Norman Foster: "The vision of an architect is utopian, but it must be rooted in reality"

BilbaoWith the permission of the Guggenheim Museum, the metro is the other great icon that a contemporary architect has left in Bilbao. While Frank O. Gehry often created spectacular buildings, Norman Foster adheres strictly to function. Almost forty years after the inauguration of the metro, Foster's new work in the city, the expansion of the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum, which opens its doors this Monday, is once again a lesson in silent architecture. And yet, Foster's intervention –designed together with Luis Maria Uriarte– has emblematic elements, such as a spectacular open-plan temporary exhibition hall of 1,300 m²², which leads to about 700 m²² of terraces. Another is the old courtyard converted into a large atrium where sculptures by Eduardo Chillida and Richard Serra can be seen, all of them around the monumental fountain that Francisco Durrio made for the composer Juan Crisóstomo de Arriaga, who died prematurely at 19 years old. Until now this sculpture was outside, and with the new location it has recovered its character as a sound monument: the noise of the water evokes the weeping of the sculpture of the muse Euterpe that crowns it. "The ducts and pipes of the great hall are hidden to achieve a pure space to make the works of art shine," said Norman Foster this morning. "When Foster and Uriarte won the competition and Foster came to explain the project, they told us that we had asked for a good exhibition hall and that they would give us the most beautiful hall of any European museum," explains the museum's director, Miguel Zugaza, who wanted to close the tour with a room dedicated to Jorge Oteiza, the only monographic one, which has the air of a sanctuary.

Among museum directors throughout the State, Zugaza stands out for having led two major expansions, that of the Prado Museum, by Rafael Moneo, and now that of the Museum of Fine Arts, which gains about 6,000 square meters, 60% more space. In total, the works have involved the renovation of 80% of the museum's spaces. The initial idea was for the expansion to have only one floor, but the engineers rethought the structure and managed to have more: below the temporary exhibition hall, which is sponsored by the BBK Banking Foundation, there is the hall dedicated to the new line focused on Basque architecture and design. Both are crossed by a six-meter diameter oculus that allows viewing the monumental fountain by Francisco Durrio from above.

Respect existing buildings

Foster and Uriarte won the international ideas competition with an exceptional proposal: the new galleries are inserted into a structure that acts like a bridge connecting the two existing buildings, the original neoclassical one from 1945 and the later one from 1970, intended for exhibiting contemporary art and remodeled in 2000 by Uriarte himself. More specifically, it is a 55 x 30 meter structure between two groups of gigantic V-shaped columns. This Sunday, Foster attributed the structural solution of the new building to the engineer Julio Martínez Calzón, who died in 2023, with whom he had already collaborated on the Collserola Tower in Barcelona. On the other hand, Foster related his work to the Basque industrial heritage: "The local steel and the building were made by four Basque construction companies".

Foster recalled that any competition begins with a "quite arid" document, where the square meters of the commission, the volumes, and the functions are noted. "The project comes to life when you visit the site, and suddenly, your pulse quickens," explains the British architect. The original 1945 building, in a neoclassical style, by Gonzalo Cárdenas and Fernando Urrutia, was built to bring together three museums that were dismantled during the Civil War era: the Fine Arts, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Museum of Artistic Reproductions. Later, in 1970, the new headquarters of the Museum of Modern Art, designed by Álvaro Libano and Ricardo Beascoa, was the first building in the country to exhibit modern art. "The virtue of the Foster and Uriarte project is conceiving a new building in height without questioning a single square meter of the buildings that the museum had built until then. This respect and this rigor are very important. Furthermore, they shifted the entire development of the program of needs to an unprecedented place, which was the Bilbao sky, above the existing buildings," says Zugaza.

"The two existing buildings are part of the city's heritage. The only thing we had to do was improve them and adapt them to current regulations, but without touching them, to respect their history and heritage. A truly sustainable building is one that respects itself. In the past, things were not touched or demolished: they were simply updated and connected," says Foster, who also thanked Zugaza for having made things "so difficult" for him during the drafting of the project. Another key to his project is that he has recovered the entrance through the neoclassical building. "When you start working, you brainstorm with the team and start making decisions. I suppose that, like any architect, your vision is utopian, but it must be rooted in reality." Coinciding with the inauguration of the expansion, Foster and his wife, Elena Ochoa, have donated three sculptures to the museum: two rusted steel sculptures by Anthony Caro, which are exhibited on the terrace, titled Toronto flats and Low line flats, and a sculpture by Anselm Kiefer, titled Sappho.

The expansion project caused quite a stir when it was unveiled: it was branded as a UFO or a txapela over the historic headquarters. But the expansion, which features a white glass facade, steps back in the section facing the entrance of the historic building. On the other hand, the new spaces reconnect the museum with the city's Eixample grid and, at the same time, remain camouflaged among the trees of Doña Casilda Iturrizar Park. "The main challenge has been to make what is technically extraordinarily complex seem easy: the cantilever that protrudes towards the park, and which seems to disappear, can support up to 10 tons in some points," says Foster. The budget for the expansion was about 46 million euros. From now on, the museum will be open every day of the week.

A tribute to private collecting

The collection of the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum includes more than 18,000 works from the 4th century BC to the present day, 70% of which come from donations and legacies. In the new presentation, nearly a thousand can be seen in about forty spaces, 150 of which are seeing the light of day for the first time within the collection. Furthermore, Zugaza wanted to pay tribute to private collecting through the figure of the businessman and collector Plácido Arango (1931-2020). Thus, the exhibition La búsqueda del comienzo. Homenaje a Plácido Arango includes works from his holdings, preserved by family members, and others that he donated to major international museums, among which is the Metropolitan in New York. "We give the prominence of the inauguration to the collection and to private collecting, because this is a museum built from scratch by the Bilbao bourgeoisie and Bilbao institutions, and they do it without a great tradition. We have not had the luck of having the great Catalan Romanesque. Therefore, we have had to build it as if it were a museum built from scratch. Nevertheless, throughout a centuries-old history, the collection has become very extensive," says Zugaza. In addition, there is a second temporary exhibition:Visiones de ultramar. Artistas viajeros en la Col·lección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros.