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.
— ARTnews
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."
1 Comment
Regarding "The new expansion will be connected to Frank Gehry"’s original museum complex via a tunnel" I must be missing something, as Google tells me a tunnel to Urdaibai (from Bilbao) would be over 40km?
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