The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. (Click on the photo for a hi-res panoramic view.)
Iconoclastic architect Frank Gehry's Bilbao Guggenheim Museum was completed in 1997. From the beginning, Gehry wanted to sheathe the exterior with titanium, for its chameleon-like ability to reflect in varying hues depending on the weather and the time of day. When Russsian exports lowered the cost of titanium on the world market, Gehry's desire became economically viable.
To the best of my knowledge, this is the only building in the world that is clad in titanium.
Seen against a clear sky, titanium takes on a bluish cast. (Click on the photo for a hi-res image that reveals details of the titanium exterior.)
Photographed during a low angle sun, titanium reflects like gold. (Click on the photo for a hi-res image that reveals the brick-like pattern of the titanium tiles.)
Do some of us post on OptiBoard for more or less the same reason(s) that moved the earliest humans to paint art on the walls of their caves? Was Cro-Magnon man history's very first existentialist?
Photo credits:
http://www.netropolitan.org/gehry/bilbao.html
http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildi...im_Bilbao.html
http://www.spanish-living.com/region...Guggenheim.php
http://www.iadat.org/aci2005/index.htm
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