“Mr. Gehry’s building is a bright thing that attracts people to it, this building is more like a gate which connects the city back to the water,” said Kengo Kuma at a press preview today, comparing the Guggenheim Bilbao to his new Victoria and Albert Museum in Dundee, Scotland, which opens this weekend to visitors. “One of the ideas behind the building is that it is like a torii gate in Japan, which usually connects a village to the mountains.” Kuma’s building acts like a torii in a visual way: two inverted pyramids, sculpted to create an archway, framing the River Tay. The $100 million building, clad in thick bands of textured concrete panels, is also part of a more literal connection, a $1.3 billion public-funded scheme to revitalize the city’s waterfront, once a dock, and remodel the public realm so the river is now easily accessible from the city center.

“The inspiration for the building was the cliffs of northeast Scotland,” said Kuma. The building stands in what project architect Maurizio Mucciola calls a “very strong marine environment,” namely a river bank, exposed to wind from the North Sea and pounded by the salt water of a tidal estuary. The structure is a poured concrete wall, around twin cores, one for public access, the other for administration. From the inclined wall, 2,429 pre-cast concrete panels, into which hooks have been embedded, hang off brackets bolted into channels. The panels have a consistent angled profile to the exterior, but due to the severe geometries of the building behind, each are unique in shape. “Because of the conditions of the site, concrete was the only option,” said Mucciola.