How Frank Gehry (RIP) and the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao Changed Architecture

"It felt, for quite some time there, like the age of Frank Gehry would nev­er end. But now that the lat­est defin­ing fig­ure of Amer­i­can archi­tec­ture - or tech­ni­cal­ly, Cana­di­an-Amer­i­can archi­tec­ture - has died at the age of 96, the time has come to ask when, exact­ly, his age began. Or rather, with which build­ing: Walt Dis­ney Con­cert Hall in Los Ange­les? The Louis Vuit­ton Foun­da­tion in Paris? The rad­i­cal ren­o­va­tion of his own hum­ble San­ta Mon­i­ca home often cit­ed at the ori­gin point of the metal­lic, delib­er­ate­ly incon­gru­ous, often near­ly alien aes­thet­ic now rec­og­nized around the world? Accord­ing to the B1M video above, it is to the Guggen­heim Muse­um Bil­bao we must look to if we wish to under­stand the archi­tec­ture of Frank Gehry - and much else besides."

"The Guggen­heim Bil­bao was a chal­leng­ing project when it was first con­ceived in the ear­ly nine­teen-nineties, but then, Bil­bao was a chal­lenged set­ting. Once a pros­per­ous port city, the Basque metrop­o­lis had fall­en on hard times indeed, rapid­ly dein­dus­tri­al­iz­ing with­out much in the way of alter­na­tive appeal. Bil­bao's slight his­to­ry with tourism went back to the mid-nine­teen cen­tu­ry, but for many Spaniards, the prospect of turn­ing the place into an inter­na­tion­al des­ti­na­tion seemed remote at best. Still, an ambi­tious devel­op­ment plan was devised involv­ing new infra­struc­ture, includ­ing the city's first metro sys­tem, cen­tered around a branch of New York's Solomon R. Guggen­heim Muse­um."

Frank Gehry died at 96. Questions arise about which building defined his architectural era: Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Louis Vuitton Foundation, or his radical renovation of a Santa Monica house. The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao is identified as the key project for understanding his architecture and its wider impact. Bilbao transformed from a prosperous port to a deindustrialized city with declining appeal. Tourism history remained slight until an ambitious development plan proposed new infrastructure, including the city's first metro system. The plan centered cultural and urban renewal around a Guggenheim branch to attract international visitors and investment.

Read at Open Culture