Spain’s new Centro Botín shuns the ‘Bilbao effect’

Almost 20 years since Frank Gehrys $100m titanium-clad Guggenheim Bilbao opened, another city on Spains north coast is getting a major contemporary art centre designed by an internationally acclaimed starchitect. The Centro Botn, Renzo Pianos 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 Fundacin Botns visual arts comm