Jonathan Meades

The Bilbao effect

Jonathan Meades suggests a moratorium on landmark architecture and garish shelters for art like Bilbao's Guggenheim

issue 21 October 2017

Twenty years ago I wrote of the otherwise slaveringly praised Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao:

I’m in a minority of, apparently, one. It strikes me as a consummate gimmick… a fantastically elaborate and rather wearisome joke. Has mankind spent all these centuries perfecting Euclidean geometry and orthogonal engineering in order to have it overthrown by massively expensive crazy cottages clad in titanium? Apparently mankind has.

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