J.C. Reid, Texas

Bilbao, Spain. Click above for larger image, then scroll left-right to see it all.

When I visited Bilbao, Spain for the first time this past October, I felt like I was returning to a familiar destination. The word “Bilbao” has a special meaning for architects like me who were educated in the late 1980s and early 90s. It represents an uncompromising vision of the architect/artist that harnesses the built environment to engender a positive effect on society.

The “Bilbao” referred to here is the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao that was built on an abandoned industrial riverfront in this city located in Basque Country of northern Spain. Designed by Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry, the building is recognized as the greatest work of architecture of the last thirty years while also being credited for the economic and cultural revival of a city decimated by Europe’s transition to a post-industrial society.

The “Bilbao effect” is now a generic term used to describe any large-scale project that invokes urban planning and architecture to transform a rusty “city of industry” to a sleek, post-industrial city of services and (especially) tourism. I had followed (from afar) the development of this building from its inception through construction and opening. All of the initial reviews followed the same theme: the building is spectacular, but the city sucks. Bilbao – the city – is “grimy,” “rusty,” “soot covered.”

So it was with conspicuous schadenfreude that many architecture critics pronounced the effort flawed when the building opened in 1997. And yet, I thought at the time: this is surely just the initial phase of a larger, multi-year (or multi-decade) effort to transform this city? What will it look like in, say, another fifteen years?

In the intervening years I noted various references to the museum both in architecture circles (usually related to Gehry’s stratospheric career path) as well as in popular culture (the building acted as a backdrop for a James Bond film). But the question still nagged: had the building and city continued to transform into a legitimate tourist destination? And with that in mind, I “returned” to Bilbao on an actual visit during a trip to Spain in October 2012.

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