Week 8-Industrialisation, Modernism and architecture.

Well before Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum Bilbao opened its doors to the public on October 19, 1997, the new museum had people talking. The numerous artists, architects, journalists, politicians, filmmakers, and historians that visited the building site during its construction anticipated the success of the museum. It was called “the greatest building of our time” by architect Philip Johnson.
The Eiffel Tower was originally built for the International Exhibition of Paris of 1889 commemoration the anniversary of the french revolution. Out of 700 proposals, Gustave Eiffel's was chosen, but a lot of people were opposed to the design.  The Guggenheim is made from limestone, titanium and glass, while the Eiffel Tower is made of steel and iron. Gustave was an engineer, building mostly iron lattice bridges. The industrial revolution made a big impact on Gustave's work as many more materials were becoming available to build with. He went on to help design the interior structure of the Statue of Liberty that was given as a gift to the people of the United States of America. Gehry's design was also chosen as a winner of an architectural competition. He designed the building with unorthodox materials, inventive forms, with sensitivity to the urban environment and proposed the site along the Nervion River in Bilbao, Spain. Although the Eiffel Tower was originally built for an exhibit, it was later used for a wide variety of things. In 1909 it had an antenna that was used for sending telegraphs, in 1918 it began to be used for radio and then for television in 1975. It is currently being utilised as a major tourist attraction and it's familiar shape symbolizes Paris. The Guggenheim was designed and built to be a museum and still is to this day. It is so well known that it had over one million visitors in 2010 alone!



Research:

http://www.guggenheim.org/bilbao/history
http://www.parispages.com/Monuments/Eiffel/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_Eiffel