The Guggenheim in Bilbao
Frank Gehry’s titanium museum opens in a run-down industrial city. The forms are drawn and built with software from the aerospace industry.
The computer made free forms possible, and the “Bilbao effect” led cities all over the world to commission iconic buildings.
For a century Bilbao had lived on steel, shipyards and its port, but in the 1980s the industrial crisis hit hard. Factories closed, unemployment rose, the River Nervión was polluted and the city also suffered from the violence of the Basque separatist group ETA. The Basque regional government invested in transforming the city with a new metro, a new airport and a new cultural life. At the same time the Guggenheim Foundation in New York, under its director Thomas Krens, wanted to expand into an international network of museums. The Basques offered to pay for the building and a large sum for the partnership. In 1991 Frank Gehry was chosen after an invited competition, and he was given a site by the river.
The museum was built in 1993–1997 beside the river, where a large bridge passes and is incorporated into the composition. Gehry worked with handmade models of paper and cardboard, which were then scanned. With the help of CATIA, a program developed for the French aerospace industry, the complex curved forms could be calculated precisely, so that the steel frame and every panel could be manufactured at a reasonable cost. The building was clad in thin sheets of titanium, limestone and glass. At its centre rises a tall atrium, and a long exhibition hall houses large sculptures by Richard Serra. The museum was inaugurated in October 1997 by the King of Spain, and outside stands Jeff Koons’s puppy made of flowers.
The museum was a success with the public far beyond expectations, and tourists from all over the world came to see the building more than the art. Hotels, restaurants and new building projects followed, and Bilbao came to be seen as a textbook example of how a city can be regenerated. Many cities tried to copy the recipe by commissioning spectacular buildings from famous architects, but few achieved the same effect, since the success in Bilbao also rested on major investment in infrastructure and long-term work. Critics have also argued that the architecture competes with the art it is meant to show. The term Bilbao effect has since been widely used in the Swedish debate on iconic buildings and urban development too.