Perhaps only Gehry could regard this building as matter-of-fact - just imagine it on the British university campus of your choice, the questions that would be asked by the bean-counters, the whittling-down of the concept to a shadow of its original force. Here, Gehry’s language is allowed full voice, particularly in the extravagant gesture of the tilting, multiple-curving entrance canopy, which soars upwards to become the roof of the foyer, held suspended just as Gehry originally pinned a scrap of tinfoil to one of his endless sequence of models. He works through modelling, he doesn’t draw much. For obvious reasons. How do you draw something this shape?

You have to ask Gehry why he designs the way he does, and he gamely tries. He tells you about the Elgin Marbles at the British Museum or the sculpture of Bernini, or Indian friezes - the idea of suppressed force, of movement and energy captured but still apparent. “You can see it throughout art history. Trying to get a feeling of pathos, dignity, expressing feelings, but with inert materials.”

“It’s a language I got into because of the fish stuff”, he adds. This refers to a Gehry obsession. He is intrigued by the form of the fish, its architectonic beauty, the musculature rippling beneath the skin. Not that this precludes other imagery: Bilbao has been likened both to an opening flower bud and, where its titanium cladding billows upwards round the base, to the flying skirts of Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch. As our naked student friend perhaps unconsciously demonstrated, Gehry buildings are sexy. But for all that, the Bard building comes from Frank’s fish phase all right. Which looks like being his best phase.