News

The Guggenheim Foundation Board in Bilbao has decided to press ahead with plans to expand the museum with an additional building in Urdaibai, a small town on the Biscay coast. According to sources within the museum, the next phase of the planning will now go ahead, which involves outlining the process for deciding the architectural design.

The meeting held in Bilbao on Tuesday was to consider the results of twelve studies developed throughout the year, which looked into the conceptual, town-planning, environmental, legal and economic aspects of the project, to be erected in the middle of Urdaibai''s Biosphere Reserve.

According to Museum sources, studies conclude that the team eventually chosen to undertake the design of the new building will be "key" to both the "basic premise of Guggenheim Museum buildings to be in keeping with the art contained within them" as well as to ensuring the integration and sustainability of the "protected environment of the location in Urdaibai". Accordingly, the museum advised that it was not seeking to "create another iconic building, but rather an iconic setting which would act as a paradigm of the total fusion between architecture, environment and art".

The estimated dimensions of the new construction comprise an area of around 8,000 square metres expected to cost in the region of 200 million euros. The estimated number of annual visitors has been put at 148,000 on average. Bearing in mind various factors, construction of the planned museum will have a direct, indirect and stimulated economic impact of 384.1 million euros, increasing contributions to public funds by 73.3 million euros (45.7 million of which would remain in the Basque Country).

Basque Government to open the debate

Basque Government spokeswoman, Idoia Mendia, meanwhile, advocated further debate, separate from those of the Guggenheim Foundation, into the Basque Country''s cultural requirements; she supports the need to make Urdaibai more economically dynamic, though with "an infrastructure that promotes Basque culture". She acknowledged that the Executive "does not like Guggenheim two" because "we do not wish to risk this country''s cultural investment on one structure in a single area".

The spokesman for the Biscay Municipal Council, Juan María Aburto, recalled that during last week''s meeting in New York, the Solomon Guggenheim Foundation had agreed to give its backing to the project.

&' || 'nbsp;