Bilbao is one of the most storied cities in Spain, dating back more than 700 years. Presently, it has about 500,000 people within its boundaries, but Greater Bilbao, an area over 400 square kilometers in area, has over 1 million people.1 Although it had long been a leading port, it also gained prominence in the shipbuilding, chemicals and steel industries; however, when those industries began to decline after the death of Franco in 1975, the city sank into a recession. One of the causes for this recession had been Franco’s insistence that these industries only serve Spanish clients instead of expanding into international markets. When the European Economic Community insisted that member countries remove the protections that they had put into place for their industrial businesses, Bilbao’s industries were not prepared to compete.2 As with many cities, worldwide, that encountered an economic stagnation, the entire character of Bilbao took a turn for the worse, with unemployment skyrocketing to 26 percent overall, with as high as 50 percent of those between 18 and 25 years of age without jobs.3
The Guggenheim Bilbao, to be designed by Frank Gehry, was to be part of a plan to turn around the image, and the fortunes, of the entire city. In addition to the museum, the city would finance the construction of many projects, all designed by architects with worldwide fame. In addition to the museum, the city ordered a port expansion, a new subway, the Uribitarte Footbridge over the Nervion River, and the renovation of Bilbao’s airport.4 With regard to the Guggenheim Bilbao, and other facilities supporting the arts, the idea was to give the city a “private initiative and infrastructures that allow the access of all collectivities to culture, transforming the emblem of the city.”5 At that time, the Euskalduna Concert and Conference Hall and the Cultural Centre were designed to form a cultural district in Abandoibarra on the Estuary, which was seen as a multi-use blend of commercial, cultural and leisure spaces that would mark Bilbao as one of the elite cultural cities of the world. This was Bilbao’s attempt to build a cultural quarter.
Historically, cultural quarters that formed organically over time, like New York’s SoHo and London’s West End, have their own organic progression.6 However, cultural quarters that were intentionally designed are becoming a modern phenomenon, as urban planners attempt to blend them in as part of a revitalization strategy. The Guggenheim Bilbao was intended not just as a museum but also as a symbol – not just of Basque pride, but also of the aspirations of the Guggenheim Foundation.7 The competing aims of these two agendas would drive every aspect of the project, from initial architectural design to the construction process – and to the marketing of the area.
Frank Gehry, who designed the Guggenheim Bilbao, has all of the confidence and swagger of an architect with a firm sense of vision. With the Guggenheim Bilbao, as with some of his other designs, he feels that there has been a “backlashagainst [him] and everyone who has done buildings that have movement and feeling.” He finds it “self-righteous” and “annoying” that people would view his style as “counterproductive to social responsibility and sustainability.” The resulting trend, he fumes, is to believe that “curving the wall or doing something so-called willful is wrong and so there is a tendency back to bland.”8 This, of course, is a pendulum that has long swung back and forth in architectural fashion; if one considers the progression from Romanesque to Gothic to Baroque to Rococo, followed by the Sullivanesque “form follows function” dictum, followed by the organic movement of such architects as Frank Lloyd Wright and the return to movement in buildings by Gaudi and Gehry, this is a debate that has raged as long as people have been designing edifices. What is clear, though, is that Gehry put his creative heart into play with his design of the Guggenheim Bilbao.
The backdrop of the Guggenheim itself is a cascade of green, rolling hills. As Catherine Slessor describes it, it “cuts a scabrous dash on Spain’s northern Atlantic coastline.”9 A powerful symbol of the collaboration between the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and the expanding designs of Bilbao on a return to prosperity, the museum would help out both groups – Bilbao, as has been mentioned, was urgently working toward a rebirth of its own, while the Guggenheim Foundation wanted to boost its presence in Europe. The Basque government paid the $100 million tag for the project and agreed to provide some of the funding in its annual budget. The Guggenheim Foundation got to operate the museum, acting as the curatorial authority for this sister facility to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice.10
As it was, though Gehry almost didn’t get to design the Guggenheim Bilbao. He was one of three invited to submit designs, along with Arata Isozaki and Coop Himmelblau; each one received a period of three weeks and one visit to the site to put together a proposal. All three visions were radical; in addition to Gehry’s curvilinear New World creation, Himmelblau put together a set of glowing cubes, joined together to provide space for the art works, and Isozaki imagined a set of spaces with different shapes, running organically together. When the foundation chose Gehry’s vision for the museum, it was signaling a vote for the most radical of the three proposals – a vision that, to some, mirrored Frank Lloyd Wright’s Expressionist vortex that he placed on Fifth Avenue in New York City in 1959.11 In Gehry’s own words, the design represents “computer assisted Cubism”12 and resembles, in many ways, the same amalgamation of broken surfaces and maimed curves that Braque and Picasso brought onto the scene when they first turned the literal into the cubist, but on a much grander scale. To achieve the sense of curve that he wanted in his project, Gehry rolled up paper sheets and taped them together by hand to show his exact vision for the desired form.13
The curves that form the museum’s structure were so extreme that the existing materials for designing a prototype did not exist in 1997. Fortunately, Gehry had the help of the CATIA application. This software could take all of the curvilinear creations on Gehry’s models and turn them into three-dimensional models on the screen that the user can then move around in an interactive setting.14 Of course, the artistic issue that one encounters when one can do anything at all on a computer screen, and with the same ease that one can reproduce a form that is, say, as familiar as the Parthenon, becomes the future of the word “unique.” If there are no mechanical hurdles anymore, because computer software can take all of our Seussian dreams and tell us, in a set of directions, how to erect them on land, then what is the difference between architecture and painting with a third dimension? Or between architecture and a very large form of sculpture? If computers are answering all of the mechanical questions, then architecture as art becomes an endangered species, replaced instead by architecture as simple management of materials. The new creators in this field, one might think, could be computer designers, not traditional architects.
As the museum took its form on land, it quickly became clear that the Guggenheim Bilbao was designed to cleave to its natural environment, draping itself around the Puente de Salve as though it were a lithe cat, wrapping itself almost into a pretzel before lying down. To one side, the shape leaves a curvilinear promenade along the river. There is a gaunt bridge that darts from the Ensanche to the eastern section of Bilbao. When the sun hits it, instead of a cat, though, the building evokes a long sea serpent, having crawled up out of the depths to take its rest right along the shore of its river, shining iridescently and sending out a wealth of colors in all directions. Atop this creation is a series of twisted, metal support beams; at the south end, though, this metallic craze joins a façade of ashla red and cobalt – right by a huge topiary dog. This junction is where visitors enter for the first time.
The limestone extends into the entrance and forms the first flight of stairs, with the metallic shine running up and around the walls. The stairs narrow as you go down, pushing you into the entrance area. You have to slide through a fairly narrow crack into the gallery area, which broadens again quickly into a gargantuan atrium – typical of Gehry’s tendencies to make his buildings gyrate wildly in terms of volume.15 The space is a startling 50 meters in height, with light ripping its way through gashes in the walls, which makes for a dancing cavalcade of shadows. Off the atrium are 21 different galleries, each with its own layout and size, over three stories. Natural and overhead light both illuminate these various rooms; on the bottom level, a series of lightwells allows the natural light to filter down and augment the light bulbs. The set of galleries is an ideal set of stages for the most outlandish flights of modern fancy imaginable – and such was Gehry’s ideal.16
It is impossible to bring a discussion of the Guggenheim Bilbao to a close without a look at the impact that the museum actually had on the city. Cultural tourism is still a fairly new sector of the travel market, but initial studies have shown that building and maintaining facilities for cultural tourism has led to economic growth, as tourists who are interested in these cultural facilities have shown a tendency to travel to see them, and then to spend money on lodging, restaurants and other attractions.17 According to the Arts Council of England, six out of every ten tourists who visit the country are there to see a gallery or museum.18 Research suggests that for every dollar that entities spend on cultural tourism, as far as building or maintenance, four dollars will come in from training.19 The Guggenheim Bilbao has followed – in fact, in some years, even beaten – that forecast. The first year it was open, it brought in 1.36 million visitors – far more than the estimated 801,032 guests. The next year, there was a slight dropoff, but only to 1.265 million, which was not as much as expected. Over 75 percent of those visitors, in both years, came to Bilbao just to see that museum, or decided to stay in town longer than they had planned, because they did not know about the museum before they arrived.20 These visitors spent about $450 million in those two years, which dwarfs the initial $100 investment that the regional government made in the museum. This brought in about $65 million in VAT (value added tax), income tax and corporation tax. In 2000, when there were “only” 1 million visitors, which brought in about $29 million in combined taxes. The museum and its surrounding infrastructure have added approximately 700 jobs to the local community and kept about 8,200 more people employed because of the increased need in surrounding service industries.21
The impact also has to do with the growth in the Bilbao art community. Before the construction of the Guggenheim, there was no modern or contemporary art presence in the city. There were no facilities where residents could see the important 20th century art from the United States and Europe. In addition to bolstering the economy, then, the Guggenheim also filled important cultural and educational gaps that the city was experiencing. The museum itself has set up 42 different educational programs that have served more than 200,000 people.22 Currently, the membership of the Guggenheim totals more than 11,000.23 The only issue that some in the art world have is that the collections are fairly uneven in their representation of modern and contemporary art; however, because that is a curatorial issue rather than a structural one, it will be quite simple for the staff to remedy over time. Two-thirds of the pieces come from acquisitions by the Basque government, while the other third comes from the Guggenheim Foundation. Originally, the foundation had wanted to fill the space with its own work, but contractual issues that tied certain works to the New York location permanently have made this infeasible at this time.
As time goes forward, there is hope that the Guggenheim Bilbao will feature more Bilbao artists, as well as more works from the Guggenheim Foundation’s holdings. However, the fact remains that Frank Gehry’s whimsical, organic vision is one that will benefit the city of Bilbao, and comprise a truly unique staging site for modern and contemporary art, for decades to come.
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