The Magnet of the Space: Bilbao

The Guggenheim Museum building in Bilbao is a powerful magnet. There are a number of superbly unusual buildings in the world, not that many as one would wish, actually, but still. And yet, arguably any of them have had such an impact on so many different aspects of life: on an individual level of perception of millions, on the completely new organisation of a space, on transforming  the landscape, on changing the face of a large historical city, on adding new and incredibly important attractiveness to a country. 

Apart of the similar unique multi-aspect effect that had been created twenty five years before the appearance of the Guggenheim Bilbao by the fantastic building of the Sydney Opera House, and which was a decisive influence on the author of Guggenheim Bilbao, there is hardly a building in the history of modern architecture during the last half of century, if not more, that has created such incredible and long-lasting effect. 

The author of the Guggenheim Bilbao, tireless Frank Gehry, passed away on December 5, 2025, at the good old age of 96 in Santa Monica where he lived with his family during the previous almost 50 years.  The world-famous architect had an insatiable desire for work. He was working all the time, belonging to that special generation that experienced the horrors of the Second World War being young, and who lived and worked, metaphorically speaking, also for those whose lives were brutally interrupted by the Holocaust and the war, and whose many talents were never developed. That generation had the mission to fulfill not only the aspirations of their own, but also those who were prevented from living. As simple – and as overwhelming –  as this. 

“I used to be Goldberg” 

Frank Goldberg was 25 when he changed his Jewish family name into Gehry. 

It was seven years after he moved with his family to California from Toronto. During those years immediately after the end of the Second World War, the remaining Jewish world was devastated. Every day, for years, people were learning about the destinies of their families, about the destinies of entire Jewish communities in Europe, about unimaginable crimes and horror. All that was piling up. 

The family of Frank’s mom, Kaplansky from Lodz, Poland, lost 33 members. “I never knew them”, – the architect would mention many decades later, actually, just 6 years ago, being 90. When a 90-year-old person who is not too open about this pattern of his life normally, speaks about it in this somber way 70 years after it had happened, it means that the pain and memory about it was living inside him all his life.  

Immediately after the end of the Second World War, Jewry in the New World were mortified not only by the constantly coming devastating news about their families in Europe. In Canada, from 1946 onward, that government infamously accepted and accommodated at least 2 000 Nazi criminals, most of whom were sent off by Britain. It was truly unbearable to many Canadian Jews, especially those with families left in Eastern and Central Europe who fell victim to the Shoah.  

When moving to California, Goldbergs-Kaplanskies has become witness of the McCarthyism craze which was at its peak at the time. No wonder that Efraim Frank Goldberg has changed his obviously Jewish name and dropped his Jewish first name – as so many frightened Jews did in the post-war US at the time in the hope ‘not to be on the radar’ in this respect. It is also not surprising that Frank, like many and many people who found themselves in this........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)