Name Guggenheim Museum BilbaoArchitect Frank O.GehryDate Groundbreaking: 22nd October 1993 Public OpeningStyle Of Architecture The Guggenheim Museum is a post-modernist piece of avant-garde architecture. It is difficult to categorise because of its unusual and unique shape. Some people would even classify it as a sculpture.Height The highest point on the Guggenheim Museum is the glass atrium that is 57m high. The roof of the building stands 34.5m above ground. Level 4 is 29m high whilst level 3 is 22 metres high, level 2 is 15m and level 1 is 7m above ground level.Materials The three main materials used in the construction of the Guggenheim Museum were titanium, Spanish limestone and glass. The titanium form ...view middle of the document...
The museum contains 19 galleries over 4 levels, one of the the galleries stretches for 130m and is over 25m in width however the incredible thing about it is the fact that it is entirely free of columns, allowing it to display unusually large works of art and sculpture. Visitors are able to reach different levels of the museum by circling the glass atrium. The atrium, along with additional skylights, provides natural sunlight to the building, including channelled beams which reach over two floors. The titanium cladding and ships prows on the museum reflect Bilbao's industrial era, when Bilbao's ports were used for shipbuilding. in the mid 1980's, many of the ship manufacturing companies closed down and jobs were lost; The Guggenheim Museum was built to attract tourism and create more jobs for those whose were lost.Chapter 4 - Technology The Guggenheim Museum is a revolutionary piece of architecture. State of the ark technology was used in its construction. The titanium cladding that surrounds parts of the buildingis only 0.3mm thick but is incredibly stable - more stable, in fact, than stone because stone deteriorates in the city pollution. The museums architect, Frank O.Gehry, incorporated a suspension bridge, that sliced through the museum, into the designand used it to support a 130x25m room. O.Gehry also used computers to help him design the museum. If it had not been for a computer program that was recently designed, the project would not have stayed within construction budget.Chapter 5 - Bibliography1. Van Bruggen, Coosje, Frank O.Gehry: Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, 19972. Curtis, William J. R., Modern Architecture Since 1900, Phaidon Press Inc., 19963. http://www.guggenheim-bilbao.es, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, History, 1998