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'You just have to want to do it': Frank Gehry profiled in TIME Magazine

2023-04-06T14:54:00-04:00

[...] standing on the third floor of the Guggenheim during its 25th–anniversary celebrations in October 2022, even Gehry seemed a little awed. “When you look at your old buildings, you’re very critical of every little detail,” he says, looking around. “And I love it, I think. I find I love it.”

In a recent profile on Frank Gehry, TIME met up with the 94-year-old architect at one of his most celebrated buildings, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. As Gehry revisited the halls his team designed more than three decades ago, he opened up about design principles, technical challenges, and his thoughts on movement in design.

Video via TIME on YouTube

Construction begins on Foster + Partners' 'floating' extension to Bilbao Fine Arts Museum

2022-11-22T14:35:00-05:00

Construction has commenced on the Foster + Partners-designed Bilbao Fine Arts Museum in Spain. The firm won the commission to remodel and expand the existing museum in 2019, seeing off competition from five other international teams.

The project sees the expansion and remodeling of the existing 20th-century building, with major moves including the creation of a new public atrium space and art galleries in a “floating pavilion.” Outside, a new pathway will connect the original 1945 building, the 1970s extension, and a new visitors center.

Image credit: Foster + Partners

The design team’s approach revolved around the original 1945 building, which the team sought to make the “primary protagonist” of the complex through restoring its original entrance and internal sequence of spaces. 70 percent of the existing building will be upgraded, which, when combined with the new extension, will increase the museum’s usable area by 50 percent.

Image credit: Foster + Partners

The extension volum...

The Guggenheim Bilbao announces $129 million Basque country expansion

2022-08-02T15:34:00-04:00

The Guggenheim Bilbao’s long-gestating plans to expand to a Spanish natural reserve may finally come to fruition. Earlier this week, officials with the government of the Biscay province, whose capital is Bilbao, revealed that they were planning to put €40 million toward an expansion in Urdaibai, an estuary to the east of Bilbao that has hundreds of plant species and thousands of human residents.

The new expansion will be connected to Frank Gehry’s original museum complex via a tunnel, according to the local outlet El Correo. The Guggenheim has been promoting the idea on and off since 2008 while it forged ahead with its other either failed or repeatedly-delayed (and not to mention politically-tinged) satellite projects under the leadership of outgoing Director Richard Armstrong.

As ARTnews reported, the Bilbao expansion will be an adaptive reuse design split between two former industrial sites in Guernica and Murueta. The total €127 million ($129 million) construction is expected to add at least 900 jobs and 148,000 annual visitors to the local economy in a hopeful repeat of the original expansion's famous effect. In a press statement, Armstrong said it will potentially be the "first important museum of the 21st century" and would not be "an architectural icon but a landscape one."

Gehry's Guggenheim Bilbao lights up covered in Jenny Holzer projections this week

2019-03-22T15:45:00-04:00

The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao presents Jenny Holzer: Thing Indescribable, a survey of work by one of the most outstanding artists of our time. This exhibition features new works, including a series of light projections on the facade of the museum, which can be viewed each night from March 21 to March 30.

"The artist’s aim is to engage the public by creating evocative spaces that ask viewers to consider and potentially define their positions on contentious issues including the global refugee crisis, violence against women, and systemic abuses of power," reads the description of the new exhibition Jenny Holzer: Thing Indescribable.

"The exhibition features newly created works, including electronic signs animated by robotic assemblies, paintings, and light projections. Writing by Basque, Spanish, and international poets will be projected onto the museum’s facade after dark from March 21 to March 30, creating a series of nighttime public events."

View this post on Instagram Indescriptible es la mejor palabra que describe la exposición “Jenny Holzer. Lo Indescriptible" #Inauguración #HolzerGuggenheimBilbao Patrocina #FundaciónBBVA
A post shared by Museo Guggenheim Bilbao (@museoguggenheim) on Mar 22, 2019 at 4:02am PDT

Frank Gehry's buildings are no strangers to becomin...