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Designed
by the North American architect Frank O. Gehry, this unique Museum built on
a 32,500 square meter site in the center of Bilbao represents an amazing
construction feat. On one side it runs down to the waterside of the Nervión
River, 16 meters below the level of the rest of the city of Bilbao. One end
is pierced through by the huge Puente de La Salve, one of the main access
routes into the city.
The perfect setting: architecture for art´s sake
The building
itself is an extraordinary combination of interconnecting shapes. Orthogonal
blocks in limestone contrast with curved and bent forms covered in titanium.
Glass curtain walls provide the building with the light and transparency it
needs. Owing to their mathematical complexity, the sinuous stone, glass, and
titanium curves were designed with the aid of computers. The glass walls
were made and installed to protect the works of art from heat and radiation.
The half-millimeter thick "fish-scale" titanium panels covering most of the
building are guaranteed to last one hundred years. As a whole, Gehry's
design creates a spectacular, eminently visible structure that has the
presence of a huge sculpture set against the backdrop of the city.
A new
urban center
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.
A
city within another
Visitors passing
through the hall to the exhibition areas come immediately to the atrium, the
real heart of the Museum and one of the most idiosyncratic features of
Gehry's design, which has a sort of metal flower skylight at the top that
allows a stream of light to illuminate the warm, inviting space. From the
Atrium, the visitor is given the opportunity to access a terrace covered by
a canopy supported by a single stone pillar. The canopy serves a function
(better appreciated perhaps from the other bank of the river, which offers
observers an excellent view of the entire rear façade of the Museum) that is
both protective and aesthetic at one and the same time. 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.
Exhibition galleries are organized on three levels around the central atrium
and are connected by a system of curving walkways suspended from the roof,
glass elevators and stair turrets. All in all, a spectacular vision that one
critic has described as a metaphorical city, where the panels of glass that
cover the elevator-well evoke the scales of a fish that leaps and spins, the
walkways that climb the interior walls are like vertical motorways, and the
plaster curves crowning the atrium suggest the molded ribbing of a drawing
by Willem de Kooning. In short, a glimpse of artifice in architectural
design taken to its uttermost limits.
The
space of art
Eleven thousand
square meters of exhibition space are distributed in 19 galleries. 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. By playing with volumes and perspectives, these galleries provide
huge interior spaces that somehow manage not to overwhelm the visitor.
Large-scale artworks are housed in an exceptional 30 meter wide, 130 meter
long gallery 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. 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.
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