Download file 44 KB Texto completo en español More of: Oscar Bustamante

What has changed? The city or the way in which we see it? Both things, says the author of this essay. In the context of a fragmented metropolis driven by its own erratic forces, buildings are what magnetize the city. If the expression of buildings in the city were restricted to the facade until a short while back, now we have the composition of their volumes in space, apart from the necessary response to purpose and functionality. Architecture burst into the creative sphere that used to be the territory of artists. Surprised by the tools put into his hands, the architect faces the challenge of exploring his possibilities. The city of Bilbao, an industrial, sober and somewhat gray city in another age, took on the challenge and a huge extraneus animal —the headquarters of the Guggenheim museum— came to sit beside the estuary. Bilbao has become a different city because of this amazing facility. The contemporary city is an open field, says the author, waiting for artists to inoculate it with magic, abstraction, like Guery, and for buildings to become sculptures and spaces to become paintings.