by Gina Cariño
Home >> Postcard from Los Angeles
Gehry’s Guggenheim was commissioned primarily by the Basque Government. Gehry’s Disney Hall was commissioned by Walt Disney’s widow.
One houses art, the other houses music. The Bilbao Guggenheim is home to Richard Serra’s Torqued Ellipses and Jeff Koons’s Puppy. The Disney Concert Hall is home to the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
Gehry’s Guggenheim is diagonally across the river from Deusto University. Gehry’s Disney Hall is diagonally across the street from Rafael Moneo’s Los Angeles cathedral.
The curves of Gehry’s Disney Hall are like the tangle of freeways nearby. They speak of speed and constant motion. The Walt Disney Concert Hall describes what it’s like to live in L.A.
The freeway curves because it is a continuum in which everybody is always moving. The grid of straight ground-level streets in compact urban centers, with its stops and starts at right angles, doesn’t work much in L.A., because in L.A., there really are no urban centers in the “European” sense of the term. Los Angeles is the capital of suburbs and de-centering. Commuters commute not from suburb to center, but from suburb to suburb. There is no need for downtown.
A lot of time is spent in a car talking on your cellphone to others who are likely to be on the road as well. Angelenos talk but don’t walk much. Who walks in L.A.? Only vagabonds and visitors.
Bilbainos talk and walk. So what does Bilbao’s tempest of titanium say about Bilbao, which does have a center, and the Bilbainos, who do “walk it”?
It is said that Gehry’s Guggenheim put Bilbao on the world map. Gehry’s Disney Hall did not put L.A. on the world map because L.A. was on the world map long before Disney Hall went up. Los Angeles needed no Gehry to put it on the map.
Did Bilbao?
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Posted on http://www.weeklyletter.com at 2007-07-05 10:00:00 +0200
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Hello Gina,
It’s amazing the way these buildings look alike.
Besides that I don’t see many similarities between Bilbao and L.A. One thing I don’t like about some American cities is that you can’t really walk anywhere and you have to drive.
Gina, have you thought of sending e-mails from all these cities you visit instead of postcards? :P
Best regards,
Cristina
Frank Gehry appears in an episode of The Simpsons. He is supposed to make a cultural center for Springfield. He draws his inspiration from a letter that he crumples and throws away. Have any of you seen this episode?
jejeje … yes I did, it was a really funny episode, like all show …
I think Bilbao and L.A. are so different cities, about people, weather, customs, food, etc.
For example, I prefer a weather L.A. than Bilbao, becouse I need hot! , but I love the honesty of basque people and no comment about food, I’ve never been in L.A. but Spanish food is so difficult to exceed ;D
Both cities have a lot to offer, about inhabitant as much as tourist, and about those buildings, I only can say “incredible” ;p
Hi Gina!
And what about the brilliance of the Bilbao Guggenheim? It’s amazing! I think there’s another difference between L.A. and Bilbao because the building looks different if it is a very cloudy day or a sunny day, and Bilbao has an infinite kind of daylight and L.A. hasn’t.
If I were from Bilbao my answer to your last question would be: “No. He didn’t. Actually We put Frank Gehri on the world map!”.
;-)
Hello Gina:
It was an interest point of view about the building. But It´s curious your comment: people don´t walk in L.A. The question is, who people live in L.A.?
I prefer a city where people talk and walk and have time to drink a chiquitos (if it´s possible Marques de Riscal, better).
Best regards:
J.M.
Greetings from Gina’s sister in Los Angeles, who insists that Los Angeles basks in a wide spectrum of light! The desert sun and the smog make for spectacular pinks and browns, don’t you worry. Another reason why the buildings reflect light differently: Bilbao-Gug is clad in titanium, the WDCH in stainless steel.
Gehry is smart to let himself be cast and parodied on The Simpsons. [I have friends close to the star-chitect himself who tell me Frank had a blast doing the voiceovers.] He also has a good enough sense of humor to wear a t-shirt that pokes fun at him. See this
That earns him points in my book.
Love from sunny Southern California,
Mia Cariño
I want to say that you walk in L.A., too. My Auntie Mia made me walk up to the HOLLYWOOD sign! She also made me walk around the Getty Center, which is very big.
And about food… There is plenty of different kinds of very very good food in L.A.
Could the WDCH in Los Angeles also be about earthquakes? What about the Guggenheim of Bilbao? Does Bilbao have earthquakes? Political earthquakes?
My dear friends:
I’ve never been in Guggenheim Museum of Bilbao, though I’ve stayed several times in Bilbao because of labour’s needs. I only can speak about the building’s impressive image that you can see taking a walk along the river in Bilbao.
I neither have been in L.A.’s Guggenheim, but one year I spent two days of my Holidays in the Lady, if you allow me to call L.A. as Sinatra did.
I’ll hope the day I can get enough time to take a visit inside the Museum in Bilbao.
Guillermo : I’m perfecly agree with your comment about Bilbao putting in the world map the Frank Gheri’s name. I want to add that under my point of view, it means as catalan, Barcelona did the same with Gaudi’s name in architecture, and nowadays my city is doing the same too, financing a film of an unknowed director called Woody Allen or a name like this.
As you can see not only bilbainos people are exaggerate. It’s an Spanish trendy.
Bye for now to everybody.
I think the only way to compare Bilbao and Los Angeles is putting Frank Gehry in the middle. Both cities are really diferent, the only common thing is Frank Gehry.
I like so much this kind of architecture, so different to functional architecture, becouse this buidings looks like sculptures, big sculptures. It´s incredible how they can build this big structures, with all this lines and curves and those wonderfouls building materials, and the final result don’t loose the purpose of the construction.
Now in Madrid there are four big skyscrapers under construction, and twice of them looks diferent than ‘normal’ skyscrapers, with strange angles, and non straight lines in the front. I´m waiting very excited the final result, becouse I hope the traffic jam will finish, and becouse buidings is a good way to show the world how your home city is, modern, ancient, peculiar, different, common … and Bilbao and L.A. are out of the ordinary.
I am American and yet California has never appealed to me. I’m sure I could live there with no problem and I can adapt to any lifestyle but I like Europe and I think that L.A. is an American extreme. There’s nothing wrong with it; it’s just not for me.
I can’t say that Bilbao has ever appealed to me, either, but I’d take it just because it’s Europe. It’s big enough to give you plenty of opportunities for work and leisure and it’s close enough to everything I love; Madrid and Barcelona are an hour away (as is San Sebastian), London and Paris are two hours away.
Iowa City has a Gehry, too, by the way…
Hi everyone.
This is the case of comparing two different cities from the main landmark though from my angle doesn´t make sense at all. Different lifestyle´s and customs and at the same time both cities have one of the most important buildings on earth which have been made from the same genius.
I wonder why different citizens from both cities has to agree with the same liking? I guess that is not just about citizens,perhaps the choice to built it up in both places has to be more with economic issues rather than finding similar features between both cities.
I mean both cities have plenty of holidaymakers who don´t hesitate to spend money in their trip so that the reason to set up the building there make more atractive the cities.
Obviously both cities have nothing to do with the other,LA people mind´s is completly different than Basque Country people, the culture, food, lifestyle make both cities rather interesting to be visited,so my advice to everyone is very simple and straight forward:
Even if you are not so keen to visit museum, buildings or another different things and you have the chance to be in both places definitely go fot it and enjoy the multiple choice that you might get there.
Greetings
Ivan
Bilbao is a lot about place. Los Angeles is about no-place. It’s about placelessness and rootlessness. You either like that or you don’t, and if you don’t, precisely because you don’t, you may find it interesting. People who like living in L.A. are happy to be rootless or ungrounded. They are indifferent to place. They do not whine about being dislodged. I think there is something attractive and instructive about that.
Anyway, the article is also simply about Gehry and two of his most emblematic buildings, and about how they may, or may not at all, say something about the cities they are in. I don’t think the WDCH is a main landmark of L.A. Is the “Gug” a main landmark of Bilbao? Of course a city is more than its landmarks.
Hi Gina and everybody,
I have been to Bilbao three years ago and to Los Angeles last year. I have knew both Frank Gehry’s buildings but only outside. They are very similar, almost the same, but the enviroment is very different. The Frank Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles is near of very moderns buildings (like the Moneo’s cathedral), in midle of big streets. I think it is spectacular, but not so much as is the Bilbao Guggenheim museum. This is like a strange ship on the river that comes from the future to the donwtown of the old city.
I agree, I think that the WDCH is like the life in Los Angeles, people don’t walk, only they drive (will it be like this in the future?). But in Bilbao we can appreciate the contrast, and this is interesting.
I know several cities in the world, and the feeling that I have from Los Angeles is that I can’t find in the map the differents suburbs, because I moved from one to other by car. In other cities, I can know where I am, because I can “walk” the city (for example, New York), but in Los Angeles this is impossible for me.
If you have the chance to visit Los Angeles don’t forget to visit the Universal Studies. This is the definition of Show Bussiness. It is very, very, very funny. It is like to be in the movies.
Greetings.
Conchi Calvo
An interesting question to end with Gina, and I love the references to place & movement in the city, and the concept of “groundedness”.
Did Bilbao need Gehry to get on the map?
I think so. As a decaying industrial giant the city had to take drastic steps to change the downward spiral, and the Guggenheim was one inspired and in many ways inspirational way of doing that I reckon. The scale and presence of the project had enough impact to kick-start the regeneration which continues today. A lower profile project might not have done that. Today, the city has attracted the airlines & the tourists into the city & surrounding area via a stunning airport (a clever way of “selling” the city visually from the time of arrival – airport photo. “So what!?” others might say!) and has shown that it knows how to sell itself – something which to some extent perhaps “choca” with the (stereo-) typical view of the Basques as “honest”, down-to-earth, and very “super-grounded” to use Gina’s term…and has much more to do , it appears, with the self-promotional ability often attributed to U.S. culture. Maybe that’s something then that the two cities have in common…but having never been to LA – nor even met someone “from” there – I’m talking of impressions as opposed to experience or fact…
There is a really true thing: each person who lives in a place, love that place! ( if you live there because you want and you decide, of course). I suppose both cities have their “special attractive” and both works of art have their sense and beauty. Perhaps at first they look like similar, but for a person who is fall in love art, these works have their own differences.
The most important thing is to enjoy in the place you stay and see all the beautiful places.
Conchi F.
I’ve never been in Bilbao or L.A. but I would like to visit the Guggenheim Museum and Bilbao city. It’s a strange building but at the same time is an incredible structure. I have seen some photographs about where is situated and it’s a beautiful place.
I’m sure Basque food is better than American and, at this moment I prefer to go to Bilbao than L.A. Firstly because is near and secondly by food. I may go there any weekend…
I was always very partial to other, more compact, more “European” U.S. cities, especially New York. I did always have this prejudice against the sprawl and the freeway of L.A. But L.A. is the way it is, physically. It does not try to be adorable. It’s interesting because of its defects and its conflicts. And it’s a great place, a place of bursting creativity and ebullience, exploration, experimentation, in all fields and at all levels. I don’t know about now, but Berlin was Europe’s most restlessly creative city a few years ago, and Los Angeles America’s.
Physically it’s to me a bit like Manila. That is, Manila would be like L.A. if it weren’t for the fact of extreme poverty spread between the pockets of extreme wealth, and if Manila’s “villages” were open to general traffic so that one might drive through Forbes Park the way one can drive through Beverly Hills, alleviating bottlenecks.