On Dec. 5, American architect Frank Gehry, famous for designing landmarks such as the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and the Walt Disney Concert Hall, passed away in Los Angeles at the age of 96.<\/p>\n
Unlike other internationally renowned architects \u2014 Rem Koolhaas, Zaha Hadid, and Tadao Ando, who designed the CCTV Headquarters, Beijing Daxing International Airport, and several Chinese museums, respectively \u2014 Gehry left no works in the Chinese mainland. He was invited to compete for, but didn\u2019t win, the commission for the National Art Museum of China. While he was selected to design the Quanzhou Museum of Contemporary Art, his plans were so radical that it remains unknown whether they will be implemented.<\/p>\n
But despite the mainland lacking a Gehry building, he has had a profound influence on how Chinese cities have changed in the past two decades. This influence is not due to any particular architectural style, but lies in the urban development logic that a visually striking landmark will enhance an area\u2019s profile, drive up land values, and spark commercial activity.<\/p>\n
This urban development trend can be traced back to the northern Spanish city of Bilbao, which in the 1980s was mired in crisis. With shipyards closing and blast furnaces shutting down, it had become Spain\u2019s rust belt \u2014 similar to America\u2019s Detroit, Germany\u2019s Ruhr, or China\u2019s northeast. Unemployment soared to 25%.<\/p>\n
The local government bet on high-end culture to reinvent the city as a services and consumption center. In 1991, it struck an agreement with the U.S.\u2019s Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation to jointly establish the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao.<\/p>\n
Gehry would design it. He pushed the limits of architecture, using aerospace software and 33,000 titanium sheets to create a building that resembled a sci-fi spaceship that had landed amid the industrial ruins on the banks of the city\u2019s Nervi\u00f3n river.<\/p>\n
During its opening year, 1997, the museum attracted 1.36 million visitors \u2014 nearly triple expectations. The government recouped its construction costs in just three years. In 2023, the museum\u2019s contribution to the local economy since its opening was calculated to be \u20ac7.7 billion<\/a> ($9 billion).<\/p>\n More importantly, the museum transformed Bilbao\u2019s reputation from a polluted industrial port into a major cultural center. This is the \u201cBilbao Effect<\/a>,\u201d a formula that says declining city + star architect\u2019s landmark building = refreshed image and economic boom.<\/p>\n The legend of Bilbao found a rapt audience in China that, at the time, had just begun to rapidly urbanize. Just one year after the museum\u2019s opening, in 1998, China\u2019s Ministry of Culture and the National Administration for Cultural Heritage collaborated<\/a> with the Guggenheim Foundation to host the major exhibition \u201cChina: 5,000 Years\u201d in Bilbao.<\/p>\n The impactful visuals created by the Terracotta Warriors, juxtaposed with futuristic deconstructivist spaces, made an impression on Chinese cultural officials and allowed them to see firsthand how architecture can transcend the exhibits and attract visitors in its own right.<\/p>\n