THE BLOBAO EFFECT? The Dalí Museum's proposed "glass enigma," aka Big Blob, seems calculated to attract the kind of attention given to Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Bilbao. Credit: North Elevation/ Hellmuth, Obata + Kassbaum

THE BLOBAO EFFECT? The Dalí Museum’s proposed “glass enigma,” aka Big Blob, seems calculated to attract the kind of attention given to Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Bilbao. Credit: North Elevation/ Hellmuth, Obata + Kassbaum

Of the three local museums planning expansions that will take place over the next two years — the Tampa Museum of Art, the Arts Center and the Salvador Dalí Museum — the Dalí has hewed closest to the philosophy of destination architecture. Last week, the museum received approval from the St. Petersburg City Council for its designs of a new, potentially iconic home adjacent to the Mahaffey Theater. Designed by the Tampa offices of architecture firm Hellmuth, Obata + Kassabaum, the structure pairs the classic straight-edged volume of modern architecture with a surreal "glass enigma" that alternately suggests a viscous mass oozing from the building or engulfing it. When the new Dalí opens in 2010 after a two-year construction scheduled to begin late this fall, downtown St. Petersburg will join a global experiment in the Bilbao effect (so named for Frank Gehry's imaginative Guggenheim Bilbao), hoping to attract international tourists and spur local development with museum architecture that inspires a "wow."

The Dalí already has a strong attendance base, averaging 200,000 visitors per year — half from Florida, half coming from outside the state and country to visit the museum. The construction of the new, $32-million building will more than double the museum's current footprint of 28,000 square feet to 68,000 square feet, making the Dalí the largest fine art museum in Tampa Bay by a nose. (The new Tampa Museum of Art is expected to be 66,000 square feet.) The expansion would enable the Dalí to show all of its permanent collection at one time and will provide more space for a visitor welcome area, the museum's gift shop and a café that could lure local residents back on a regular basis, museum director Hank Hine told reporters at a press conference last week. As for the building's interior and an elaborate garden labyrinth on the waterfront, the curious will have to wait another month or more for the museum to release additional renderings. "There will be surreal surprises throughout the building," Hine promises.

This article appears in Apr 23-29, 2008.