The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao by Frank Gehry

Introduction
 
 The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao by Frank Gehry, is a ground-breaking monument in post-modern architecture, redefining museological function. Ostentatiously set in the used, once intensively industrialized city of Bilbao, Spain, the museum was a hesitant decision made by the Canadian architect. Its predecessor was an old brick factory peripheral to the Nervión River, which runs through the entire city. Plans for a new museum surfaced as part of major redevelopment of the city in the late 1980s, leading to the Basque Authority's proposal for the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in 1991. 

When approached for consultation by Thomas Krens, the former director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, Gehry commented that the original site proposed, a beautiful nineteenth-century former wine-storage house, was unsuitable for the function of a museum. Any attempt to impose it would either result in a meaningless façade or a complete reconstruction disruptive to the context. He then suggested a new site, which sits on the harbor front where Krens had described to be the "geocultural triangle of Bilbao", as it was the center of the Bellas Artes Museum, university and opera house. The site was eventually obtained, and the design of the museum was determined in a competition between Frank Gehry, Coop Himmelblau and Arato Isazaki. Gehry's design championed with an undulating, organic giant that was bold but blended seamlessly with urban context and its role in housing modern artwork.
The museum was erected in 1997, and dubbed as one of the most important pieces of architecture of the 20th century. It economically transformed Bilbao into a service epicenter almost instantaneously. Today, it has become an icon that sits on the same pedestal as the Sydney Opera House. Boasting titanium cladding, extensive limestone revetment and a curvilinear free-form generated by CATIA, a software designed for aeronautic engineering, the extraterrestrial building is mostly identified as Deconstructivist. This paper will investigate how Guggeinheim Museum has revolutionized architecture, and its architectural success as a museum. The definition of "success" will be based on the museum's convincing attributes aesthetically and functionally. In this manner, we will be able to better understand the direction post-modernism has geared towards. 

Chapter One
Materiality, Form and Hapticity

 Deconstructivism is said to be a branch of post-modernism, but its application is controversial. The term "Deconstructivism" was derived from a literary philosophy, "Deconstruction", crafted by Jacques Derrida. The term was intended for metaphorical use, and not technical. The theory promotes fragmentation in design, and deviation from functionalist constrictions. In architecture, it is an elusive classification. Gehry disliked association with the term. He abandoned such a label in the museum's design process, although his work is undoubtedly radical, due to the use of unorthodox construction materials and absence of pure geometric forms. However, I contend that the Guggenheim Bilbao is not merely a resource-wasting, dysfunctional enigma, as claimed by detractors.

Indeed, the Guggenheim Bilbao is an outright rebellion against the minimalist concepts exhausted in the 20th century flowering of the Modernist movement. Although post-modernist notions had pre-existed from the 1970s, the museum remains an unprecedented representation of the shift. Not all awe is lost in the intimidation of its size, which is arguably superfluous. Infinite visual diversity can be inferred from the elevations alone. It has a complete lack of stasis and symmetry; its multi-faceted façade intrigues with seeming movement. The buttery hue of the sunlit titanium cladding liberates from any coldness and industrial connotation. Its metallic surface aptly glistens with coloured sheens painted on by its surroundings. The complex curves extend through the glass windows, resulting in complicated geometry of the glass walls. 2000 out of 2200 glass panels used were unique shapes, simulating thousands of broken glass fragments. The museum abandons the homogeneity of modernism, and adopts a multivalent, pluralist disposition that relates to nature.


Madelon Vriesendorp, a Dutch artist and one of the co-founders of Office of Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), identifies with his drawing, "Metaphors of the New Guggenheim", where he translates the museum façade into an artichoke, fish, mermaid and a boat. Although it is difficult to verify Gehry's true intentions, it is important to note that the development of the museum's unique organic form is not completely unfounded. It is a culmination of Gehry's keen liking for the fish form, partially owing to his Jewish ancestry, where the fish undertakes much religious symbolism. Gehry first utilized CATIA when he designed a free-form sculpture mimicking a fish for Barcelona in the 1992 Vila Olympica. Subsequently, his building projects regularly consisted of the familiar fluid fractal, which was gradually recognized, and then celebrated with Guggenheim Bilbao. The fish form has two pertinent architectural qualities: its gentle curve and gradating volume that create versatile spatial experiences, and its innate relation to nature. When given a sharp edge, it might be interpreted as petal shapes, as seen in the flower-shaped central atrium in Guggenheim Bilbao, meant as an artistic centerpiece. The building has approximately 26 varying "petals" that grow in varying directions and heights, which generously sculpt light and shade, as with the flutes of classical columns. A major influence for the atrium was German Expressionist architecture. Modernist architect Philip Johnson was reduced to tears when he entered the atrium, calling it the "most perfect space in all of architecture".




Even with such a dynamic and tactile design, there is

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