Project Profile

Guggenheim Bilbao

A Titanium Leviathan on the Banks of the Nervion

Francois Chaslin, Jean-Paul Robert, David Leclerc · Memar 01 · Summer 1377 / July 1998

Architect: Frank Gehry

Location: Bilbao, Spain

Year: 1991–1997

Area: 24,000 sqm

Client: Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation & Basque Country Government

Original source: “Bilbao Guggenheim,” l'architecture d'aujourd'hui, No. 313, October 1997

The museum and the Salve Bridge seen from Artxanda hill. The building's titanium-clad sculptural forms rise amid Bilbao's urban fabric along the Nervion River.

The Basque heartland of Spain is in dire straits: its economic foundations are crumbling and unemployment is soaring. The municipal and regional authorities of the Basque Country have launched a major development programme in the city of Bilbao to halt this decline. A striking building has become the vanguard of these improvements: the new Guggenheim Museum, designed by the Californian architect Frank Gehry. The creation of this building has several dimensions: a political dimension that takes on urban and architectural form; a programmatic dimension involving the purchase of a franchise from the American Guggenheim Foundation; and a constructional dimension that operates on a level of masterly brilliance.

With the building set to open in mid-October, we seize the opportunity to welcome an event that embodies the incarnation of architecture in the fusion of a talent, an opportunity, and a policy.

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Background

The construction of the Guggenheim Bilbao is part of an immense plan for urban renewal in a region whose particular economy—metalworking, chemicals, and shipbuilding—has fallen far behind and is gripped by crisis. Moreover, this building signals a new strategy in the world of art and museum management, one derived from the theory of commercial franchising. It is therefore as much an architectural event as it is a step toward globalizing cultural exchange, delocalizing everything, and imposing the standards of financial centres on the art market.

In earlier editions of the 1,300-page guidebook to Spain, only four pages were devoted to this Basque city. You could see the whole town in less than two hours, provided you made a hurried visit to the Fine Arts Museum as well. After that, farewell—you could head off to the coast. This port city, which most of us knew only by name from Brecht and the Basque folk song, was one of those places easily forgotten, left buried in the world of maritime industries and pre-war novels, steeped in the seepage of sea spray and fish oil. All of this is set to change with the opening of this Guggenheim, which has been built for 150 million dollars. The region hopes that spending such a sum will attract hundreds of thousands of tourists.

This sea monster made of plain metal creates a mesmerizing spectacle against its backdrop: a frozen leviathan with multiple humps and hollows, a titanium whale beached on the banks of the Nervion, beneath a motorway overpass that seems to want, in one final shudder, to swallow it whole. More than a functional building, it is a sculpture: an architectural statement, an extravagant sign of the desire for renewal.

The governance of the Guggenheim Bilbao Museum is twofold: financing and management are the responsibility of the Basques, but artistic oversight rests with the Guggenheim Foundation, which, through a system of exhibitions, has assumed institutional guardianship over museum collections displayed under its name. This unprecedented fusion raises a variety of questions: Is this a form of cultural imperialism or a novel form of patronage? Does this dual oversight guarantee the museum’s independence?

In a controversial book published in Spain, “The Chronicle of a Swindle” is presented—a swindle that was certainly two-sided. The author, a Basque scholar named Joseba Zulaika who has been teaching in Nevada since 1990, borrowed the term “swindle” from Jean Baudrillard, who is quoted in the book’s opening: “We have been told that everything depends on production. But if everything depends on the swindle, then what?” And swindle is the word, because according to the author, Thomas Krens, who has been president of the Guggenheim Foundation since 1988, once confessed: “Swindle: this is my profession. I am a professional swindler. I deceive people into giving us 20-million-dollar gifts. Swindle means making people want something without your asking for it. It is the transfer of your desire to them.”

“Swindle: this is my profession. I am a professional swindler. I deceive people into giving us 20-million-dollar gifts. Swindle means making people want something without your asking for it. It is the transfer of your desire to them.”
— Thomas Krens, Director of the Guggenheim Foundation

After an attempt to build an addition to the Guggenheim’s fifth-floor space in SoHo—which left the foundation with serious financial difficulties—Krens devised a brilliant scheme for granting franchises worldwide, enabling various cities to build branches of the museum entirely at their own expense and thereby be guided from New York. The press in America called these projects the “McDonald’s of art.” No museum had ever before thought of granting a franchise. It had not even occurred to anyone to introduce a commercial concept into the realm of art—one that had been operating as a system since around 1955 with the multinational fast-food corporation.

In Spain, contacts were made with officials in Madrid, Seville, and finally Bilbao, where a plan for a museum of modern art had languished for years. The authorities in Bilbao showed interest. Before any discussion could begin, Krens immediately demanded a franchise fee of 15 million dollars—which was later raised to 20 million—simply for placing the necessary technical know-how at their disposal.

In April 1991, the officials of Bilbao—having laid on a helicopter, rolled out a red carpet, and arranged all manner of ceremonies—welcomed this tall, former volleyball-playing figure with metal-rimmed glasses, a gabardine coat, and a portable computer in hand, “very big and very American.” This battered city, ranked fifty-sixth among European cities, was so devoid of attraction that it could not have appealed to this American’s taste.

But he returned to Bilbao in May, with a memorandum of understanding signed in February. The museum design would be entrusted to an architect of international renown, and the Basque authorities were obliged—in addition to the 20-million-dollar franchise fee—to invest 100 million dollars. Two weeks later he came back again, this time accompanied by Frank Gehry, who years before had sought the commission for a large museum of modern art in Massachusetts but had not received it.

Gehry, winner of the Pritzker Prize in 1989, was at the height of his fame. For years, Richard Serra had spoken to him of this “extraordinarily resilient” and mesmerizing city, which immediately captivated him as well. During his pre-dinner jog, a few hundred meters from the hotel, he discovered the site that Thomas Krens experienced as a revelation: running along the left bank of the Nervion beneath the Salve suspension bridge, he found a piece of land surrounded by four enormous cranes. At that moment, a vast and splendid building, as if in a dream, came to his mind.

Under the regulations governing such projects built with public money in Spain, a design competition should have been held. Krens insisted that the competition participants, the manner of the competition, and the jury all be selected by him. Accordingly, the designers were limited to Gehry, Arata Isozaki, and Coop Himmelb(l)au—with the assumption that each represented a continent. Each was given three weeks and a ten-thousand-dollar advance. Gehry’s scheme was chosen.

The agreement was signed in December at the palace serving as the seat of the Basque regional government. In the agreement it was stipulated that decisions on purchasing artworks—approximately 50 million dollars’ worth—would be the responsibility of the Guggenheim team in New York, and that the Basque authorities must provide their written approval within one month. Initially, Krens intended the Bilbao branch to prioritize the display of American art and to exhibit the Panza collection of Minimalist art as its permanent collection.

Other scandals followed, including disputes over the authenticity of works in the Panza collection. Eventually, a movement was launched to pressure the Spanish government into removing Picasso’s Guernica, deteriorating in a display case at the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid, and bringing it to Bilbao. This dispute—which nearly escalated into a full-blown governmental affair—seems to have ended in a stalemate. The Basques had calculated that bringing this sacred icon of the Spanish Civil War to Bilbao would be a trump card that by itself would draw large numbers of visitors. Gehry, in the upper part of the centre, had reserved an excellent space for the work, which they might now deliberately leave empty—like a silent monument, a wordless rebuke of Madrid’s stubborn centralism.

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A Visit

Philippe Bazin prepared a photographic report of the museum a few weeks before its opening. Although construction was still ongoing and access to some of the exhibition rooms was not possible, he was able to capture, in the very light of Bilbao, this event: the final stages of an enduring work of architecture. Jean-Paul Robert, who accompanied him, offers an analytical commentary on these photographs. The subtlety and complexity of this building are the consequence of a dialectic between two major constraints: placing a singular object in a pre-existing urban landscape, and the necessarily delicate confrontation between artworks and the architectural work itself.

The City and the Museum

Two views of the Guggenheim Bilbao: the museum from a nearby street in the Ensanche district, and the riverside view with the Salve Bridge — Above: View from a street in the central Ensanche district. Below: The Salve Bridge and the railway crossing the southern bank of the river, with the museum reflected in the Nervion.

This fire whose metallic flames leap above one another has broken out in a city besieged by motorways. The nearby highway crossing the river, and the not particularly attractive entrance portal, create a rush of wind. The fire spreads along the riverbank, passes beneath the suspension bridge, and sends up tongues of flame. The restless motion of the museum responds to the frozen rush of the highway. Bilbao, entranced, gazes upon this silent commotion.

A city that stretches between its surrounding hills without paying much attention to its river or its geography has suddenly found a vista worth looking at—an architectural work upon which one can fix one’s gaze, and with an unexpected turn, even find the justification for its existence there. More or less, it is as though these buildings and textures that surround it—which have been there long before the museum—have themselves organized things around it. Even the bridge needs to approach and hover over this new building. And the gateway, too, participates in this composition.

Changing Reflections

The museum's titanium terrace at dock level, with mountains in the background, and a view of the museum beneath the Salve Bridge — Above: The terrace at dock level, showing the titanium-clad forms against the Basque mountains. Below: The museum's titanium and stone surfaces seen from beneath the Salve Bridge.

When we move along the bank opposite the museum, images appear and disappear with the changing viewpoint. The prow of a ship: an image that the river, the ocean nearby but invisible, the past, and the memory of port activities all evoke. A little later, other images come forward, even negate the previous one: a structure on which a vertical gust has blown, an explosion with distortions—in this visual language no metaphor is absent. Just as no single word-image can describe it. Each impression one steps away from, releasing its hold, leaves behind yet another image cut from a whole whose comprehension in its totality is not possible.

Stone and Sky

From whatever angle we look at it, from whichever side we approach, the museum draws us to itself. The silent masses reveal nothing of what they contain within, but their dancing forms prevent any feeling of gloom. The duality begins here: some forms are matte, smooth, stone—they belong to the city’s ground, a continuation of its surface and geometry, made of tellurium. Other forms, curved, even winding and undulating, have sprung from pedestals of this same stone—they have leapt into the sky. Their covering holds a certain quality of the earth’s atmosphere; with their surface, which appears rough and uneven, they reflect the changing moods of the sky. Or their metalness possesses this strange property of condensing the light of the sky within itself, to the point where the light seems to emanate from the building—whether the sky is grey, as it often is in the Bay of Biscay, or fiery as at sunset.

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Urban

Floor plan of the dock level showing the atrium and temporary exhibition galleries, plus interior photographs of the atrium columns — Above: Floor Plan 1 — dock level, showing the atrium and temporary exhibition galleries. Below: Sequential photographs of the atrium's lower level, with its massive concrete columns and curving forms.

The metallic masses have risen along the riverbank and entered into play with water and sky. Stone has been laid on the ground to form small plazas or ramps descending to the river’s edge, and to extend the movement of the bridge and highway within the building’s dual logic. A stout column, visibly made of stone, supports a metal canopy that provides a roof over the small plaza. The twin-towered gateway of the bridge and its deck are positioned at a reverse angle—thus the dialectic of building and city is reopened, as though the museum had been built before the city, resolving its own difficulties through this temporal illusion.

The Third Element

Floor Plan 2 — mid-level of the atrium, showing the exhibition halls arranged around the central void.

The dialectic of the entrance plaza’s edge continues its own movement downward, as the path of motion from there slides toward the atrium. At the entrance, which descends to the level of the riverbank, the first contrast is between up and down—between the base, bound to the city by earth and stone, and the suspended volumes in the sky and light, whose whiteness of materials is the interior counterpart of the exterior metal cladding. The second contrast unfolds through the intersection of directions parallel and perpendicular to the river, with diagonal directions introduced through glazed partitions. These openings of light have a double advantage: they present the interior space to the city and allow the interior to absorb the city into itself. The sum of these oppositions—above and below, intersecting perpendicular lines and the neutralizing lines between them—has created a spiral quality in the volumes.

Meanwhile, a third element disrupts this flawless logic: a blue-coloured form housing the museum’s offices. This component is alien, as though it originated from the face the city presents along the river. Details confirm this reading: its colour prevents the materials from showing off—the same blue appears here and there on surrounding buildings. This visual impurity is justified: without it, the museum would rest content with the interplay of its own stone and metallic volumes, risking isolation from the urban landscape.

The Impulse to Fly

A broad staircase leads from the galleries and the far side of the city to the atrium. The first and most striking feature of the atrium is its breadth and vertical capacity, which, through a succession of curved, suspended forms that rise crown-like toward the top, ascends page by page. The stone used in the base and its volumes inspires heartfelt confidence; the human scale makes one feel that this impulse to fly will be checked. But it turns its head upward. The white volumes—which, when light falls on the surfaces of their beams, merge and glide upward; the gleaming metal mesh fills the gaps, and through it other lights enter and other openings are revealed, encouraging movement.

Spiral

The atrium is in motion, born of all these tensions. The contrasts of up and down, of the stone base and the forms suspended from above, of the directions parallel to the river and the axis perpendicular to it—all of these have created a spiral movement in the volumes. This spiral began with the movement of the figures and continues through the experience of the visitor.

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Art and Architecture

Floor plan of the upper gallery level and interior photographs of the atrium corridors — Above: Floor Plan 3 — upper level of the atrium, showing the exhibition halls. Below: Interior walkways and corridors of the atrium, with curving walls, stairways, and natural light filtering through.

The building—and the reason for these spatial combinations—lies in the architectural motivations. The subtlety is hidden. These combinations are the product of a reading of the museum programme, which is above all simple: pathways that are themselves in motion and along which people move, distributing visitors among exhibition rooms in tranquil fashion. The dialectic of movement, the placement of the building within the city, has been made possible in a wondrously masterful form. But beyond that, this dialectic relates to another, yet more profound one—that of art and architecture.

The atrium’s movements quicken toward an alertness that they arouse unconsciously—imperceptible shadows that, in the general flow of things, appear to yield to a rhythm of movement. The pull and release of eyes accustomed to framed and unframed surfaces, matte and open, create the same effect. All of them, by setting the eye in motion through architecture, prepare it for viewing art.

Gallery interiors at the mid-level and upper level, showing artworks on display in the clean white spaces, plus a cross-section through the galleries — Above: Gallery interiors at the mid-level (with contemporary artworks) and upper level (a contemplative space viewed through a rectangular opening). Below: Cross-section through the exhibition galleries.

In the museum, two types of artworks are displayed. The first group were specifically commissioned from artists—such as Richard Serra, who was asked to take charge of the temporary exhibition gallery, and Sol LeWitt, who took charge of the middle floor. Both were working in rooms situated in the midst of the atrium’s circulation, both opening onto the atrium. Both artists are friends of Gehry; they are familiar with his work and, like him, are accustomed to treading the fine line that both separates and joins art and architecture.

The second group are collections most often brought from the Guggenheim Foundation. The architect’s art regarding this group has been to show humility before them and efface himself—in the stone, cylindrical volumes of the calm exhibition rooms. Gehry had intended, with skylights that bring light unchanged from one level to the next, to provide appropriate illumination, leaving the space to its own devices so as to afford the viewer the opportunity for contemplation.

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The Project

How does a building like this get designed? How is it presented? How does one work on it? What was the genesis of the project? Gehry, more as an architect than the artist most people imagine him to be, began the work of craftsmanship and shaping—primarily using physical models—with his team, before modelling on a computer the solutions whose details he had patiently elaborated. Software also assisted him in clarifying structural and constructional options. The main lines of the project changed little from start to finish—so the story is essentially true that the architect saw this building from atop Artxanda hill, in a waking reverie.

Programme and Spatial Layout

The Guggenheim Foundation, through Thomas Krens, had requested various types of exhibition spaces and three kinds of galleries: so-called “classical” rooms for displaying the museum’s permanent collection; less conventional spaces for exhibiting contemporary artists who have created work specifically for this museum; and finally a large hall for temporary exhibitions and the display of very large-scale works.

Initially, the bodies of the rectangular buildings housing the classical galleries were shaped like a hook with its back turned to the city, and the metallic “flower” of the atrium was placed inside it, while the temporary exhibition galleries extended along the river and beneath the bridge. Later, this hook was rotated to face the city, creating the museum’s entrance plaza and accommodating the downward movement toward the atrium. This is how the plan acquired its definitive “crow’s foot” form.

Evolution of the Visual Language

Early design models from 1992-1993 and a riverside view of the construction site from September 1992 — Above: Early study models (1992–1993) showing the evolution of the design from initial concept to refined form. Below: View of the riverside site, September 1992.

Unlike many of Gehry’s other projects, which undergo complete metamorphosis at the sketch stage, the evolution of the Guggenheim Museum design reveals the continuity of a single intention and purpose. Four years of study were devoted primarily to the search for greater integration of the “metallic flower” and the stone-clad volumes. In the competition entry, the “flower” was criticized for not sufficiently participating in defining the museum’s spatial quality. Gehry added canopies to develop the links between the flower petals and the volumes.

From outside, the “flower” gradually took on the appearance of a vast octopus spreading between the stone volumes along the river, while the galleries of contemporary art within it gathered around the atrium alongside the “classical galleries.” The tower was the product of several narratives. Initially designed as a vertical gallery—the counterpoint to and termination of the long, ship-like gallery volume—it did not work well in this form. Eventually, it was reduced to a simple urban marker signalling the entrance to the city from the bridge side and the museum’s presence.

The Atrium

Here the goal was to create a late-twentieth-century counterpart to Frank Lloyd Wright’s circular building—the famous Guggenheim Museum in New York—which would at the same time avoid its main flaw: Wright’s building does not provide museum spaces of high quality. Thomas Krens had expressed a desire for a space without artworks but with a powerful artistic presence. He did not want an atrium like those I.M. Pei had built at the Louvre and the National Gallery in Washington, which he believed resembled hotel lobbies. Gehry seized this opportunity to create an architectural masterpiece.

The atrium is both the heart and the lungs of the museum: all horizontal and vertical circulation routes converge there to form, like Piranesi, a forest-vault rising more than 50 metres—allowing the museum’s space to breathe. Initially, the atrium was composed of elementary volumes stacked upon one another, but later, the verticality of the interior gradually asserted itself in the stairwell and elevator shafts. The atrium, according to Gehry, was inspired by the sets of Fritz Lang’s film Metropolis, and is to be fitted with a multimedia network and may even accommodate digital and electronic equipment.

Computer-Aided Design

Wireframe structural drawing, volumetric study model, and interior photograph of the atrium steel structure after completion — Above: Structural wireframe drawing and volumetric study model of the sculptural forms. Below: The atrium structure after completion — the massive steel skeleton before cladding.

The complexity of the forms in this project was such that conventional methods of presentation could not cope. The computer, as the only tool for visualizing and mastering the project’s formal and economic dimensions, proved indispensable. Gehry’s office used the CATIA programme—perfected by the aerospace industry—to digitize the study models. The computer then analyzed the surfaces and corrected them based on the project’s structural, functional, and economic constraints. The numerical data thus obtained were applied once more to a physical model, so that the volumes could be verified and altered if necessary. This back-and-forth between study models and their digital translations established the formal foundation of the project.

Computer data were then used to prepare the construction drawings. The manufacturing plants used the computer files directly for the design and production of building components. The primary structure is solid steel. The supporting structure for the curved elements was formed from bent pieces laid on a grid, creating a mesh on which the cladding materials—waterproofing and facade panels—are hung.

Construction

Gehry initially intended to use stainless steel for the “flower” cladding, but surface-coating tests proved unsuccessful. His attention then turned to a piece of titanium that happened to be in his office. This metal, more resistant to weathering than stainless steel, is more responsive to change and livelier. When bidders were called, titanium was relatively inexpensive, on par with stainless steel. Titanium is much harder than steel and can be drawn into very thin sheets—in the Bilbao project, the titanium sheets are 0.38 millimetres thick. Therefore, a smaller quantity of this metal was needed. The pattern created by this cladding diminishes the museum’s monolithic appearance and gives it a luminous, urban presence.

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¹ Joseba Zulaika, Crónica de una seducción: el museo Guggenheim Bilbao (Chronicle of a Seduction: The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao), Madrid: Nerea, 1997.

² Originally published as: Francois Chaslin, Jean-Paul Robert, David Leclerc, “Bilbao Guggenheim,” l’architecture d’aujourd’hui, No. 313, October 1997. Translated into Farsi by the editorial team of Memar Magazine.

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