Guggenheim: The Latest Architecture and News

This article is part of our new Opinion section, a format for argument-driven essays on critical questions shaping our field.

Traditionally, a museum visit is a calendared occasion with a clearly scripted sequence. Arrival is ceremonially marked—by grand stairs or thresholds, by ticketing and information desks, by an audio guide and a concise institutional preface about mission and history. That deliberate "special occasion" quality extends from how museums were long conceived: deliberately exceptional, tightly curated, and organized around a specific narrative arc. In this model, the museum assumes an authoritative voice—its knowledge deep, vetted, and to be respected rather than contested—while architecture and choreography reinforce a rather singular way of entering, learning, and remembering.

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Following the news of Frank Gehry's passing at age 96, renewed attention has been directed toward a career that significantly shaped architectural discourse from the late 20th century onward. Over more than seven decades, Gehry developed a design language defined by material experimentation, iterative model-making, and an interest in fluid, expressive forms. His work ranges from early residential interventions in Southern California to major cultural institutions that have contributed to the identity of cities around the world. Together, these projects outline a trajectory that intersected with shifts in fabrication technologies, museum typologies, and urban redevelopment strategies.

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It is undeniable that, at first glance, the idea of a Louvre in Abu Dhabi or a Centre Pompidou in Brazil may seem somewhat disconcerting. The image of these museums, internationally renowned, appears in many ways inseparable from their original cultural contexts. And to some extent, it truly is. The Louvre, deeply rooted in the history of France as a former fortress and later royal residence, embodies a set of invaluable heritage values, further amplified by I. M. Pei’s iconic glass pyramid intervention in 1989. The Pompidou, meanwhile, is remembered as a historic turning point: by redefining the concept of public infrastructure through radically unconventional architecture, it marked the first time culture drew in mass audiences.

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Twenty years after the Frank Gehry–designed Guggenheim Abu Dhabi was first announced in 2006, the museum may finally have its grand opening.

The aim of the RE-DRAW competition is to develop one drawing to ‘represent’ an iconic architecture. The participants are asked to draft one image, with absolute freedom of scale, technique and level of abstraction.

Entering the Guggenheim Museum, visitors find themselves surrounded by a feast of vivid colors and mismatched fonts. Passing the gigantic green tractor at the entrance, they move across the ground floor, littered with stickers, like a lunchbox, or a lid of a laptop. A thick pillar that pierces the internal atrium has become a garish advertising column. A bale of hay, a drone, and some other object (impossible to identify) levitate high overhead. A cardboard cutout of Joseph Stalin on robot wheels moves down the ramp, scaring off visitors. Big reflective letters say: “Countryside, The Future”.

Architect Rem Koolhaas, the founder of the Office of Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) and Samir Bantal, director of OMA’s internal think-tank AMO, created this utterly confusing environment to exhibit years of research on the space beyond the boundaries of the 21st-century city.

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Opening in February 2020, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is showcasing an exhibition by Rem Koolhaas and AMO, the think tank of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA). Entitled Countryside, The Future the exhibition seeks to investigate urgent environmental, political, and socioeconomic transformations in the nonurban areas.

Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Abu Dhabi is finally set to begin construction on Saadiyat Island in the Persian Gulf. First announced in 2007, the Guggenheim project is over a decade in the making for the United Arab Emirates. Situated next to the Louvre Abu Dhabi, the sculptural project will showcase art from around the world within a mountain of plaster blocks and self-cooling translucent cones.

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The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum has announced a new research project exploring the “radical changes in the countryside, the vast nonurban areas of Earth” that will culminate in an exhibition at the museum’s Frank Lloyd Wright-designed New York home in Fall 2019.

Collaborating with Rem Koolhaas and his firm AMO, the think tank wing of OMA, the project will continue research already conducted by the Dutch architect and students from the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

In celebration of the 20th Anniversary of the Frank Gehry-designed Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, creative production studio 59 Productions has put on a 4-day projection mapping light show, transforming the museum’s iconic shimmering surfaces into a canvas for a dazzling light display.

From October 11-14th, the 20-minute-long multisensory production Reflections combined music, light and projection, creating a show on the building’s north-facing titanium facades that told the story of the museum’s genesis and design.

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On October 15^th four languages, three countries, and three astounding architectural projects will be brought together through a series of events and workshops to celebrate the 20^th anniversary of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation seeks to commemorate the event with a full day program of activities entitled Drawing the Guggenheim. Visitors can explore and sketch the museums during a variety of public drawing exercises, architectural tours, films and family events at each of the Guggenheim locations.

With celebrations of Frank Lloyd Wright’s 150th Birthday in full swing in architectural institutions throughout the country, a new book is giving Wright fanatics the chance to recreate some of the architect’s most notable works through a series of cut-and-fold paper models.

Created by paper engineer and artist Marc Hagan-Guirey, the book contains templates for creating 14 Wright-designed structures using the Japanese art of kirigami. The book leads you through the assembly of each model, which providing photographs, drawings and information for each building, including favorites like Fallingwater and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York.

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As the 150th Anniversary of Frank Lloyd Wright's birth approaches, LEGO has released the latest kit in their architecture series: Wright's New York masterpiece, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

The 744-piece set features a new rendition of the building made from the classic plastic blocks, following a 208-piece interpretation released in 2009. The new set provides a much more realistic portrayal of the Wright's original building as well as the 10-story limestone tower added by Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects in 1992 (based on Wright's original sketches).

What is the place of the museum in the modern city? What role does architecture play? How can these buildings be effectively interpreted?

Frank Lloyd Wright’s design for the Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan broke with all existing conventions, setting a new standard for the postwar art museum and, together with the Museum of Modern Art, firmly establishing the city of New York as the cultural capital of the 20th century. A decade later, the significance of this new architectural genre was not lost on Georges Pompidou when he commissioned the cultural center that would eventually carry his name—and launch the successful careers of its architects, Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers—hoping that it would position Paris as New York’s cultural rival.

In just three short years, Frank Gehry’s 450,000-square-foot Guggenheim Abu Dhabi will open. More than 12 times the size of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim New York, the expansive $800 million museum will showcase 1960s art from around the world within an asymmetrical mountain of plaster blocks and self-cooling translucent cones. Anticipating its completion, the New York Times sat down with Gehry to hear the story behind the building’s design. Watch the full interview with Gehry, here.

The search for a design for Helsinki’s new Guggenheim Museum is well under way. Over a thousand entrants submitted anonymous proposals for the harbor-side museum, and though six finalists have now been chosen, the incredible wealth of talent and effort present in the submissions is hard to ignore. We celebrate that talent here, showcasing 32 great designs-that-could-have-been for the Helsinki Guggenheim. Learn more about all of them, after the break!

With 1,715 entries submitted, the Guggenheim Helsinki Competition has become the most popular architectural competition in history. Only six proposals have made it through to the final round, however we believe there is something to be learned from the hundreds of proposals that didn't make the cut. Therefore, if you participated in the Guggenheim Helsinki Competition and would like ArchDaily’s team of architects and editors to review your proposal for publication, we ask you to submit your proposal here (under "Submit an event, competition, award, news") by Wednesday, December 10. All proposals submitted after this deadline will not be considered. Take a look after the break for the required format for submitting project materials.

The following analysis of the Helsinki Guggenheim competition entries was contributed by Federico Reyneri, partner at LPzR associates architects, and his research team.

Architects have always pushed the limit, often experimenting with forms and technologies unavailable in their time. In the last 20 years, we experienced a small revolution in thinking about spaces and embracing complexity, as computers started to show their real power. Since Gehry’s Guggenheim came to life in the mid nineties, nothing has been the same: free forms emerge everywhere from the dreamland to reality (often becoming someone else’s nightmare). Before this computer technology, except for the realm of the mind and clay modeling, real control over complexity through technical drawings was too hard a game for us ordinary mortals but eventually, in the last 10 years or so more powerful and cheaper computers and even cheaper software, capable of astonishing parametric-generated design elements, came out. Since then, new generations of designers have started to set free mind-blowing ideas, showing the world amazing computer generated pictures. Some architects even started to build them.

But how widespread is parametric design technology? How does it influence architecture worldwide? We started to analyse the Guggenheim Helsinki Design Competition, the largest architectural design competition in world history.