Gehry's approach to the GMB's waterfront setting is at once playful and imposing The museum's entire structure seems to stretch indulgently along the bank of the Nervisn River, and to ramble into unexpected places-a portion of the building boldly slides under neath La Puente de la Salve, a steel suspension bridge which cuts across the site. Gehry further engages La Puente de la Salve into his design with an elaborate, sculpture like tower, the kind of structure that he calls a high reader." The tower has no function other than visual punctuation.
As Gehry intended, the GMB furnishes Bilbao with a spectacular icon that captivates the visitor's gaze with the added interest of a highly complex contour chat radically transforms itself depending upon one's vantage point. GMB's interior is no less dramatic. Upon entering the museum. the visitor encounters a soaring 165-foot high glass a According to Krens, who was intimately involved in the design process see sidebar, the atrium reflects what one might call the positive ideas of Frank Lloyd Wright's rotunda. Like Wright, Gehry has used the idea of a central organizing space. But whereas Wright's spiral for the original Guggenheim in New York was all.