Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao

• Construction time : 1991 - 1997
• Location : Bilbao, Spain

Contrary to creating a rational form which prevails in Western architecture for centuries, the Guggenhim museum in Bibao is the result of a visual search. The combination of intuition with the computer-controlled design, production and assembly process has created a brilliant technical achievement and demonstrated the computer's rich capabilities in changing settings. design and construction.

The Guggenheim Institute of Bilbao is both contextual and unfamiliar.
The work is cleverly adjusted with the tough shape of the construction site,
however, the volume of titanium covered up was unfamiliar.

The competition to design the Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao with an award for Los Angeles architects, Frank O. Gehry . Gehry stood out in the 1980s, initially a series of very sexy homes in California challenging the lighting convention, wood frame construction, and then large public works such as Toledo School of Art ( 1989), and the Disney Concert building project in Los Angeles (1989).

Computers are essential to transform specific models into digital models with continuous curved surfaces, then convert this digital data into production drawings and control milling data. quantity by computer.

Gehry received the prestigious Pritzker Prize in the world in 1989. Ordered a Guggenheim satellite museum in Manhattan in a famous project designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, one of the works of art. Outstanding contemporary - ideal for this architect who has worked closely with both artists and their own official language with bold sculptures.

The Guggenheim Institute's museum, along with new cultural facilities and improved public transport systems, are an important component of the strategic plan to recreate Bilbao. The museum's striking, but rugged location, located on the Nervion River, is surrounded by con-tainers, railroads and ramps leading up to the elevated bridge.

Model by computer

While the main configuration of the original project developed intuitively through a series of hand-cut, rough paperboard models, the computer itself made the scheme feasible and technically subtle. Gehry is the first architect to explore the potential of CATIA software - developed by the French aerospace industry. Unlike other architectural software, CATIA is based on surfaces rather than polygons. For Bilbao, Gehry's paperboard models are digitized to create a continuous bend plane model in CATIA. From this computer model, these internal and external control surfaces are identified to be applied as design points of construction.

Actual figures :

• Structure: bracing steel frame
• Case: Titanium, stone and glass
• Area: 24,628m ²
• Funding: 10.859 million peseta ($ 59,205,000)

Two layers of infrastructure architecture built from basic steel structure.

Emerging from these control surfaces, build a structural area. Bracing steel frame, consisting of wide flange-linked cross-sections located on a 3m mesh structure, is easy to implement. Most components are straight sections, and the general elasticity of the shape is achieved entirely by joints. Between the multifaceted frame of primary steel and control surfaces are two secondary, internal and external structural layers. Horizontal ladders are made of steel pipes, with a diameter of 60mm in horizontal curvature.

Contrary to the soft metal coating and curvy stone surfaces by CNC milling techniques, the glass in the Guggenheim is flat and the intricate curves are almost identical to the multi-faceted assemblies.

Ladders are split frames in the primary structure at intervals of 3m and connect structures with common joints, to adjust in all directions. Vertical curvature is determined by the inner and outer layers of the secondary structure, with mildly shaped shaped steel frames at 60mm points. All pipes and steel bars bend in one or more dimensions.

While CATIA can accurately locate and calculate the size of each structural element, the computer model is still a steel frame drawing. BOCAD, software suitable for development of road and bridge construction, is used to convert CATIA steel frame into a 3-dimensional computer model of steel structure. From this model, BOCAD automatically generates two-dimensional production drawings or computerized numerical control milling data (CNC).

Because the cutting heads are unique, the other two pieces of steel in the construction are the same. However, when using BOCAD, the primary structure is produced to the point that field measurement, cutting and welding needs are virtually eliminated. Apply construction practices from the aerospace industry again, each structural component is coded with barcode index during production. On site, the bar code index is scanned with a laser observation device connected to CATIA so that each installation unit is in the correct position, determined by coordinates in the computer model. This method avoids superposition of tolerances, or error limits, and ensures the accuracy required to perform complex geometries.

Cover layer

But the computer model completely eliminates the need for experimental data. In the design development process, the real size model is used to confirm the limit that metal plates can withstand at a certain curvature but not buckling, and the number of precision tolerances in the joint.

The software is used to rationalize the surfaces of the building to match the maximum curvature of the titanium sheet coating, formed from real-size models.

CATIA is then used to streamline the metal surfaces of the building to match the parameters created by the model.

The building cover in Bilbao has only 4 standard and flat panels that need to cover 80% of the surface area of ​​the metal cover. While the lower galvanized layer is absolutely stretched, the plain pillow on the outer surface of the titanium shell is intentionally deployed to ease the look of the building. In contrast, all of the glass in the building is flat and because the glass is not buckled, the complex surfaces obtained through the triangles of the panels rather than bending the beam. Therefore, nearly 70% of glass panels are uniform in size.

Although the structure and covering of buildings in Bilbao can be produced using CNC machines connected to CATIA data, most subcontractors are selective instead of hand-made from human resources. His high skills . The stone covering is the only component in the building that is cut by a robot, a sophisticated engineering process that takes place right on the site, not in the workshops. While the architects think of cutting stones in the workshop and transporting them to construction sites in finished products, the subcontractor installs the milling machine at the construction site.

When the Guggenheim museum was inaugurated in 1997 , it immediately became the focus of the world's attention. By applying the technology of many other techniques to construction, Bilbao exceeded the limits of what was previously understood to be aesthetic and technical. And by turning something complex and unique into economics and mass production, computers break the convention of industrial production, creating the potential for an architecture that emphasizes skills in the world. post-industrial one more time.

Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao