Posts Tagged Bilbao
Could Dundee be the new Bilbao?
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on October 3, 2010
The proposed designs for the V&A's new Dundee outpost bear an uncanny resemblance to the Spanish city of Bilbao. So how do the two cities compare?
Six competing designs for Dundee's new £47m outpost of the Victoria and Albert museum, due to open in 2014, were unveiled last week. One looks like a pair of squatting armadillos; another resembles a futuristic 3D visor; a third would sit on the river Tay like a glittering box of light. Whichever design wins, it will transform the skyline of Scotland's fourth largest city, just as Frank Gehry's Guggenheim museum did for Spain's Bilbao in 1997. So how do the two northern, post-industrial cities compare?
Bilbao
Population: Around 353,168.Language: A sensitive issue, to say the least. The national language is, naturally, Spanish; but as the largest city in the Basque country, Bilbao's other official language is "Euskera", or Basque.
Industry: Historically centred on mining, steel, ship-building and banking; today, the city is more focused on tourism.
Insurrectionary past: Bilbao has suffered from its association with the Basque separatists Eta, whose violent campaign has killed more than 820 people over 40 years.
Culture: Did I mention the Guggenheim? That's pretty much where it's at – though there is also a symphony orchestra, an opera company, and a big summer rock festival that attracts bands such as Metallica and Iron Maiden.
Cuisine: The Basques favour an adventurous blend of fish, meats and vegetables, drawing on their enviable position between the Pyrenees and the Bay of Biscay. Classic recipes include baby eels in garlic – ugh – and quails in chocolate sauce.
Dundee
Population: Around 143,000.Language: English, nominally; though the Dundonian dialect may stump visitors. For example you may hear this after several days under Dundee's slate-grey skies: "Yer lookin' affy peely-wally th' day" (translation: "You're looking terribly pale today").
Industry: Known historically as the home of "jute, jam and journalism" for its now-defunct jute mills, marmalade factory (local woman Janet Keiller is reputed to have invented the preserve in the late 1700s), and DC Thomson, publishers of the Beano, the Dandy and, incongruously, I'm Pregnant magazine. Today, it's software development and biotechnology.
Insurrectionary past: Almost 10,000 manufacturing jobs were lost in the 80s, leading to violent industrial disputes and sit-ins.
Culture: For art and film, the trendy, glass-walled Dundee Contemporary Arts Centre; for theatre, the top-class Dundee Rep (where David "the Doctor" Tennant cut his teeth).
Cuisine: Not all deep-fried. Local delicacies include the "bridie", a hot meat pasty; and, of course, the eponymous whisky-soaked cake.
Guggenheim plans extension in Spanish nature reserve
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on June 30, 2010
Local Basque officials rail against decision taken in New York to place new Guggenheim in nature reserve
The Guggenheim Museum has become the emblem of the northern Spanish city of Bilbao and its main tourist attraction, but now attempts to spread its magic by building an extension in a nearby nature reserve have run into fierce opposition.
Provincial authorities want to call an international competition for a museum extension in the bucolic surroundings of the coastal Urdaibai Biosphere Reserve, 25 miles from Bilbao, hoping it will help boost the local economy in the same way the Guggenheim helped Bilbao.
"People in Urdaibai are worried because unemployment is growing and traditional industries are in decline. The museum would be a great boost," said Andoni Ortuzar, local head of the Basque Nationalist party.
The move has provoked concern that authorities might choose to place a building as loud and intrusive as the main museum, designed by Frank Gehry, in the unspoilt surroundings of a nature park which boasts some of Spain's finest surfing beaches. It has also run into the opposition of the regional Basque government, which has threatened to veto a competition.
The project has the enthusiastic backing of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, which also runs museums in New York, Berlin, Venice and Abu Dhabi. The foundation's director, Richard Armstrong, told a recent conference that he wanted the Urdaibai extension to become the "first important museum of the 21st century".
The foundation, however, sees the extension as very different from the dazzling building that towers over the River Nervion in Bilbao. "It would not be an architectural icon, but a landscape one," Armstrong said.
"The idea is to repeat the success, but not the model," added the Bilbao Guggenheim director, Juan Ignacio Vidarte.
The plan aims to raze a summer camp built in 1925 in the village of Sukarrieta and replace it with "an innovative ecological museum", with an emphasis on the "creative process rather than the finished product", according to the Guggenheim chief curator, Nancy Spector.
Critics have accused the Guggenheim of looking for a free new museum, given that the Urdaibai building would be paid for by local taxpayers.
Some local commentators already complain that the big decisions affecting the Bilbao Guggenheim are made in New York. "In the really important decisions the Basque and provincial governments have only been there to give their approval to what is decided in New York," said a former adviser to the museum, Javier González de Durana.
Provincial authorities said they still hoped to persuade the Basque regional government to go ahead with the architectural competition and that, if they did not get support, they would postpone it until a new government was elected.