially good in helping us to
get oriented to this building and its relationship to the site. To the
right is the plaza and main entrance, to the left is the Puente de la
Salve which as the Museum?s website says actually ?pierces? the site
and whioch is integrated into it by the ?sculptural tower,? and a
broad staircase leading up to it: ?The broad flight of stairs that
goes up to the sculptural tower, conceived as a device to absorb and
integrate the Puente de La Salve into the overall architectural scheme
of the building, is also a public access way that connects pedestrians
with the rest of the city.?
This site has two good images:
http://www.nanis-reiseseiten.de/Spanien/page_1.html
1. A helpful from-the-river image that shows that ?broad flight of
stairs? and the very beautiful pedestrian esplanade that curves
between the riverbank and a moat-like expanse of water overlooked by a
pavilion, and
2. The same, but viewed from the stairs.
The city map on the city? website uses the word ?muelle?, the Spanish
word for ?dock,? to describe this area, but clearly the area is now
being put to a purely aesthetic use.
****************
Structural and construction ideas.
First let?s consider the extraordinary shape of the building. The
building was completed in 1997 and a writer in the Washington Post was
among the many who were utterly captivated by it:
http://www.jasonkaufman.com/articles/gehrys_guggenheim_bilbao.htm
Here is part is what he had to say about the form of the building:
?Gehry's masterpiece has been likened to a metallic flower, to the
hulls of ships, and to Frank Lloyd Wright's renowned spiral rotunda of
the Guggenheim's flagship on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Its
overlapping forms seem inspired by Futurist sculpture, conveying a
sense of centripetal motion, like an arrested implosion of the Tower
of Babel. It is like nothing we have seen before.?
Gehry himself has described the building as a metal flower set in the
bank of the river. And another observer has seen no lack of allusions
to the city and its history.
http://www.architectsonline.com/publications/bilbao/
The river and the city?s
shipbuilding and industrial past are, this writer thinks, all integral
to Gehry?s vision.
A word here about Gehry in general. At this site you will find a good
account of what makes Gehry such a unique and compelling architect:
http://www.greatbuildings.com/architects/Frank_Gehry.html
Here?s what they have to say: ? In the large-scale public commissions
he has received since he converted to a deconstructive aesthetic,
Gehry has explored the classical architecture themes. In these works
he melds formal compositions with an exploded aesthetic. Most
recently, Gehry has combined sensous curving forms with complex
deconstructive massing, achieving significant new results.?
Certainly the adjectives ?sculptural,? ?exploded? and ?deconstructed?
are all terms that can be validly applied to the Guggenheim Bilboa.
The seemingly chaotic mingling of forms expresses for many the quality
of modern life. Yet out of all of this chaos emerges a harmony of a
new kind.
Materials and attitudes
It?s interesting to note that this very modern building relied on very
modern technology to be realized. Although the design work itself was
not computer-assisted?Gehry used traditional physical
modeling--computer assistance was needed to fabricate the titanium
panels that clad much of the building?s steel structure. A French
software program called CAITA, used in the construction of airplanes,
made possible the highly precise fabrication of the panels.
This site-- http://www.culturevulture.net/ArtandArch/Bilbao.htm-- has
an excellent account of this aspect of the building: ?Composed of a
group of free flowing volumes that seem to have met in a train crash,
the building shows sections of its steel skeleton, but mostly is
clothed in tissue-paper thin titanium (from whence the startlingly
beautiful effects of reflected light, the source of the welcoming
gleam from afar), warm limestone, and glass. From the three main
materials, paneling of unique sizes and shapes (details generated from
computer design, manufactured by computer commanded robots) was
created, thus allowing for the organically irregular and curved shapes
of the mass. It's like a mutated kind of shingling, taking that
technique to places it has never been before. (Critic Paul Goldberger
noted that changes in architecture have already moved ahead of Gehry;
while Gehry designs in his head and implements with the computer, a
new generation has adopted the computer itself as the generator of
design. Still, Gehry's work could not be implemented without the use
of computers.)?
The reflective nature of the skin of the building contributes in no
small part to the beauty of the building, in all kinds of light, even
the under the frequently grey skies of this city by the Atlantic.
Symbolic and historic association of the work
We have already touched upon this. One can say that the titanium
panels pay tribute to Bilboa?s industrial heritage, especially its
shipbuilding. Further, the sail-like shapes can be seen as reference
to the city?s history as an important Atlantic port. (Though both are
also typical of Gehry?s work far from Bilboa. Using fish-scale-like
panels as the skin of a building is an idea that dates back to early
in his career. And the sail-like shapes are also a Gehry trademark,
seen again in the recently completed Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los
Angeles.)
Spatial organization and character
The first thing to be said on this subject, in my view, is that the
building discloses very little of how it is organized, when viewed
from outside. But the Museum?s own website says that one can see from
the outside how the building is composed of two kinds of galleries.
The building has a total of 19 galleries organized around the central
atrium. ?Ten of these galleries have an almost classical orthogonal
look and can be identified from outside by their stone finishes. Nine
other, irregularly-shaped galleries present a remarkable contrast, and
can be identified from outside by their unusual architecture and the
covering of titanium.?
The biggest gallery is 130 meters long (!). It is ?free of columns and
with flooring specially prepared to cope with the comings and going of
visitors and museum staff, as well as the sheer weight of the works on
display there. Seen from the outside, this gallery slides underneath
the Puente de La Salve and runs up against the end of the tower that
embraces the bridge and brings it into the building.? It is this
gallery where large works like those of Richard Serra are displayed.
As for movement through the building, the museum website says that,
contrary to the outside appearance, all is easy and clear
inside:?There is a harmonius tie between the architectural shapes and
the contents of each gallery. Undoubtedly, this simplifies the tour
inside the Museum while the atrium, in its very center, and the
walkways that link one gallery with another - showing different
perspectives of the exhibitional spaces - facilitate the location of
galleries and services at any time. As visitors enter the Museum they
learn that under the external complex appearance of the architectural
shapes, there lies a neat, clear world where it is easy to find one's
way around.?
http://www.guggenheim-bilbao.es/ingles/home.htm
Here is what Mr. Modigliani has to say about the interior organization
and flow of the building: ?The interior organization returns the
visitor to the central atrium over and over again. From this space the
visitor can see back to the main entrance as well as out to the river.
While the galleries provide an appropriate mix of exotic spaces and
more traditional ones, they are containers for art - that is, closed
and inward looking. But the transition from gallery to gallery or
floor to floor always returns to the atrium space. Here, you are
immediately re-oriented within the building. Equally important, the
city becomes part of the permanent exhibit, yet forever changing with
time and light.?
http://www.architectsonline.com/publications/bilbao/
And here is what another site has to say about the ?program? of the building:
?Inside the gallery spaces are comprised of three different types:
conservative for permanent collections; a more dramatic, elongated
rectangular space extending toward the Puente de la Slave Bridge for
temporary exhibits; and seven distinct galleries of unique spatial
quality for selected living artists. This programmatics is evident on
the exterior of the buildings as limestone-clad rectilinear volumes
enclose permanent collections; the fish-like extension houses the
temporary exhibits in one grand, linear space; while the grouped forms
around the apex form the spaces for the living artists. Looking at the
Guggengeim in this manner it is evident how Gehry works, from a plan
that satisfies programmatic requirements out to a formal expression of
the spaces.? http://www.archidose.org/Jul99/071299.html
*************************
I hope I have not exhausted you with this answer! I know that I HAVE
exhausted myself, but it is a fascinating subject,and doing this
research has reinforced my determination to some day see this
remarkable building in person. Perhaps I will run into you there!
Scribe_ga
An enormously complex structure, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilboa is
also a very complex subject, but I hope that my answer will at least
give you a good start on comprehending and appreciating this building,
which seems to be considered one of the great buildings of the 20th
Century, by almost global consensus.
First, a little about the city in which it is located. Bilboa is an
industrial port city in the Basque country of Spain. The ?river? on
which the building is located (the Nervion) is actually an estuary of
the Atlantic. Bilboa is a medium-size city (350,000 population) and
the largest in the Basque region of Spain. Both city and region must
have visionary leadership. Not only did they succeed in persuading the
Guggenheim to locate a ?branch? there, but the leadership endorsed and
supported the daring vision of the museum and its architect for a
building that would be as startlingly and radically different as was
the Guggenheim?s home museum in New York City, designed by Frank Lloyd
Wright., in the 1950s. Certainly the city?s boldness has been
vindicated. It has been a major factor in the economic revival of the
city, both because of tourist dollars attracted to the city as never
before and because of the new fame, status, and cachet the building
has given to a rather obscure and economically-depressed Spanish city
located in a region that in for many years has been bedeviled by a
violent separatist movement. Incidentally, the city has continued to
commission leading architects to design projects there, including
Santiago Calatrava who designed a footbridge crossing the Nervion
(also known as the Bilboa river).
Let me take the parts of your question in the order you presented them.
The site.
The museum is located in central Bilboa in a riverside area formerly
dedicated to warehousing and port activities. (The port of Bilboa is
now located directly on the Bay of Biscay.) The building is approached
from its eastern end, where the size of the building (it is VERY
large: 24,000 square meters on a site of 32,500 square meters) is not
so apparent. The design seeks not to overwhelm its historic
surroundings and the way it avoids doing this is well described in The
Museum?s own website: http://www.guggenheim-bilbao.es/ingles/home.htm
?People coming from the calle Iparraguirre, one of the main streets
bisecting the center of Bilbao diagonally, are led directly to the
main entrance; the idea was to bring the city right to the doors of
the building. A broad flight of steps takes pedestrians down to the
Museum hall although descending flights of stairs are not a frequent
feature of institutional buildings. This is an inspired response to
the differences in height between the level of the river and the level
of the city center. It also enables a building with a surface area of
24,000 square meters and more than 50 meters high to be slotted into
the city landscape without it towering over the neighboring
buildings.?
The Wilkepedia entry agrees with this assessment: ?Also important is
while the museum is a spectacular monument from the river, on street
level it is quite modest and does not overwhelm its traditional
surroundings.?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guggenheim_Museum_Bilbao
Go to this image bank address in order to see an excellent image of
how the building looks as one approaches it down one of the city?s
main streets. (Note the hills in the distance which are usually
greener than this, in this very rainy city.)
http://www.artdreamguide.com/adg/adg_ESP/ba_ESP/bilba_ba/m_gugge/507.htm
And go here for a view of the main entrance and plaza from another
angle: http://www.virtourist.com/europe/bilbao/04.htm
It is only from across the river that the full elevation and the size
of the building can be well seen, as is shown in these two photos:
http://www.artlex.com/ArtLex/m/museum.html
http://www.barcelona-photo.com/architektur/Bilbao-Guggenheim-Museum.html
The first of these photographs is especially good in helping us to
get oriented to this building and its relationship to the site. To the
right is the plaza and main entrance, to the left is the Puente de la
Salve which as the Museum?s website says actually ?pierces? the site
and whioch is integrated into it by the ?sculptural tower,? and a
broad staircase leading up to it: ?The broad flight of stairs that
goes up to the sculptural tower, conceived as a device to absorb and
integrate the Puente de La Salve into the overall architectural scheme
of the building, is also a public access way that connects pedestrians
with the rest of the city.?
This site has two good images:
http://www.nanis-reiseseiten.de/Spanien/page_1.html
1. A helpful from-the-river image that shows that ?broad flight of
stairs? and the very beautiful pedestrian esplanade that curves
between the riverbank and a moat-like expanse of water overlooked by a
pavilion, and
2. The same, but viewed from the stairs.
The city map on the city? website uses the word ?muelle?, the Spanish
word for ?dock,? to describe this area, but clearly the area is now
being put to a purely aesthetic use.
****************
Structural and construction ideas.
First let?s consider the extraordinary shape of the building. The
building was completed in 1997 and a writer in the Washington Post was
among the many who were utterly captivated by it:
http://www.jasonkaufman.com/articles/gehrys_guggenheim_bilbao.htm
Here is part is what he had to say about the form of the building:
?Gehry's masterpiece has been likened to a metallic flower, to the
hulls of ships, and to Frank Lloyd Wright's renowned spiral rotunda of
the Guggenheim's flagship on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Its
overlapping forms seem inspired by Futurist sculpture, conveying a
sense of centripetal motion, like an arrested implosion of the Tower
of Babel. It is like nothing we have seen before.?
Gehry himself has described the building as a metal flower set in the
bank of the river. And another observer has seen no lack of allusions
to the city and its history.
http://www.architectsonline.com/publications/bilbao/
The river and the city?s
shipbuilding and industrial past are, this writer thinks, all integral
to Gehry?s vision.
A word here about Gehry in general. At this site you will find a good
account of what makes Gehry such a unique and compelling architect:
http://www.greatbuildings.com/architects/Frank_Gehry.html
Here?s what they have to say: ? In the large-scale public commissions
he has received since he converted to a deconstructive aesthetic,
Gehry has explored the classical architecture themes. In these works
he melds formal compositions with an exploded aesthetic. Most
recently, Gehry has combined sensous curving forms with complex
deconstructive massing, achieving significant new results.?
Certainly the adjectives ?sculptural,? ?exploded? and ?deconstructed?
are all terms that can be validly applied to the Guggenheim Bilboa.
The seemingly chaotic mingling of forms expresses for many the quality
of modern life. Yet out of all of this chaos emerges a harmony of a
new kind.
It?s interesting to note that this very modern building relied on very
modern technology to be realized. Although the design work itself was
not computer-assisted?Gehry used traditional physical
modeling--computer assistance was needed to fabricate the titanium
panels that clad much of the building?s steel structure. A French
software program called CAITA, used in the construction of airplanes,
made possible the highly precise fabrication of the panels.
This site-- http://www.culturevulture.net/ArtandArch/Bilbao.htm-- has
an excellent account of this aspect of the building: ?Composed of a
group of free flowing volumes that seem to have met in a train crash,
the building shows sections of its steel skeleton, but mostly is
clothed in tissue-paper thin titanium (from whence the startlingly
beautiful effects of reflected light, the source of the welcoming
gleam from afar), warm limestone, and glass. From the three main
materials, paneling of unique sizes and shapes (details generated from
computer design, manufactured by computer commanded robots) was
created, thus allowing for the organically irregular and curved shapes
of the mass. It's like a mutated kind of shingling, taking that
technique to places it has never been before. (Critic Paul Goldberger
noted that changes in architecture have already moved ahead of Gehry;
while Gehry designs in his head and implements with the computer, a
new generation has adopted the computer itself as the generator of
design. Still, Gehry's work could not be implemented without the use
of computers.)?
The reflective nature of the skin of the building contributes in no
small part to the beauty of the building, in all kinds of light, even
the under the frequently grey skies of this city by the Atlantic.
Symbolic and historic association of the work
We have already touched upon this. One can say that the titanium
panels pay tribute to Bilboa?s industrial heritage, especially its
shipbuilding. Further, the sail-like shapes can be seen as reference
to the city?s history as an important Atlantic port. (Though both are
also typical of Gehry?s work far from Bilboa. Using fish-scale-like
panels as the skin of a building is an idea that dates back to early
in his career. And the sail-like shapes are also a Gehry trademark,
seen again in the recently completed Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los
Angeles.)
Spatial organization and character
The first thing to be said on this subject, in my view, is that the
building discloses very little of how it is organized, when viewed
from outside. But the Museum?s own website says that one can see from
the outside how the building is composed of two kinds of galleries.
The building has a total of 19 galleries organized around the central
atrium. ?Ten of these galleries have an almost classical orthogonal
look and can be identified from outside by their stone finishes. Nine
other, irregularly-shaped galleries present a remarkable contrast, and
can be identified from outside by their unusual architecture and the
covering of titanium.?
The biggest gallery is 130 meters long (!). It is ?free of columns and
with flooring specially prepared to cope with the comings and going of
visitors and museum staff, as well as the sheer weight of the works on
display there. Seen from the outside, this gallery slides underneath
the Puente de La Salve and runs up against the end of the tower that
embraces the bridge and brings it into the building.? It is this
gallery where large works like those of Richard Serra are displayed.
As for movement through the building, the museum website says that,
contrary to the outside appearance, all is easy and clear
inside:?There is a harmonius tie between the architectural shapes and
the contents of each gallery. Undoubtedly, this simplifies the tour
inside the Museum while the atrium, in its very center, and the
walkways that link one gallery with another - showing different
perspectives of the exhibitional spaces - facilitate the location of
galleries and services at any time. As visitors enter the Museum they
learn that under the external complex appearance of the architectural
shapes, there lies a neat, clear world where it is easy to find one's
way around.?
http://www.guggenheim-bilbao.es/ingles/home.htm
Here is what Mr. Modigliani has to say about the interior organization
and flow of the building: ?The interior organization returns the
visitor to the central atrium over and over again. From this space the
visitor can see back to the main entrance as well as out to the river.
While the galleries provide an appropriate mix of exotic spaces and
more traditional ones, they are containers for art - that is, closed
and inward looking. But the transition from gallery to gallery or
floor to floor always returns to the atrium space. Here, you are
immediately re-oriented within the building. Equally important, the
city becomes part of the permanent exhibit, yet forever changing with
time and light.?
http://www.architectsonline.com/publications/bilbao/
And here is what another site has to say about the ?program? of the building:
?Inside the gallery spaces are comprised of three different types:
conservative for permanent collections; a more dramatic, elongated
rectangular space extending toward the Puente de la Slave Bridge for
temporary exhibits; and seven distinct galleries of unique spatial
quality for selected living artists. This programmatics is evident on
the exterior of the buildings as limestone-clad rectilinear volumes
enclose permanent collections; the fish-like extension houses the
temporary exhibits in one grand, linear space; while the grouped forms
around the apex form the spaces for the living artists. Looking at the
Guggengeim in this manner it is evident how Gehry works, from a plan
that satisfies programmatic requirements out to a formal expression of
the spaces.? http://www.archidose.org/Jul99/071299.html
*************************
I hope I have not exhausted you with this answer! I know that I HAVE
exhausted myself, but it is a fascinating subject,and doing this
research has reinforced my determination to some day see this
remarkable building in person. Perhaps I will run into you there!
Scribe_ga
Hello ttc,
An enormously complex structure, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilboa is
also a very complex subject, but I hope that my answer will at least
give you a good start on comprehending and appreciating this building,
which seems to be considered one of the great buildings of the 20th
Century, by almost global consensus.
First, a little about the city in which it is located. Bilboa is an
industrial port city in the Basque country of Spain. The ?river? on
which the building is located (the Nervion) is actually an estuary of
the Atlantic. Bilboa is a medium-size city (350,000 population) and
the largest in the Basque region of Spain. Both city and region must
have visionary leadership. Not only did they succeed in persuading the
Guggenheim to locate a ?branch? there, but the leadership endorsed and
supported the daring vision of the museum and its architect for a
building that would be as startlingly and radically different as was
the Guggenheim?s home museum in New York City, designed by Frank Lloyd
Wright., in the 1950s. Certainly the city?s boldness has been
vindicated. It has been a major factor in the economic revival of the
city, both because of tourist dollars attracted to the city as never
before and because of the new fame, status, and cachet the building
has given to a rather obscure and economically-depressed Spanish city
located in a region that in for many years has been bedeviled by a
violent separatist movement. Incidentally, the city has continued to
commission leading architects to design projects there, including
Santiago Calatrava who designed a footbridge crossing the Nervion
(also known as the Bilboa river).
Let me take the parts of your question in the order you presented them.
THE SITE.
The museum is located in central Bilboa in a riverside area formerly
dedicated to warehousing and port activities. (The port of Bilboa is
now located directly on the Bay of Biscay.) The building is approached
from its eastern end, where the size of the building (it is VERY
large: 24,000 square meters on a site of 32,500 square meters) is not
so apparent. The design seeks not to overwhelm its historic
surroundings and the way it avoids doing this is well described in The
Museum?s own website:
http://www.guggenheim-bilbao.es/ingles/home.htm
?People coming from the calle Iparraguirre, one of the main streets
bisecting the center of Bilbao diagonally, are led directly to the
main entrance; the idea was to bring the city right to the doors of
the building. A broad flight of steps takes pedestrians down to the
Museum hall although descending flights of stairs are not a frequent
feature of institutional buildings. This is an inspired response to
the differences in height between the level of the river and the level
of the city center. It also enables a building with a surface area of
24,000 square meters and more than 50 meters high to be slotted into
the city landscape without it towering over the neighboring
buildings.?
The Wilkepedia entry agrees with this assessment: ?Also important is
while the museum is a spectacular monument from the river, on street
level it is quite modest and does not overwhelm its traditional
surroundings.?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guggenheim_Museum_Bilbao
Go to this web address in order to see an excellent image of how the
building looks as one approaches it down one of the city?s main
streets. (Note the hills in the distance which are usually greener
than this, in this very rainy city.)
http://www.artdreamguide.com/adg/adg_ESP/ba_ESP/bilba_ba/m_gugge/507.htm
And go here for a view of the main entrance and plaza from another
angle: http://www.virtourist.com/europe/bilbao/04.html
It is only from across the river that the full elevation and the size
of the building can be well seen, as is shown in these two photos:
http://www.artlex.com/ArtLex/m/museum.html
http://www.barcelona-photo.com/architektur/Bilbao-Guggenheim-Museum.html
The first of these photographs is especially good in helping us to
get oriented to this building and its relationship to the site. To the
right is the plaza and main entrance, to the left is the Puente de la
Salve which as the Museum?s website says actually ?pierces? the site
and whioch is integrated into it by the ?sculptural tower,? and a
broad staircase leading up to it: ?The broad flight of stairs that
goes up to the sculptural tower, conceived as a device to absorb and
integrate the Puente de La Salve into the overall architectural scheme
of the building, is also a public access way that connects pedestrians
with the rest of the city.?
This site has two good images:
http://www.nanis-reiseseiten.de/Spanien/page_1.html
1. A helpful from-the-river image that shows that ?broad flight of
stairs? and the very beautiful pedestrian esplanade that curves
between the riverbank and a moat-like expanse of water overlooked by a
pavilion, and
2. The same, but viewed from the stairs.
The city map on the city? website uses the word ?muelle?, the Spanish
word for ?dock,? to describe this area, but clearly the area is now
being put to a purely aesthetic use.
****************
Structural and construction ideas.
First let?s consider the extraordinary shape of the building. The
building was completed in 1997 and a writer in the Washington Post was
among the many who were utterly captivated by it:
http://www.jasonkaufman.com/articles/gehrys_guggenheim_bilbao.htm
Here is part is what he had to say about the form of the building:
?Gehry's masterpiece has been likened to a metallic flower, to the
hulls of ships, and to Frank Lloyd Wright's renowned spiral rotunda of
the Guggenheim's flagship on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Its
overlapping forms seem inspired by Futurist sculpture, conveying a
sense of centripetal motion, like an arrested implosion of the Tower
of Babel. It is like nothing we have seen before.?
Gehry himself has described the building as a metal flower set in the
bank of the river. And another observer has seen no lack of allusions
to the city and its history.
http://www.architectsonline.com/publications/bilbao/
The river and the city?s
shipbuilding and industrial past are, this writer thinks, all integral
to Gehry?s vision.
A word here about Gehry in general. At this site you will find a good
account of what makes Gehry such a unique and compelling architect:
http://www.greatbuildings.com/architects/Frank_Gehry.html
Here?s what they have to say: ? In the large-scale public commissions
he has received since he converted to a deconstructive aesthetic,
Gehry has explored the classical architecture themes. In these works
he melds formal compositions with an exploded aesthetic. Most
recently, Gehry has combined sensous curving forms with complex
deconstructive massing, achieving significant new results.?
Certainly the adjectives ?sculptural,? ?exploded? and ?deconstructed?
are all terms that can be validly applied to the Guggenheim Bilboa.
The seemingly chaotic mingling of forms expresses for many the quality
of modern life. Yet out of all of this chaos emerges a harmony of a
new kind.
It?s interesting to note that this very modern building relied on very
modern technology to be realized. Although the design work itself was
not computer-assisted?Gehry used traditional physical
modeling--computer assistance was needed to fabricate the titanium
panels that clad much of the building?s steel structure. A French
software program called CAITA, used in the construction of airplanes,
made possible the highly precise fabrication of the panels.
This site-- http://www.culturevulture.net/ArtandArch/Bilbao.htm-- has
an excellent account of this aspect of the building: ?Composed of a
group of free flowing volumes that seem to have met in a train crash,
the building shows sections of its steel skeleton, but mostly is
clothed in tissue-paper thin titanium (from whence the startlingly
beautiful effects of reflected light, the source of the welcoming
gleam from afar), warm limestone, and glass. From the three main
materials, paneling of unique sizes and shapes (details generated from
computer design, manufactured by computer commanded robots) was
created, thus allowing for the organically irregular and curved shapes
of the mass. It's like a mutated kind of shingling, taking that
technique to places it has never been before. (Critic Paul Goldberger
noted that changes in architecture have already moved ahead of Gehry;
while Gehry designs in his head and implements with the computer, a
new generation has adopted the computer itself as the generator of
design. Still, Gehry's work could not be implemented without the use
of computers.)?
The reflective nature of the skin of the building contributes in no
small part to the beauty of the building, in all kinds of light, even
the under the frequently grey skies of this city by the Atlantic.
Symbolic and historic association of the work
We have already touched upon this. One can say that the titanium
panels pay tribute to Bilboa?s industrial heritage, especially its
shipbuilding. Further, the sail-like shapes can be seen as reference
to the city?s history as an important Atlantic port. (Though both are
also typical of Gehry?s work far from Bilboa. Using fish-scale-like
panels as the skin of a building is an idea that dates back to early
in his career. And the sail-like shapes are also a Gehry trademark,
seen again in the recently completed Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los
Angeles.)
Spatial organization and character
The first thing to be said on this subject, in my view, is that the
building discloses very little of how it is organized, when viewed
from outside. But the Museum?s own website says that one can see from
the outside how the building is composed of two kinds of galleries.
The building has a total of 19 galleries organized around the central
atrium. ?Ten of these galleries have an almost classical orthogonal
look and can be identified from outside by their stone finishes. Nine
other, irregularly-shaped galleries present a remarkable contrast, and
can be identified from outside by their unusual architecture and the
covering of titanium.?
The biggest gallery is 130 meters long (!). It is ?free of columns and
with flooring specially prepared to cope with the comings and going of
visitors and museum staff, as well as the sheer weight of the works on
display there. Seen from the outside, this gallery slides underneath
the Puente de La Salve and runs up against the end of the tower that
embraces the bridge and brings it into the building.? It is this
gallery where large works like those of Richard Serra are displayed.
As for movement through the building, the museum website says that,
contrary to the outside appearance, all is easy and clear
inside:?There is a harmonius tie between the architectural shapes and
the contents of each gallery. Undoubtedly, this simplifies the tour
inside the Museum while the atrium, in its very center, and the
walkways that link one gallery with another - showing different
perspectives of the exhibitional spaces - facilitate the location of
galleries and services at any time. As visitors enter the Museum they
learn that under the external complex appearance of the architectural
shapes, there lies a neat, clear world where it is easy to find one's
way around.?
http://www.guggenheim-bilbao.es/ingles/home.htm
Here is what Mr. Modigliani has to say about the interior organization
and flow of the building: ?The interior organization returns the
visitor to the central atrium over and over again. From this space the
visitor can see back to the main entrance as well as out to the river.
While the galleries provide an appropriate mix of exotic spaces and
more traditional ones, they are containers for art - that is, closed
and inward looking. But the transition from gallery to gallery or
floor to floor always returns to the atrium space. Here, you are
immediately re-oriented within the building. Equally important, the
city becomes part of the permanent exhibit, yet forever changing with
time and light.?
http://www.architectsonline.com/publications/bilbao/
And here is what another site has to say about the ?program? of the building:
?Inside the gallery spaces are comprised of three different types:
conservative for permanent collections; a more dramatic, elongated
rectangular space extending toward the Puente de la Slave Bridge for
temporary exhibits; and seven distinct galleries of unique spatial
quality for selected living artists. This programmatics is evident on
the exterior of the buildings as limestone-clad rectilinear volumes
enclose permanent collections; the fish-like extension houses the
temporary exhibits in one grand, linear space; while the grouped forms
around the apex form the spaces for the living artists. Looking at the
Guggengeim in this manner it is evident how Gehry works, from a plan
that satisfies programmatic requirements out to a formal expression of
the spaces.? http://www.archidose.org/Jul99/071299.html
*************************
I hope I have not exhausted you with this answer! I know that I HAVE
exhausted myself, but it is a fascinating subject,and doing this
research has reinforced my determination to some day see this
remarkable building in person. Perhaps I will run into you there!
Scribe_ga
An enormously complex structure, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilboa is
also a very complex subject, but I hope that my answer will at least
give you a good start on comprehending and appreciating this building,
which seems to be considered one of the great buildings of the 20th
Century, by almost global consensus.
First, a little about the city in which it is located. Bilboa is an
industrial port city in the Basque country of Spain. The ?river? on
which the building is located (the Nervion) is actually an estuary of
the Atlantic. Bilboa is a medium-size city (350,000 population) and
the largest in the Basque region of Spain. Both city and region must
have visionary leadership. Not only did they succeed in persuading the
Guggenheim to locate a ?branch? there, but the leadership endorsed and
supported the daring vision of the museum and its architect for a
building that would be as startlingly and radically different as was
the Guggenheim?s home museum in New York City, designed by Frank Lloyd
Wright., in the 1950s. Certainly the city?s boldness has been
vindicated. It has been a major factor in the economic revival of the
city, both because of tourist dollars attracted to the city as never
before and because of the new fame, status, and cachet the building
has given to a rather obscure and economically-depressed Spanish city
located in a region that in for many years has been bedeviled by a
violent separatist movement. Incidentally, the city has continued to
commission leading architects to design projects there, including
Santiago Calatrava who designed a footbridge crossing the Nervion
(also known as the Bilboa river).
Let me take the parts of your question in the order you presented them.
The site.
The museum is located in central Bilboa in a riverside area formerly
dedicated to warehousing and port activities. (The port of Bilboa is
now located directly on the Bay of Biscay.) The building is approached
from its eastern end, where the size of the building (it is VERY
large: 24,000 square meters on a site of 32,500 square meters) is not
so apparent. The design seeks not to overwhelm its historic
surroundings and the way it avoids doing this is well described in The
Museum?s own website: http://www.guggenheim-bilbao.es/ingles/home.htm
?People coming from the calle Iparraguirre, one of the main streets
bisecting the center of Bilbao diagonally, are led directly to the
main entrance; the idea was to bring the city right to the doors of
the building. A broad flight of steps takes pedestrians down to the
Museum hall although descending flights of stairs are not a frequent
feature of institutional buildings. This is an inspired response to
the differences in height between the level of the river and the level
of the city center. It also enables a building with a surface area of
24,000 square meters and more than 50 meters high to be slotted into
the city landscape without it towering over the neighboring
buildings.?
The Wilkepedia entry agrees with this assessment: ?Also important is
while the museum is a spectacular monument from the river, on street
level it is quite modest and does not overwhelm its traditional
surroundings.?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guggenheim_Museum_Bilbao
Go to this image bank address in order to see an excellent image of
how the building looks as one approaches it down one of the city?s
main streets. (Note the hills in the distance which are usually
greener than this, in this very rainy city.)
http://www.artdreamguide.com/adg/adg_ESP/ba_ESP/bilba_ba/m_gugge/507.htm
And go here for a view of the main entrance and plaza from another
angle: http://www.virtourist.com/europe/bilbao/04.htm
It is only from across the river that the full elevation and the size
of the building can be well seen, as is shown in these two photos:
http://www.artlex.com/ArtLex/m/museum.html
http://www.barcelona-photo.com/architektur/Bilbao-Guggenheim-Museum.html
The first of these photographs is especially good in helping us to
get oriented to this building and its relationship to the site. To the
right is the plaza and main entrance, to the left is the Puente de la
Salve which as the Museum?s website says actually ?pierces? the site
and whioch is integrated into it by the ?sculptural tower,? and a
broad staircase leading up to it: ?The broad flight of stairs that
goes up to the sculptural tower, conceived as a device to absorb and
integrate the Puente de La Salve into the overall architectural scheme
of the building, is also a public access way that connects pedestrians
with the rest of the city.?
This site has two good images:
http://www.nanis-reiseseiten.de/Spanien/page_1.html
1. A helpful from-the-river image that shows that ?broad flight of
stairs? and the very beautiful pedestrian esplanade that curves
between the riverbank and a moat-like expanse of water overlooked by a
pavilion, and
2. The same, but viewed from the stairs.
The city map on the city? website uses the word ?muelle?, the Spanish
word for ?dock,? to describe this area, but clearly the area is now
being put to a purely aesthetic use.
****************
Structural and construction ideas.
First let?s consider the extraordinary shape of the building. The
building was completed in 1997 and a writer in the Washington Post was
among the many who were utterly captivated by it:
http://www.jasonkaufman.com/articles/gehrys_guggenheim_bilbao.htm
Here is part is what he had to say about the form of the building:
?Gehry's masterpiece has been likened to a metallic flower, to the
hulls of ships, and to Frank Lloyd Wright's renowned spiral rotunda of
the Guggenheim's flagship on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Its
overlapping forms seem inspired by Futurist sculpture, conveying a
sense of centripetal motion, like an arrested implosion of the Tower
of Babel. It is like nothing we have seen before.?
Gehry himself has described the building as a metal flower set in the
bank of the river. And another observer has seen no lack of allusions
to the city and its history.
http://www.architectsonline.com/publications/bilbao/
The river and the city?s
shipbuilding and industrial past are, this writer thinks, all integral
to Gehry?s vision.
A word here about Gehry in general. At this site you will find a good
account of what makes Gehry such a unique and compelling architect:
http://www.greatbuildings.com/architects/Frank_Gehry.html
Here?s what they have to say: ? In the large-scale public commissions
he has received since he converted to a deconstructive aesthetic,
Gehry has explored the classical architecture themes. In these works
he melds formal compositions with an exploded aesthetic. Most
recently, Gehry has combined sensous curving forms with complex
deconstructive massing, achieving significant new results.?
Certainly the adjectives ?sculptural,? ?exploded? and ?deconstructed?
are all terms that can be validly applied to the Guggenheim Bilboa.
The seemingly chaotic mingling of forms expresses for many the quality
of modern life. Yet out of all of this chaos emerges a harmony of a
new kind.
It?s interesting to note that this very modern building relied on very
modern technology to be realized. Although the design work itself was
not computer-assisted?Gehry used traditional physical
modeling--computer assistance was needed to fabricate the titanium
panels that clad much of the building?s steel structure. A French
software program called CAITA, used in the construction of airplanes,
made possible the highly precise fabrication of the panels.
This site-- http://www.culturevulture.net/ArtandArch/Bilbao.htm-- has
an excellent account of this aspect of the building: ?Composed of a
group of free flowing volumes that seem to have met in a train crash,
the building shows sections of its steel skeleton, but mostly is
clothed in tissue-paper thin titanium (from whence the startlingly
beautiful effects of reflected light, the source of the welcoming
gleam from afar), warm limestone, and glass. From the three main
materials, paneling of unique sizes and shapes (details generated from
computer design, manufactured by computer commanded robots) was
created, thus allowing for the organically irregular and curved shapes
of the mass. It's like a mutated kind of shingling, taking that
technique to places it has never been before. (Critic Paul Goldberger
noted that changes in architecture have already moved ahead of Gehry;
while Gehry designs in his head and implements with the computer, a
new generation has adopted the computer itself as the generator of
design. Still, Gehry's work could not be implemented without the use
of computers.)?
The reflective nature of the skin of the building contributes in no
small part to the beauty of the building, in all kinds of light, even
the under the frequently grey skies of this city by the Atlantic.
Symbolic and historic association of the work
We have already touched upon this. One can say that the titanium
panels pay tribute to Bilboa?s industrial heritage, especially its
shipbuilding. Further, the sail-like shapes can be seen as reference
to the city?s history as an important Atlantic port. (Though both are
also typical of Gehry?s work far from Bilboa. Using fish-scale-like
panels as the skin of a building is an idea that dates back to early
in his career. And the sail-like shapes are also a Gehry trademark,
seen again in the recently completed Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los
Angeles.)
Spatial organization and character
The first thing to be said on this subject, in my view, is that the
building discloses very little of how it is organized, when viewed
from outside. But the Museum?s own website says that one can see from
the outside how the building is composed of two kinds of galleries.
The building has a total of 19 galleries organized around the central
atrium. ?Ten of these galleries have an almost classical orthogonal
look and can be identified from outside by their stone finishes. Nine
other, irregularly-shaped galleries present a remarkable contrast, and
can be identified from outside by their unusual architecture and the
covering of titanium.?
The biggest gallery is 130 meters long (!). It is ?free of columns and
with flooring specially prepared to cope with the comings and going of
visitors and museum staff, as well as the sheer weight of the works on
display there. Seen from the outside, this gallery slides underneath
the Puente de La Salve and runs up against the end of the tower that
embraces the bridge and brings it into the building.? It is this
gallery where large works like those of Richard Serra are displayed.
As for movement through the building, the museum website says that,
contrary to the outside appearance, all is easy and clear
inside:?There is a harmonius tie between the architectural shapes and
the contents of each gallery. Undoubtedly, this simplifies the tour
inside the Museum while the atrium, in its very center, and the
walkways that link one gallery with another - showing different
perspectives of the exhibitional spaces - facilitate the location of
galleries and services at any time. As visitors enter the Museum they
learn that under the external complex appearance of the architectural
shapes, there lies a neat, clear world where it is easy to find one's
way around.?
http://www.guggenheim-bilbao.es/ingles/home.htm
Here is what Mr. Modigliani has to say about the interior organization
and flow of the building: ?The interior organization returns the
visitor to the central atrium over and over again. From this space the
visitor can see back to the main entrance as well as out to the river.
While the galleries provide an appropriate mix of exotic spaces and
more traditional ones, they are containers for art - that is, closed
and inward looking. But the transition from gallery to gallery or
floor to floor always returns to the atrium space. Here, you are
immediately re-oriented within the building. Equally important, the
city becomes part of the permanent exhibit, yet forever changing with
time and light.?
http://www.architectsonline.com/publications/bilbao/
And here is what another site has to say about the ?program? of the building:
?Inside the gallery spaces are comprised of three different types:
conservative for permanent collections; a more dramatic, elongated
rectangular space extending toward the Puente de la Slave Bridge for
temporary exhibits; and seven distinct galleries of unique spatial
quality for selected living artists. This programmatics is evident on
the exterior of the buildings as limestone-clad rectilinear volumes
enclose permanent collections; the fish-like extension houses the
temporary exhibits in one grand, linear space; while the grouped forms
around the apex form the spaces for the living artists. Looking at the
Guggengeim in this manner it is evident how Gehry works, from a plan
that satisfies programmatic requirements out to a formal expression of
the spaces.? http://www.archidose.org/Jul99/071299.html
*************************
I hope I have not exhausted you with this answer! I know that I HAVE
exhausted myself, but it is a fascinating subject,and doing this
research has reinforced my determination to some day see this
remarkable building in person. Perhaps I will run into you there!
Scribe_ga |
