Although Bilbao experienced its first urban sprawl as far back as 1876, the New Bilbao is a more considered late twentieth-century spread in line with the city´s industrial reconversion. The city, and especially the left bank of the River Nervión, has been rethought, grafting the new metropoli´s structures onto the industrial structures of yore, the wharfs, shipyards and blast furnaces. The New Bilbao is much more spacious than the older part of the town, with straight, open streets, squares, avenues, promenades and especially an end-of-the-century architecture designed by today´s best architects.

The River Nervión converted the small port beside the Iglesia de San Antón into one of the most important towns on the whole Cantabrian coast. The estuary is spanned by one of the symbols of modern Bilbao: the bridges. As well as the Puente de Deusto there is also the Puente Euskalduna, built in 1997 and also the pedestrian walkway of Uribitarte (called Zubizuri), the work of Santiago Calatrava.

The sector of Abandoibarra is the reflection of the industrial city converted into a cultural and service city. It contains two of the iconic buildings: the Palacio de Congresos Euskalduna and the Museo Guggenheim. This museum, designed in 1991 by the architect Frank Gehry, is the architectural jewel in the crown of New Bilbao. Gehry decided to clad its internal metal structure first with a covering of stone and crystal, then adding on a curved and writhing titanium surface that projects and reflects light at any time of day, creating magnificent chromatic effects over the River Nervión. We are ushered into the museum complex by Jeff Koons´s huge floral statue Puppy. The Palacio de Congresos Euskalduna, for its part, was made by the architects Federico Soriano and Dolores Palacios between 1997 and 1998 over the ruins of the shipyard previously bearing the same name. Constructed using shipbuilding technology and taking up an area of over 50,000 metres, it conjures up the image of a huge ship stranded on the slipways of the old shipyard.

Besides the enlargement of the Universidad de Deusto, one of the great undertakings in New Bilbao was the metro, designed by Norman Foster, inaugurated at the end of 1995. Based on the tenets of originality, simplicity and efficacy, the Metro de Bilbao represents a masterly blend of architecture and engineering.

© Alhena Media