Architect: This Is Not Bilbao
Almost 20 years since Frank Gehry’s $100m titanium-clad Guggenheim Bilbao opened, another city on Spain’s north coast is getting a major contemporary art centre designed by an internationally acclaimed “starchitectâ€. The Centro BotÃn, Renzo Piano’s first big commission in the country, opens in Santander on 23 June. But comparisons with the museum that became a model for culture-driven regeneration schemes worldwide are too simplistic, say Piano and the president of the Fundación BotÃn’s visual arts committee, Vicente TodolÃ.