Bilbao Architecture 2: Regeneration

The Guggenheim is the most famous of Bilbao´s regeneration projects but many other impressive new buildings and projects have been built in the last 20 years as part of the drive to renewal. Many of them relate to public services, which are taken pretty seriously here – and there´s enormous civic pride in them and in the role they've played in the regeneration.

The metro is a good example. It´s a beautiful system designed by Norman Foster. Inside, the corridors leading to the staircases down to the trains hang delicately over the railway, and the design of the whole is coherent and slick.

Outside, many of the metro entrances are marked by elegant glass and metal ´porches´, known locally as ´Fosteritos’, which act almost as extensions to the escalator tunnels leading down into the system

Libraries, community centres, theatres, museums and so on have played a significant role in the regeneration. The city council has systematically rescued fine old buildings and modernised them for public use.

For instance, there’s the 18th century ‘palazzo’ on our street which has been modernised and turned into a council office.

There’s the beautiful Moorish-style ‘Campos Eliseos’ theatre, with its modern extension...

Similarly the old Moorish-style bath-house, now a council office:

And the Archaeology Museum, an old station given a new lease of life:

And there's the recent modernisation of the Ribera market building:

The flagship city council project, however, is ´the Alhondiga’. This building is a huge 19th century art nouveau wine warehouse in the centre of the new town, which had been derelict for some time. It has been turned into the city´s major leisure centre, designed by Philippe Starck, with state-of-the-art library, gym, swimming pool, exhibition space, cinemas and so on. Three new buildings were built inside the shell of the old building. The effect is stunning, if quite hard to take good pictures of…

The most extraordinary features are the columns that support the three internal buildings. Starck conceived these as a kind of ‘library’ of architectural styles:

One fun aspect of the building is the swimming pool, built across the top of the buildings, the floor of which can be viewed from the atrium below.

Another great library building in the new town is the Biscay province library, a stunning building which is part of the Biscay government complex. The windows are decorated with proverbs in many languages, and at night the whole thing is lit up to display the books inside.

The Basque Country regional government (‘gobierno vasco’) has also put up some striking buildings, for instance its main office in Bilbao, which has an undulating glass front overlooking a public square next to the Alhondiga.

There is also the amazing Basque Country health service building:

Then there’s the interesting new Bilbao city hall (‘ayuntiamento’) extension:

The riverside has been a major focus of new building. In a previous post, I mentioned the key riverside development by the Japanese architect Isozaki, built inside the shell of the nineteenth century customs building.

Its two towers play on the motif of the enclosed balcony which is characteristic of Northern Spain, and are linked by a dramatic staircase, which also connects the river and the new Zubiburi bridge (by Calatrava) to the new town, with a steel sculpture by the most famous Basque artist Eduardo Chillida at the centre.

It´s part of a riverside renewal project which has involved constructing new riverside promenades on the old wharves all the way through the city centre, which are extremely well-used and a popular location for Bilbainos to take their evening ‘paseo’.

Further down the river, there´s the Euskalduna Palace (see last post) and the Maritime Museum, which contains one of the best audio-visual presentations I´ve seen in a museum, about the regeneration of the city. It employs a huge model of the city which lights up in different colours as a dual-screen film about the city plays.

As the river wends its way out of town, one comes to a strip of land called Zorroatzurre, which lies between the river and the canal, and is now an ex-industrial wasteland. A vast plan has been formulated, designed by Zara Hadid, to rebuild this as a central business zone – but the financial crisis seems to have stalled the project.

One commercial building that has been built is the Iberdrola tower. It looks good from some positions, but on the whole I'm not keen on it. Like a lot of the new towers in London, it stands arrogantly and incongruously in its surroundings, disfiguring many views.

There are plenty of other interesting buildings – universities, hospitals, museums, etc. – but no space to mention them all here. You can read much more about these and many other aspects of Bilbao architecture and culture at www.bilbaointernational.com.