In the early 1990s, Bilbao was in trouble. Unemployment was high. Morale was low. And in this context, the local government proposed something extraordinary: to revive the city’s fortunes by building an art museum.

Not just any museum — a radical new structure that looked more like a sculpture than a building. With swooping titanium walls and impossible curves, many said it couldn’t be built. Others said it shouldn’t.

The City chose Frank Gehry. Gehry, already known for his unconventional designs, had faced serious challenges with previous projects — most notably the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, which had stalled due to funding and engineering problems. Choosing him for the Bilbao commission was a risk. But the selection panel felt his vision best matched the ambition of the city’s transformation.

To translate Gehry’s wildly complex shapes into a buildable structure, his team turned to CATIA, 3D modelling software originally developed to design military aircraft.

At the time, most architects used rudimentary computer-aided design (CAD) tools, which could model only in two dimensions or simple three-dimensional blocks. CATIA, by contrast, allowed Gehry’s team to model highly intricate curves using mathematical precision — a process known as non-Euclidean geometry.

From hand sketches to paper models to digital simulations, Gehry’s team developed the Guggenheim’s design in a way no architectural project had been realized before. CATIA didn’t just describe the shape — it broke it down into thousands of parts, each of which could be manufactured and assembled with millimeter precision.

It also helped solve another puzzle: how to construct curved surfaces using flat materials. CATIA could “unfold” the building’s skin, providing 2D templates for each titanium panel — a task that would have taken teams of engineers weeks to complete by hand.

And it worked. The museum drew 1.3 million visitors in its first year — more than triple expectations. CNN covered the opening. International tourists arrived in droves. The local economy boomed.

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