The Observer | 01. 1 0. 17 | THE NEW REVIEW 13
the complex, multiply curving shapes
which, since Bilbao, are assumed to be
his trademark.
They were, however, brewing in
some of his projects, especially an
$82m house for the Ohio insurance
magnate Peter Lewis – a trustee of the
Guggenheim foundation from 1993 to
2005, its biggest donor, and the man
who introduced Gehry to Krens — that
was designed and redesigned but never
built. Gehry and his offi ce pioneered
the use of CATIA , software originally
developed for designing aircraft,
which allowed elaborate shapes to
be made without prohibitive cost.
It enabled him to realise the Bilbao
Guggenheim, as he is keen to point out,
within its $100m budget. “I could have
straightened everything out,” he says,
but “it wouldn’t have cost less.”
The ability of computers to design
unfeasibly elaborate buildings has
since multiplied. It is a ubiquitous
and defi ning feature of contemporary
architecture. It has been an eff ective
accomplice of post-Bilbao “iconic”
architecture which, although sensible
architects have been pointing out its
weaknesses for almost as long as it has
existed, and although it suff ers from
an obvious hyperinfl ation of shape – if
everything looks abnormal it becomes
normal – shows no sign of going away.
This long-running craze would
have happened in any case, but the
Guggenheim gave it fuel. Its infl uence
takes two main types. In one, public
authorities – in West Bromwich , in
Denver, in Metz – seek to use some
version of the “Bilbao eff ect” to
“kickstart” (as it is often horribly put)
regeneration. In Spain, in the bubble
years, cities became particularly fond
of monuments whose appearance
‘It was a boat’:
Frank Gehry’s
glittering titanium
Guggenheim museum
in Bilbao. Gettygo home and tell my mother I’m in
the Louvre.’” He reels off the artists
who he says liked the Guggenheim- Anselm Kief er , Sol LeW itt, “even”
Robert Rauschenberg. He says that a
clique of museum directors, meeting
in London, “passed a resolution that
they should never build a building
like Frank Gehry’s... they pretty much
kept to it.” He claims that the same
directors – “you know who they are” - told Cy Twombly never to show in
Bilbao. He did, eventually, two years
or so before his death. “Cy called me
and said it was the best show in his
whole life.”
Gehry is also keen to distance
himself from the dumber aspects of
the building’s architectural legacy. “I
apologise for having anything to do
with it,” he says. “ Maybe I should be
hung by the yardarm. My intention
was not that it should happen.” Talk
of the “Bilbao eff ect” makes him
cringe – “it’s bullshit... I blame your
journalist brethren for that.” He wants
to stress an aspect of the design often
overlooked by imitators, which is
that it works hard to connect to its
surroundings: “I spent a lot of time
making the building relate to the
19th century street module and then
it was on the river, with the history of
the river, the sea, the boats coming up
the channel. It was a boat.”
Vidarte, too, is uneasy about
its infl uence. He’s “fl attered”,
but at the same time “concerned
and nervous... many people are
just trying to replicate its most
superfi cial aspects.” The project
was not about the building, he says,
but also a “sustainable” plan for its
management and content, and the
regeneration of Bilbao was not just
about the Guggenheim but also about
investment in infrastructure and other
urban essentials.
At the time of the Guggenheim’s
completion a giant puppy, covered
in living fl owers, was installed by
its entrance, and it remained until- It was created by Jeff Koons
and “underwritten” by Hugo Boss.
Shortly before the opening three
Basque separatist terrorists tried to
disguise themselves as gardeners so
as to plant explosives in it. They were
foiled, but a policeman died in the
ensuing shoot-out.
The incident was emblematic. It
was evidence of the troubles that
Bilbao was trying to escape and which
have indeed diminished. The Koons-
Boss pooch, charming and calculating
at once, was an early manifestation of
the sort of global, big-money, market-
led, spectacular art culture that has
now become familiar, for which the
Bilbao Guggenheim was certainly a
Trojan horse. Krens himself went on
to be a controversial and ambitious
protagonist of this culture, if not
an entirely successful one – his
Guggenheims planned for Rio de
Janeiro, Las Vegas, Guadalajara ,
Taichung , lower Manhattan and
Abu Dhabi have mostly failed to
materialise, or stuttered if they did.
But to lay on the Bilbao Guggenheim
the eff ects of its legacy is an injustice
to what it was and is. From the
political, cultural and commercial
currents of its time, not all of them
noble or elevated, it drew the energy
to make a phenomenon that few
people would wish away, least of all
Bilbao itself. Its true lesson is that it
can’t be copied, because it came from
circumstances that were unique.
outran their content, architectural
dumb blondes by Santiago Calatrava
or Oscar Niemeyer or Peter Eisenman
that looked especially redundant when
the crash came. In the other type,
private developers use funny shapes as
marketing tools for their towers – see
the skylines of Dubai or many Chinese
cities, or London’s car boot sale of
domestic gadgets.
What both approaches, public and
private, have in common is the use of
spectacle to distract attention. Public
authorities might not want you to
notice that their regeneration plans
are fl imsy. Developers typically use
eye-catching design to justify their
stretching of planning restrictions, or to
obscure the fundamental sameness and
ordinariness of their products, or to sell
buildings before they are realised – in
some cases too to deodorise the dirtymoney that pays for the projects.
The use of spectacle was also the
basis of the most sustained critique
of the generally lauded Guggenheim,
that its powerful look makes it a poor
setting for art. For the critic Hal Foster ,
speaking in Sydney Pollack’s fi lm
Sketches of Frank Gehry , the building
trumps the art it is supposed to serve:
“he’s given his clients too much of
what they want, a sublime space that
overwhelms the viewer, a spectacular
image that can circulate through the
media and around the world as brand”.
Gehry is familiar with the criticism
and pushes back. All his professional
life he has known and worked with
artists. “In the beginning,” he says,
“I thought architects should make
neutral spaces for art. But my artists
were saying: ‘Fuck off , we want to be
in an important building. I want toCentre Pompidou-Metz, France,
designed by Shigeru Ban , 2010
As in Bilbao, a famous art institution
created an architecturally conspicuous
outpost in an unglamorous city.Th e Public , West Bromwich, designed by
Will Alsop, 2008
An attempt to revive the West Midlands
with a “box of delights”, where people
could both experience and make art. It is
now a sixth-form college.Centre Niemeyer, Avilés, Spain, designed
by Oscar Niemeyer, 2011
A cultural centre designed by thecelebrated Brazilian architect in his 90s, it
closed for fi nancial reasons soon after its
completion , but later reopened.Ordos museum, China, by MAD
Architects, 2011
A museum and landmark for a city in the
Gobi desert, whose redevelopment is
famously underinhabited.Louvre Abu Dhabi , designed by
Jean Nouvel, 2017
Due to open in November, the latest
marriage of a museum brand with an
aspiring city, celebrated with dazzling
architecture. RMTHE BILBAO LEGACY Five would-be icons