Museu Gugenheim and the Basque Countryside
Well, I made it to San Sebastian yesterday. It is beautiful here. The hills are so green! After 5 weeks in the dry spanish climate the rolling green hills and mountains are a welcome sight.
The hillsides have little towns nestled in the nooks and crannies with stone walls and tiled roofs. It is beautiful. So beautiful that I have decided to stay another night in san sebastian and extend my stay in Santiago as well. I realized I am a hilly rainy green countryside sort of gal, and when you couple that with the beach here in San Sebastian you can´t beat it.
OK, on to the Gugenheim. Today I took a day trip to Bilboa, about an hour or so from San Sebastian. Bilboa is a primarily industrial city that is busy trying to reinvent itself as a hip tourist destination. It´s doing pretty well. The city is really clean and there is a lot of work that has been put into making the waterfront and other areas very pleasant to stroll along.
The Gugenheim is incredible, a landmark building. An brilliant sculpture that manages to stand out of the surrounding town and at the same time make the surrounding hills and buildings beautiful. It was fantastic.
I couldn´t help compare this building to two other Gehry buildings, the weisman art museum in minneapolis and the experience music project in seattle (two towns I´ve lived in). The gugenheim is very similar to the weisman, in the way that the titanium facade reflects the light off of the adjacent river. He also used sandstone in the structure so it is a combination of curving, sculptural titanium and rigid linear sandstone. In contrast to the EMP, I think that gehry took into account the surroundings for this building and managed to make it innovative without being intrusive. In a way it seemed to make the surrounding areas more picturesque.
The interior seemed an improvement over both buildings. With the weisman, once inside you don´t really get a sense of the outside structure whereas with the gugenheim you are constantly reminded of it and connected to it. I am realizing through my numerous architecture experiences here in spain that this is something I think is very important in good architecture. Also, it makes use of the space, whereas I feel the EMP has a lot of wasted space.
OK, enough architecture the exhibits themselves were really cool as well including a series of large steel sculptural mazes you could walk through and a outstanding temporary exhibit showcasing african modern art. One artist had some paintings portraying the WTC attacks that were particularly powerful and disturbing.
Tomorrow I am planning a day at the beach.
The hillsides have little towns nestled in the nooks and crannies with stone walls and tiled roofs. It is beautiful. So beautiful that I have decided to stay another night in san sebastian and extend my stay in Santiago as well. I realized I am a hilly rainy green countryside sort of gal, and when you couple that with the beach here in San Sebastian you can´t beat it.
OK, on to the Gugenheim. Today I took a day trip to Bilboa, about an hour or so from San Sebastian. Bilboa is a primarily industrial city that is busy trying to reinvent itself as a hip tourist destination. It´s doing pretty well. The city is really clean and there is a lot of work that has been put into making the waterfront and other areas very pleasant to stroll along.
The Gugenheim is incredible, a landmark building. An brilliant sculpture that manages to stand out of the surrounding town and at the same time make the surrounding hills and buildings beautiful. It was fantastic.
I couldn´t help compare this building to two other Gehry buildings, the weisman art museum in minneapolis and the experience music project in seattle (two towns I´ve lived in). The gugenheim is very similar to the weisman, in the way that the titanium facade reflects the light off of the adjacent river. He also used sandstone in the structure so it is a combination of curving, sculptural titanium and rigid linear sandstone. In contrast to the EMP, I think that gehry took into account the surroundings for this building and managed to make it innovative without being intrusive. In a way it seemed to make the surrounding areas more picturesque.
The interior seemed an improvement over both buildings. With the weisman, once inside you don´t really get a sense of the outside structure whereas with the gugenheim you are constantly reminded of it and connected to it. I am realizing through my numerous architecture experiences here in spain that this is something I think is very important in good architecture. Also, it makes use of the space, whereas I feel the EMP has a lot of wasted space.
OK, enough architecture the exhibits themselves were really cool as well including a series of large steel sculptural mazes you could walk through and a outstanding temporary exhibit showcasing african modern art. One artist had some paintings portraying the WTC attacks that were particularly powerful and disturbing.
Tomorrow I am planning a day at the beach.
posted by mnlrs at 12:06 PM
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