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Photograph: After Bilbao: The Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio.
With the unprecedented success of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Frank Gehry, FAIA, has ascended from the ranks of being ``America's most obscure great architect,'' as Martin Filler described him in 1986, to being a ``genius,'' as reported in RECORD, October 1997. While Gehry has received any number of raves for previous work, Bilbao put him into a special category. It is the Big Whammy that every architect dreams about.
Not only did Bilbao open 20 months ago to ecstatic accolades from critics and architects, but also it has been an unparalleled success with the public. Tourism to Bilbao was galvanized by the museum, with 1.4 million visitors tallied in the first year. ``Bilbao,'' observes Kurt Forster in Frank O. Gehry, the Complete Works (Monacelli Press), ``will not only go down as one of the most complex formal inventions of our time, it will stand as a monument to the productive capacities at our disposal if an architect, such as Gehry, puts them to imaginative use.'' Clearly the world has been inexorably drawn to the gleaming effervescence of its exterior and to the high-powered oomph of the spaces inside.
In this light, Bilbao could be terrific for architecture. As part of the ``Bilbao Effect,'' cities, regions, countries reportedly are looking now at arty architects to design innovative buildings to lure tourism. ``Bilbao has brought back the significance of the real artifact to the public, not just as a structure, but as a spectacle,'' Peter Eisenman, FAIA, comments. ``The sense of exaggeration, scale, and climax all come into consonance in Bilbao.''
With all the carrying on, there are some nagging questions. First, what does it mean to be a ``creative genius'' in architecture these days? Is not such a label just playing into the hands of the hyperventilating media, which inflate reputations of celebrities and architecture-as-spectacle to sell magazines? Will success spoil Gehry--especially when clients just want Bilbaoesque buildings that shimmy and gleam? And what happens when others knock off Bilbao? Will spectacle spoil architecture?
To examine the situation, let's go back 25 years. Louis Kahn was the last American architect described as a creative genius, on the level...