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Explored on November 13, 2013
Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (1993-1997).
Architect: Frank O. Gehry.
Bilbao, Basque Country, Spain.
Technical data: Nikon D800 | Nikkor AF-S 14-24 mm f/2.8G ED at 18mm | Hitech Pro Stop 10 IR | Lucroit filter holder | Induro AT213 tripod + BHL2 ballhead.
299s (4min 59s) | f/8 | ISO 100.
"I approach each building as a sculptural object, a spatial container, a space with light and air, a response to context and appropriateness of feeling and spirit. To this container, this sculpture, the user brings his baggage, his program, and interacts with it to accommodate his needs. If he can't do that, I've failed."
Frank O. Gehry.
With the decline of the ship building and manufacturing industry toward the end of the twentieth century, the city of Bilbao, as well as many other industrial cities in Europe, was showing evident signs of decay in areas strikingly close to the city center. As part of an ambitious strategic plan drawn up by the Basque government in 1991 that aimed to revitalize metropolitan Bilbao, especially that dilapidated port area along the Nervión River, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation commissioned the building of an international center for modern and contemporary art from Canadian-born architect Frank O. Gehry.
Built between 1993 and 1997, the Guggenheim Museum embodies the recovery of the banks of the Nervión River for the city of Bilbao that has been achieved in the last two decades. Gehry’s design comprises a building that extends beyond the site’s natural boundaries, lays a curved promenade along the river, and offers an ample new public plaza to the city to meet the pre-existing Ensanche grid in order to make a physical connection to the city. At the same time, Gehry’s signature structure finds prominence and exposure on the riverside, where the titanium scales that coat the warped flanks of the museum shimmering in the changing light convey the extraordinary iridescence characteristic of much of his mature work. Being this one of the most admired pieces of architecture of our time, Gehry’s creation pushed the boundaries in his personal crusade against Postmodernism in Architecture.
The Guggenheim Museum soon became the cornerstone of Bilbao’s Renaissance, an undertaking that put a new dot on the map of the international art world.
Back in 2021, when mask-wearing was still mandatory... But zoom in, look, who's wearing one? Welcome to the Principality of Liège, a city that has always been unconventional and "outside the law." Civil disobedience or simply weariness? In any case, revisiting its old files is always interesting!
2015 | Tribute to 50 years of Le Corbusier’s death
(October 6, 1887 – August 27, 1965)
Notre Dame du Haut (1954), Ronchamp, France
Spent the day in the botanic gardens staring at the ceilings!
Week # 23 of 52 for 2014 - Theme: "Monochrome"...
This is the Komazawa Olympic Park Control Tower built for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. Made of concrete and later painted white, the design is based on a traditional Japanese wooden pagoda, it is 50 meters in height. This area is featured in the 1967 film "You Only Live Twice" starring Sean Connery as James Bond who races around Tokyo in a rare 1967 Toyota 2000GT with Bond girlfriend actress Akiko Wakabayashi.
Something from the archives of our Valencia vacation.
An interactive museum of science that resembles the skeleton of a whale. It occupies around 40,000 m² on three floors. The hotch-potch of exhibits is designed more for 'entertainment value' than for science education. Much of the ground floor is taken up by a basketball court sponsored by a local team and various companies. The building is made up of three floors of which 26,000 square meters is used for exhibitions. The first floor has a view of the Turia Garden that surrounds it; which is over 13,500 square meters of water. The second floor hosts “The Legacy of Science” exhibition by the researchers; Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Severo Ochoa y Jean Dausset. The third floor is known as the “Chromosome Forest” which shows the sequencing of human DNA. Also on this floor is the “Zero Gravity,” the “Space Academy,” and “Marvel Superheroes” exhibitions. The building’s architecture is known for its geometry, structure, use of materials, and its design around nature. The building is about 42,000 square meter and 26,000 square meters of is exhibition space, which is currently the largest in Spain. It has 20,000 square meters of glass, 4,000 panes, 58,000 m³ of concrete, and 14.000 tons of steel. This magnificent building stands 220 meters long, 80 meters wide and 55 meters high.
Please don't use this image on websites, blogs or other media without my explicit permission. © 2013 M Kiedyszko All rights reserv
2015 | Tribute to 50 years of Le Corbusier’s death
(October 6, 1887 – August 27, 1965)
Unité d'habitation (1952), Marseille, France
This is the original YMCA building in Columbus, Georgia. "The original marble YMCA building located at 118 E. 11th St. was dedicated on December 2-4, 1903. The construction was completed in 1907. According to Johnny Sharp, former YMCA Metropolitan Executive Director (1975), the building was modeled after the YMCA in London. 'Columbus on the Chattahoochee' (1951), Etta Blanchard wrote,'Georgia Foster Peabody gave to Columbus the only marble YMCA in America.'"http://www.columbusymca.com/cms-view-page.php?page=our-history.
Isozaki Atea (1999-2008).
Architect: Arata Isozaki.
Uribitarte Ibilbidea.
Bilbao, Bizkaia, Basque Country, Spain.
Technical data: Nikon D800 | Nikkor AF-S 14-24 mm f/2.8G ED at 15mm | Hitech Pro Stop 10 IR + Hitech Pro Stop 6 IR | Lucroit filter holder | Induro AT213 tripod + BHL2 ballhead.
356s (5min 56s) | f/11 | ISO 100.
Processing: Lightroom 5 | Photoshop CS6 | Nik Silver Efex Pro 2.
Wacom Intuos 5 pen tablet.
"Once the buildings collapsed, the meaning that used to organize urban space instantly vanished, and the elements of both structure and symbol were reduced to sheer materiality. Signs disappeared and all became substance. [...] Forced out of the loop of urban signification, the buildings faced us, stripped naked."
Arata Isozaki, On Ruins, 1997.
The Isozaki Atea was born as an ambitious urban an architectural project to regenerate the lands of an abandoned custom storehouse built at the beginning of the 20th century. Isozaki's project encompasses the construction of five residential buildings, and the creation of a large public square adorned with a variety of commercial spaces on three different levels.
The two residential towers in the image, located on boths sides of the resulting open space, signal the entrance to the 20th-century extension of the city of Bilbao -Atea means door in Basque, shaping a radial axis that links the city center and the now vibrant and highly attractive riverside-Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum is only 500 m away downstream.
This image is a reflection on the relativity of notions such as symmetry, parallelism, or linearity. All of them turn out to be mere mental constructs based upon what we have been taught over our lifetime. Human perception is easily manipulated, and light can fool our brain into thinking that what we see is real. This is a world of illusion.
Two figures step into the light, framed by stone and shadow — an accidental stage, a fleeting scene of everyday poetry.
City life, geometry, contrast.
Fujifilm X-T10 with XF18-55.
Edificio projetado por Joseph Gire, data 1937, 22 andares, localizado na Praça Maua, Rio / Building projected by Joseph Gire, Year of Built 1937, ubicated at the Maua square in Rio de Janeiro Brazil, Mr Gire also did the project of the famous Copabana Palace Hotel at same period.
Explored on October 24, 2013
Capileira, Andalusia, Spain.
Technical data: Nikon D800 | Nikkor AF-S 14-24 mm f/2.8G ED at 22mm | Induro AT213 tripod + BHL2 ballhead.
1/200s | f/8 | ISO 100.
Processing: Lightroom 5 | Photoshop CS6 | Nik Sharpener Pro 3 | Nik Silver Efex Pro 2.
In search for inspiration to sort out the questions that arise in the work of an architect, we are often drawn to the geniuses of our time and their latest creations. Even though that approach might have proved useful and cost-effective in most cases, I am a big believer in looking for our sources a bit further back in time.
Las Alpujarras, an otherwise wild territory of hills and valleys on the Southern foothills of Sierra Nevada that extends over the provinces of Granada and Almeria (Spain), saw its first settlers in the 8th century. The smart engineering work of those people, who channeled the water from the abounding streams in the area to villages and terraced plots, made it possible the development of an incipient economy based on the cultivation of Mediterranean crops. Most of the villages were established in the steepest places within this territory, so as to dedicate the little flat land available for cultivation.
Out of necessity, those pioneers developed their own construction techniques to build small, flat-roofed houses more akin to the styles found in Northern Africa and some areas of the Middle East, than to those accustomed in Europe. The absence of any sort of urban planning legislation gave rise to an actual maze of narrow, winding streets punctuated with passages like this one that can be found in Capileira. Nowhere more than here does form follow function, the core principle of modern architecture.
I was lucky enough to enjoy the first years of my life in Laroles, a small village in Las Alpujarras similar to that depicted here. If you want to read more about this region in the eyes of a stranger coming to live here, I highly recommend you head over Chris Stewart's autobiographic novel Driving Over Lemons.