Buildings like this are expensive and Meyer Guggenheim had emigrated from Switzerland in the mid-19th Century and through wheeling, dealing and good fortune amassed a significant share of the world’s lead, copper and silver markets by the early 20th Century.  One of his seven sons, Solomon, was the art lover who collected modern art voraciously and needed a building to house his collection in. Step forward Lloyd Wright and by 1957 the “Museum of non-objective painting” likened to a multi-story car park by its detractors, was open to visitors.

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As the collection has grown the foundation have developed two further sites with a third, Abu Dhabi due to open in 2026. The taste for spectacular architecture continues. Peggy Guggenheim bought a palazzo in Venice but was thwarted from realising her dream of modernising it by the lack of weight bearing foundations and had to content herself with using her flat roof for topless sunbathing.

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The search for the third site coincided with the need to reinvigorate the old rust belt city of Bilbao in the Basque region of Northern Spain. This married the ideals of Guggenheim Foundation and public benefit.

Frank Gehry, a Canadian living in California (b.1929 and still working) whose work embodied “the joy of architecture” was chosen. Perhaps another marmite architect but certainly a statement builder whose initial drawings, which some liken to squiggles, reflect the landscape around and mirror the setting quite deliberately. In Bilboa he referenced with the metal working history of the region with titanium panels. These statement metal sheets are hugely expensive, reflective, light, durable and are perhaps what most of us recognise about the building.  

 

Gehry is known to be fascinated by movement, shape and light which he attributes to his Jewish grandmother keeping carp in the bath before family feasts.  He set the museum on the riverside to allow reflections on the water under the heavy industrial metal towers and flooded the building with natural light through the central atrium.  Opened in 1997 the museum has been an important factor in regional regeneration. The Bilbao of today is unrecognisable from 50 years ago showcasing the transformative power of architecture as a vehicle for positive change.

Lucy Picton-Turbervill