The Bridge of Life at the Crossroad of Time
Biodiversity Museum (Museo de la Biodiversidad) the project designed by a world celebrity, winner of the Pritzker Prize in 1989, the architect Frank Owen Gehry is constructed in the Republic of Panama. The Biomuseo is the only one in its class in the region. Besides being an architectural icon (it is Frank Gehry’s first incursion in Latin America), the main exhibition depicts of how the Isthmus of Panama changed the history of our planet. Also, the museum plans to have a profound impact on education, primarily in subjects related to biodiversity.
The opening of designed by Frank Gehry wrapped in titanium Guggenheim Museum in 1997 in the Spanish Bilbao at once made this city a model of reconstruction, known as the “Bilbao effect”. The museum is recognized as one of the most spectacular buildings in the world, attracts to this largest city of the Basque Country, thousands of tourists. Fifteen years later, 83-year-old architect is in the way of the completion of its first project in Latin America - the Museum of Biodiversity “Bridge of Life” in Panama-City.
This event revived the debates about what is the iconic architecture, what is its role for the place where embodied such successful projects? It will be recalled, they become a kind of brands and have a powerful effect on the city, making them famous all over the world, promoting the business and tourist activity.
With the arrival of Frank Gehry’s twisting, titanium-clad Guggenheim Museum in 1997, the small, shipbuilding town of Bilbao became a cultural destination, its name forever bonded to a dreamy urban renewal scheme known as the “Bilbao effect.” Fifteen years after the completion of the Guggenheim Bilbao, Gehry, whose wife Berta Gehry Aguilera is a citizen of Panama, is on his way to finishing his first project in Latin America, the Museum of Biodiversity (or Biomuseo) in Panama City, where conviction in the power of iconic architecture has been renewed. And what could be more prestigious than a museum, which will be the pride of the Panamanians, demonstrating to the world community the uniqueness of this country and its role in world history? This is a remarkable building is being built on the territory of former American military base “Amador” at the input to the Panama Canal from the Pacific Ocean side, near the national park of Sovereignty (Soberania National Park), known by its lush tropical rainforests. Its construction is to be completed in the first half of 2013. When the theme of the Museum was agreed upon, Gehry Partners subcontracted its design to Bruce Mau Associates who conceived the design for telling the three stories. The building was designed around eight major galleries that the visitor will traverse in a sequence that outlines the major chapters in the story. Each gallery will have a large “Device of Wonder” at its center.
These will be major symbolic sculptures or reconstructions, lying at the junction of art and science, which are designed to evoke surprise and curiosity and to draw the visitor into a series of exhibits that recount the particular chapter in the story that the gallery represents. First, visitors will be available only five exhibits, and a year later - three more. One of the first to open is “Gallery of Biodiversity”, then is followed by “Panamarama”, where on the ten screens will be displayed the ecosystem of Panama, “The bridge arises” - the story of the formation of the Isthmus of Panama, “The Great Exchange”, where one can trace the migration of plants and animals from one continent to another, as well as “The Web of Life”. The project also envisages the creation of an aquarium where one can observe and compare the inhabitants of the underwater world of the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.
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Materials provided by BioMuseo