Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

No building has been more anticipated than Frank Gehry's stunning new Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, an industrial city in the Basque country of northern Spain. In a cover story for the New York Times Magazine, Herbert Muschamp wrote of it, "The word is out that miracles still occur", while Sverre Fehn, winner of the 1997 Pritzker Architecture Prize (Gehry received the award in 1989), stated, "This building is fantastic". This book celebrates the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and details the design process that is an intrinsic part of Gehry's revolutionary approach to architecture. Gehry's use of nontraditional materials and his sensitivity to the environments of his buildings are legendary; his method of envisioning a building through semiautomatic drawings and handmade models is little known but provides an immediate entry into his creative process. Here, stunning color photographs of the building and reproductions of Gehry's drawings and models bring to life his greatest achievement to date. Art historian and artist Coosje Van Bruggen, who has collaborated with Gehry on various architectural and art projects, documents the history of the Guggenheim Bilbao from conception through design and construction. With unique access to the architect and his studio, she has uncovered scores of fascinating drawings and working photographs, which are published here for the first time.