Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum.
I received an e-mail recently from an Austrian artist friend, Kasper Kovitz. He’s been spending some time in Spain and was sending his hellos from Bilbao, where that not-so-good collection is displayed inside the Frank Gehry Guggenheim. He was thinking of the city’s expansion since that molded metal masterpiece of architectural invention was completed. He was telling me that the urban planning of the town was right up there with cities of the Persian Gulf like Abu Dhabi and Dubai. “It’s an interesting city, between beautiful and gritty and obviously very successful at reinventing itself through signature buildings,” he explained. It’s interesting how significant architectural feats can unite and alter a city and at the same time separate it from its own cultural history and still be widely acceptable. It feels like we’re living in a time where new architecture has no connection to a culture or time period. The most extreme visions, ie. Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim in Bilbao, of the future are planted and rooted into a city richer and older than any Los Angeles intersection could ever imagine. Somehow the building is allowed to grow and while it may never blend aesthetically, it does find a way to become accepted by the people who live and work around it, even if they hate it at first. I can only imagine what people will think about our culture hundreds of years from now. Were we the culture that simply experimented and tinkered with history, turning cities upside-down, essentially making anything and everything acceptable?
