As you Bond, James Bond, fans will no doubt recall, the opening image of Pierce Brosnan's 1999 debut is a long lens shot of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao -- an explosion of sunlit titanium framed at the end of a dark Spanish street.

Jump cut to Washington Street, Chicago -- we're about to get the same action picture from Gehry, Frank Gehry. The cladding is going onto the frame of the new Grant Park Bandshell.

Chicago has acquired a strong new image whose profile is dead centered on Washington Street and framed by the proscenium of the Wabash El. Thousands drive one-way east on Washington daily -- not one will miss it. (See arrow above.) Gehry's unmistakable forms are half the story and will get the press. But look closely at the pictures -- his skill at integrating the Bandshell into the Millennium Park site and Chicago's fabric is the other half.

It is very easy to forget that Mr. Gehry has an Urban Planning degree from Harvard. It is also easy to overlook that Urban Planning is something he takes very seriously and is exceedingly good at. It's easy to overlook because you are looking at the building's image, the setting recedes into the background.

Cross-fade to Bilbao, May 1991. Gehry's first meeting there with Guggenheim Director Thomas Krens was to consult on the site for the new museum. His analysis of the urban factors and city views in Bilbao lead away from an earlier site proposed by the Basque Government, to the present one on the Nervion River, adjacent to the Punte de la Salve. This site was much more exciting because diagonal views through the city connect it to Bilbao's arts centers, the Museo de Bellas Artes and its gardens to the west, and the Teatro Arriaga (Opera House) on the east, adjacent to Bilbao's governmental center. Across the river from this new site was the Universidad de Deusto -- together they would integrate the Guggenheim Bilbao into what Krens called the "geocultural triangle of Bilbao." Gehry's support of Krens helped convince their hosts to change the site. Coosje van Bruggen's book Guggenheim Museum Bilbao outlines the site selection process in detail. Two months later Gehry won the design competition, selected over Coop Himmeblau and Arata Isozaki.

Shortly after the Guggenheim Bilbao opened in 1998, members of the Pritzker family suggested to Mayor Richard M. Daley that the set piece of Millennium Park should be a new Grant Park Bandshell for its Outdoor Music Pavillion by their 1989 Pritzker Prize laureate. They backed it up with a $15 million gift from the Pritzker Foundation, and Chicago got its Gehry. The Millennium Park Project has stumbled several times since, but this month, as the first cladding goes up on the Bandshell, Gehry's skills in urban design are visible.

Seeing the Bandshell in profile on Washington tells us one important thing. Yes, it's on the grid. In Bilbao, Gehry used the radiating street pattern effectively, and in Chicago, he has used our grid to knit the Bandshell into the wider city. Locally, the Bandshell's profile is centered on the stairs that ascend from Michigan Avenue into the Park. In the same block across Michigan Avenue is the beloved Cultural Center, parallel to the Bandshell. They are both framed by Randolph Street on the north, and Washington on the south. To the west, the blocks between and adjacent to those two streets contain Chicago's Theater District, The Goodman Theater, Daley Plaza, Marshall Fields, and at LaSalle street, City Hall. Bordering the site to the south is the Art Institute, its primary facade on Michigan Avenue. The new wing by Renzo Piano will anchor the Columbus Drive corner. A pedestrian bridge by Piano connecting the two across Monroe Street was planned, but has been cancelled. (The fate of Gehry's wavy pedestrian bridge across Columbus to the east is unclear. Let us know what the situation is.)

The whole of the Bandshell and Outdoor Music Pavilion are framed between the neo-classical Peristyle at Randolph and Michigan and the Art Institute to the south. The sculpture of the Bandshell is very successful as the "free" element framed in a "classical" composition. Of course, the Peristyle was added to Millennium Park as it was redesigned over the past three years as economic times changed and more donors were brought on board. But all this has happened without moving the Bandshell or changing the Urban relationships of Gehry's design.

How will Chicagoans at large react? I hope for something like the response to the opening of the Thompson Center (State of Illinois Building), now for sale. Jahn's and Thompson's building, dramatically satirizing Chicago's machine politics, caused a furor that split the city into two camps: "It's incredibly great!" and "Who got paid off?" And, we will see if Gehry's Bandshell and Outdoor Music Pavilion will join our succession of iconic Chicago images, with John Hancock and Sears Tower, the Picasso, Marina Towers, the Wrigley Building, and the Tribune Building.

Our Predictions? Appears in print? one month. On television? two months. In a Bank One or Harris Bank commercial? 3 months. Dished by Blair Kamin? 4 months. In the next film set in Chicago? 18 months. Shot in Chicago? Who knows?

What do you think?