that's true, stephen, but it was after the fact. the locals were interested beyond the fact that it was breuer. the library staff did think it was useful/interesting to do the breuer display.
not least of which was a local art/arch historian/benefactor's role in getting the library built (with his family's money, not public money). << that one seemed to help the cause some.
Jun 26, 07 5:48 pm ·
·
Steven, I figured it was after the fact and yes that there were reasons beyond Breuer's authorship, but puddles used the present tense--"...i feel that many of those involved in the effort to save that building have nary a clue who breuer or any ohter significant architect is." If anything, a form of "starchitecture chic" was used among the efforts of the preservation cause.
And I remain curious as to whether the cause would have been taken by architects here (to the extent it had) without the Breuer name.
well, i guess it's hard to get a sense of that after the fact [how many of us would have gotten involved without the breuer name],
...but i can vouch we had extensive conversations on de-emphasizing the breuer name and stressing the overall simple quality of the building... and i think it was puddles that brought those issues to the foreground.
you can see the result of these conversations in the short text leading the ideas charrette results. i don't think breuer is mentioned at all.
so yes, it evolved. we started using whatever arguments we could find, but once we had a chance to "present" the ideas as a whole, we tried stressing the importance of the building within the community, not the stardom.
oh, yes, there were certainly some people in the grosse pointe community who are familiar the name breuer. in fact, probably some people who know much more about him than i do (i've already admitted that i'm a relative dunce when it comes to breuer). i speaking in very general terms above.
the exhibit case with the small breuer feature was a very spur of the moment thing. when i arrived at the central library to display the work of the charrette, that's when some of the librarians decided to pull something together.
i'm not doubting that the breuer name didn't help, but i also feel that the library had as much to do with the varied concerns of locals, as well as, a general sense that modern buildings are under attack these days regardless of whether they are breuer, rudolph, etc. in fact, i feel that it's the relative anonymity of these modern buildings that puts them at risk. if the were really designed by "stars" even locals would be reluctant to tear them down.
as to the success of this effort within the archinect community that's difficult to evaluate since we don't really have any firm numbers of just how many archinect members participated by writing letters or sending emails to the library board. before i actually posted that thread, i hesitated to do it because i was concerned that my personal reputation as "puddles" (with all the knucklehead things i say & do) might negatively impact people's reactions to the cause of helping this building. in retrospect, and considering that many of the strongest supporters of the effort have been long time forum participants who are family with me and decided to support the effort, you might be able to argue that my own reputation or celebrity-ness within this social circle was as much a factor in its success as was the breuer name. the question being, would a brand new or little known and obviously anonymous archinecter receieved as strong of a response. i don't know...and i probably shouldn't spend too much time thinking about it either. regardless, i was and remain very pleased that people choose to participate for whatever reasons they might have had.
sorry for the sloppiness of my grammar & spelling...i'm feeling a bit light headed at the moment (still buzzing from the paris hilton release, i guess).
aml makes some good points. one of the things that we were conscious of was that the connection of the local family's involvement in the original building probably had more appeal to most in that community than the significance of the architect.
and similar to the librarians efforts to educate community members about the legacy of breuer, i should probably note that the local grosse pointe news also ran a very nice article about marcel breuer shortly after the presentation & our visit to the library. it was a good introductory article for those who were probably curious as to who breuer was and why was he so significant anyhow. i'm not sure if we ever managed to post it anywhere or not. i can't recall.
i got involved because it was a breuer. no question.
but stephen's question is an interesting one to follow up: are there people out there that are anti-star enough that it would be a reason to GET RID of a star's building (if existing) or block its construction (if not existing)?
i'll admit to getting a bent nose every time someone imports a ny arch for a project that a local could do just as well, but i can't say it's been a point of overt hostility toward the project. and, in fact, i think i'm learning that locals may NOT do the work just as well, not for lack of ability but for lack of hubris/moxie in standing up to the client and because the client is less likely to be open to or committed to the ideas of a local than those of an imported 'name'.
(rumors - i think that's all they were - that josh prince-ramus might be pursued by the ky state board for calling himself an architect without having a us license DID make me chuckle a little. as did the article that described him wearing silver slippers to a party here in louisville.)
A more useful question to ask might be, ‘what does starchitecture accomplish or produce?’ Of course, it produces fame or notoriety, which is increasingly of paramount value in a world that is more and more based on the symbolic economy of consumption (brandism, design, ‘cool’). In this economy, architects, clients, critics, but also cities, regions, and nations profit in very real, material ways by the functioning of starchitecture.
So, the buildings are only part of the equation - if starchitecture can produce the symbolic capital of stardom (only in part dependent on the architecture itself), it has succeeded and will flourish in a political economy that utilizes meritocracy, individual genius, and talent as central tenets of its mythos.
The starchitect is the new economy’s champion, globalization’s hero, one of the gurus of the sacred realm of creative genius that lies at the heart of the secular world of modern liberal democratic capitalism. Starchitecture is simply a symptom or an indication of architecture’s adaptation to a new political economic paradigm - globalizing consumer-capitalism. Hero or villain, triumph or tragedy, take your pick.
nicely stated, iron temple, but i'd offer as counterpoint juhani pallasmaa's essay in the latest architectural record. near the end he makes some wonderfully sensible comments about globalism and architecture. i can't find online, so i'll transcribe it here over lunch.
"@ Steven Ward
I think there is a clear difference between being known by arch-geeks and the general or at least academic, knowledge worker, public
That is perhaps what makes a starchitect"
pallasmaa: "...with regard to designing outside of one's immediate cultural context, the essence of culture cannot be learned, only lived. designing for such cultural contexts is almost necessarily doomed to turn into a shallow depiction of the overt characteristics of the culture in question, or in the standard case, to remain an alien import, and more and more nowadays, a simple monument to the fluidity of digitalized capitalism. yet great creative individuals often have an amazing capacity to internalize qualities of landscape, light, and cultural traditions. i am here thinking, for instance, of louis kahn's serene, sublime works in ahmadabad and dhaka..."
One thing that's tangling up the discussion here is that most of us agree that Bruer is good, in addition to being a onetime star. The goodness of more contemporary star architects is till under debate, even if their status as stars isn't. There simply hasn't been enough time for a consensus to develop about good contemporary work.
Steven, Thank you. For the most part I agree with the Pallasmaa quote (I'm not sure Kahn's work is exempt) - designing for culture, instead of, perhaps, from culture, is bound to be 'fake'.
But I wasn't speaking of globalization in this sense. The spread of a 'globalization' paradigm is not exclusive to the 'frontiers' of capital (the West's 'other', 'exotic', 'underdeveloped', or 'developing'). This paradigm works on us too, here 'at home' in the epicenter of Western expansion, to create an hegemony of inevitability, rightness, progress, etc.
So, what I'm saying is that the 'starchitect' is one of many icons of global-capitalism - a poster child (for us) of all that is good (but also bad) about the 'trappings/benefits of modernity' (brilliant, genius, talented, successful, innovative, famous, over-hyped, elite, commodified, commercialized, fad, etc.).
And this is perhaps even an accident, not some kind of characteristic of architecture as a discipline, or architects as personae. Rather, in the more ubiquitous rush to create success in the 'experience economy', to create 'destinations' that can generate income for cities and regions, architectural Diva-hood has morphed from association with a patron class to equality with the celebrity set.
i'm not sure that anybody who is dead even qualifies as a star...legend maybe...but for some reason i feel that you have to be on the scene today to qualify as a star. from that perspective, i don't really feel that either breuer or kahn are stars.
@ Steven Ward
While you might have been "speaking" facetious i think there is still a point to be had.
We (meaning archinecters) cannot be placed in the same category as the general public, especially when it comes to knowing about and especially criticizing the "staritects".
As i think some of the discussion in the slowhome thread makes clear, the public isn't thinking generally beyond size, and the Wow factor.
This is what staritects generally provide. Especially when placed within the context of marketing/capitalism.
Perhaps not all archinecters are concerned with the "negative" effects of the star system...Personally i think that any problems we may have has as much or little to do with the staritect him/herself as it does with the globalized consumer-capitalistic system of production overall. (and no i am not anti-capitalism, aka a Marxist)
As Iron Temple and Vado make clear there is a "colonization" going on, but it is a global one, including West and East, and the colonizers are in most cases not the staritects themselves, but the marketers or developers etc. It is a colonization of social structures , by economic structures.
And of course there are a million ways in which these issues tie in with the systemic non-sustainble development patterns that now exist around the world.
Although i am not at all blaming the staritects for that...They are after all simply responding to market pressure.....
because we are all relatively young, i think we imagine that this is all a new phenomenon when really it has been going on since the rise of print media.
It was sad when street art became gentrified and the embodiment of the overpowering commercial (colonizing?) forces that it once stood against. Thanks, Mark Ecko!
instead of being a real attack on the commercialization of art, the "splasher" seems to me to simply be out for attention. a real critique takes thought, effort, and substance. splatter paint and stink bombs is more a juvenile prank than a truly substantive attack despite the purported manifestos. (how 20th century is that?)
interestingly, skewering starchitects on blogs while being equally devoid of substance seems far more contemporary. the medium for critique these days seems far more interesting than the critique itself or even starchitect/anti-starchitect debate as a whole.
I find it sad that when you are allowed critic, then even there the limits are set ; these protesters must all be riods and demolision mashines ,this has to be a fight, and destruction is expected from the emagine of the crowd ,so ancious to expect the star to fall off the heavens.
This is all lies --- who say the demolision mashin would ever smash the stararchitects Icon why ; don't it fall apart all by itself in very few years ?
There are a mountain of money out there Now we can use the word Bold, no hammer are better than dreams about chick lightweight building structures , but out there in the offices of the stararchitects, this is already been reduced into a crowd of wild designers, trying to overtake the scene by destructive tearing down the symbols of the prison cell window gate star formed tower of godwilling purety.
This has to be a violent act, it can not be about the stararchitects turned their back to architecture , it must newer deal with the real issues the production. It all has to be paralysed around a stardom no one would wish for his vorse enemy no one would give up a good stabile life for any of that, so who has the screwed view. Designers just want to build houses, not to rudder demolision tractors.
Looks to be full of wordy critique, that some people who are soaked in this kind of stuff (architecture students, ahem) would recognize, Gothamist's claim of critical theory ignorance not withstanding.
I actually have some sympathy with Splasher's position, as long as he (they?) keep it in the streets and don't stink bomb galleries and shit. Outdoor walls are fair game, as people like Shephard Fairey, etc. well know.
It's damage of damage, that's the whole point. These walls are already totally covered by famous, mainstream 'street artists' who still do illegal work. Then the Splasher comes along and defaces that. He's not hurting the original wall any more than these famous guys already have.
i saw the splasher manifesto. it's nothing, but a glorified zine. i could do as much or you or anyone. my criitique of that is that manifestos are old and out-dated, that the internet offers far more contemporary means of critique and expression. not only is the splasher lazy; he/she is not even with it.
Listen some of it is quite high standard art , I regret proberly only a percenteage a fraction and, these street painters can be directed they listen to sense talk anyway some of them . Architects to can't totaly turn their back to the dictates they already made on astronomic scale ; their wonders are newer displayed with the scale that would even render grafitti ,at distance there are no real dameage and to what.
Beside when you hear demands, these are about flats, jobs money and a lazy life , they also are individual very sentivetive to a particular sort of critic , but not at all to the critic I hear here. While they paint riods in basicly more important already feed a huge hunger for more cheap building sites there they build museums Kill the Icon.
I feel like the splasher is just another empty attempt to get attention. Which works, apparently. Should I start talking about girl scout cookies to get us off the topic?
is easy to dismiss the splatter, but is she/he/they a visual representation of a larger frustration within the art world? is that a similar frustration to the one Nobel writes about in architecture?
Well Ive tried to read most of this, forgive if I repeat.
If starchitecture is all about media coverage then the argument seems abit silly. If you buy into it, then muscle in and get yours. If you dont, then why worry about it? I mean how much does media attention really do? Does anyone but us really care how famous a person is? I mean theres a potential for false credibility but really ordinary people are going to look at past work, look at an offices real capabilities and make an architecturally ignorant descision. Its like people getting all pissed about Paris Hilton coverage. This presuposes we can trust mass media for anything. Do we really have any reason to take cnn more seriously than the national enquirer at this point?
As far as user generated architecture goes, I mean of course Im all about it in principal. I think its a beautiful idea, I just wish someone would actually make it work.
i don't think rex is doing our tower in louisville because the clients loved josh prince-ramus' portfolio or understood his 'real capabilities'. they're doing it because oma is famous and they were (then) part of oma.
Do you really think city planners think "ooooh oma!" the way we do? I mean how much clout does that really carry with them? They saw seatle, and valid or not bought into the logic and trusted they could pull it off.
planners?! the clients are part of the two local benefactor families and art collectors. they hired deborah berke for their 21c hotel/museum and historian william seale for their restoration of a 19thc farmhouse.
Im not saying media coverage doesnt account for anything, Im just saying its actual impact is way overplayed by this discussion and by architects in general. Its a brochure. I mean how many clients are really knowledgeable art-buffs? Ask the average person what bilbao is and they'll probably tell you about hobbits.
exerpts from a 2004 CNN article...in my opinion, the rise of starchitecture is all about $$$...media is just a powerful tool...if architecture has found a way to provide continuous revenue while promoting itself, i'd say we embrace it and use it to better our profession...
...
In 2001, the Financial Times estimated that the museum had generated 500 million in economic activity for the region during its first three years, plus 100 million in taxes. Even in 2002 -- the worst year in memory for international tourism -- Guggenheim patrons contributed some 160 million to the local economy.
...
The library initially expected to receive 5,000 or so daily visitors. On opening day, 28,000 people showed up. Since then, it's been averaging an estimated 12,000 to 15,000 guests per day. That's good news not only for the library and Koolhaas, but also for any business lucky enough to be located near the attraction. Local newspapers reported that revenues rose 30 to 50 percent at a slew of nearby establishments, from photo developers to taco stands.
...
Attendance tripled in the first year it was open, from about 100,000 a year in a predecessor facility to 350,000 in the new one. What's more, the building is drawing a new, worldly kind of tourist to central Texas.
...
At the Milwaukee Art Museum, the soaring, bird-like structure by hot Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava opened to rave reviews from critics and the public. More than 500,000 people visited the building in its first year, an enormous attendance leap.
the 'average person' is not the average client for a major architectural project. most corporations, museums, libraries, etc are looking for starpower these days. i'm kind of confused where you're coming from, oe, cuz this isn't new news. chipperfield and holl's recent museum projects are good examples, as are projects at major universities (vincent james at tulane, rem at iit, holl in iowa) and most of the asian projects that we hear about over here. you can bet that none of these clients is simply taking proposals and picking the ones they think will be best for the job. they're looking for recognition by association.
is there a difference between starchitect and starchinality (ie the star power persona for good soundbites?) or is it the same thing??? also lets say that a firm that does decent work ie has some talent on board decides to "hire" twenty unpaid interns to crank out a gazillion renderings and models for various competitions. could a firm concievably push itself to stardom this way???
simples, your examples are interesting in that it shows the public will embrace and pay for "good design." while the actual merits of the design of these buildings can be debated, the perception of quality is what counts. as oe points out, perhaps, it's not the starpower that really matters. most people have never heard of rem, but they are impressed by a building that does something different, looks different, etc. that's what a client is looking for, not gehry, the star; that's secondary. all of which i believe should be embraced by the profession.
meanwhile, nobel's anonymous architect continues to make anonymous architecture appreciated by other anonymous architects.
jafidler..."most people have never heard of rem" is a good point...i think it has to do with both persona/known talent and the perception of renowned quality architectural design...after all, how often do we see only starchitects listed in competitions? Media exposes who are the renowned architects today...
it also has to do with controversy (as in bilbao), and the building owner needs to have the "world-renowned design architect" in his/her pocket to "defend/sell" the controversial design...
Anti-Starchitecture Chic
that's true, stephen, but it was after the fact. the locals were interested beyond the fact that it was breuer. the library staff did think it was useful/interesting to do the breuer display.
we sorta used all arguments we had at our disposal. fame, good design, reuse/recycling/sustainability, etc.
not least of which was a local art/arch historian/benefactor's role in getting the library built (with his family's money, not public money). << that one seemed to help the cause some.
Steven, I figured it was after the fact and yes that there were reasons beyond Breuer's authorship, but puddles used the present tense--"...i feel that many of those involved in the effort to save that building have nary a clue who breuer or any ohter significant architect is." If anything, a form of "starchitecture chic" was used among the efforts of the preservation cause.
And I remain curious as to whether the cause would have been taken by architects here (to the extent it had) without the Breuer name.
well, i guess it's hard to get a sense of that after the fact [how many of us would have gotten involved without the breuer name],
...but i can vouch we had extensive conversations on de-emphasizing the breuer name and stressing the overall simple quality of the building... and i think it was puddles that brought those issues to the foreground.
you can see the result of these conversations in the short text leading the ideas charrette results. i don't think breuer is mentioned at all.
so yes, it evolved. we started using whatever arguments we could find, but once we had a chance to "present" the ideas as a whole, we tried stressing the importance of the building within the community, not the stardom.
oh, yes, there were certainly some people in the grosse pointe community who are familiar the name breuer. in fact, probably some people who know much more about him than i do (i've already admitted that i'm a relative dunce when it comes to breuer). i speaking in very general terms above.
the exhibit case with the small breuer feature was a very spur of the moment thing. when i arrived at the central library to display the work of the charrette, that's when some of the librarians decided to pull something together.
i'm not doubting that the breuer name didn't help, but i also feel that the library had as much to do with the varied concerns of locals, as well as, a general sense that modern buildings are under attack these days regardless of whether they are breuer, rudolph, etc. in fact, i feel that it's the relative anonymity of these modern buildings that puts them at risk. if the were really designed by "stars" even locals would be reluctant to tear them down.
as to the success of this effort within the archinect community that's difficult to evaluate since we don't really have any firm numbers of just how many archinect members participated by writing letters or sending emails to the library board. before i actually posted that thread, i hesitated to do it because i was concerned that my personal reputation as "puddles" (with all the knucklehead things i say & do) might negatively impact people's reactions to the cause of helping this building. in retrospect, and considering that many of the strongest supporters of the effort have been long time forum participants who are family with me and decided to support the effort, you might be able to argue that my own reputation or celebrity-ness within this social circle was as much a factor in its success as was the breuer name. the question being, would a brand new or little known and obviously anonymous archinecter receieved as strong of a response. i don't know...and i probably shouldn't spend too much time thinking about it either. regardless, i was and remain very pleased that people choose to participate for whatever reasons they might have had.
sorry for the sloppiness of my grammar & spelling...i'm feeling a bit light headed at the moment (still buzzing from the paris hilton release, i guess).
aml makes some good points. one of the things that we were conscious of was that the connection of the local family's involvement in the original building probably had more appeal to most in that community than the significance of the architect.
and similar to the librarians efforts to educate community members about the legacy of breuer, i should probably note that the local grosse pointe news also ran a very nice article about marcel breuer shortly after the presentation & our visit to the library. it was a good introductory article for those who were probably curious as to who breuer was and why was he so significant anyhow. i'm not sure if we ever managed to post it anywhere or not. i can't recall.
i got involved because it was a breuer. no question.
but stephen's question is an interesting one to follow up: are there people out there that are anti-star enough that it would be a reason to GET RID of a star's building (if existing) or block its construction (if not existing)?
i'll admit to getting a bent nose every time someone imports a ny arch for a project that a local could do just as well, but i can't say it's been a point of overt hostility toward the project. and, in fact, i think i'm learning that locals may NOT do the work just as well, not for lack of ability but for lack of hubris/moxie in standing up to the client and because the client is less likely to be open to or committed to the ideas of a local than those of an imported 'name'.
(rumors - i think that's all they were - that josh prince-ramus might be pursued by the ky state board for calling himself an architect without having a us license DID make me chuckle a little. as did the article that described him wearing silver slippers to a party here in louisville.)
steven my firm is taking over louisville.
so you keep saying, but i hardly ever hear of them...
; p
cressman center
olmstead park
papa john's stadium
etc
recently I posted this at metropolis.mag:
A more useful question to ask might be, ‘what does starchitecture accomplish or produce?’ Of course, it produces fame or notoriety, which is increasingly of paramount value in a world that is more and more based on the symbolic economy of consumption (brandism, design, ‘cool’). In this economy, architects, clients, critics, but also cities, regions, and nations profit in very real, material ways by the functioning of starchitecture.
So, the buildings are only part of the equation - if starchitecture can produce the symbolic capital of stardom (only in part dependent on the architecture itself), it has succeeded and will flourish in a political economy that utilizes meritocracy, individual genius, and talent as central tenets of its mythos.
The starchitect is the new economy’s champion, globalization’s hero, one of the gurus of the sacred realm of creative genius that lies at the heart of the secular world of modern liberal democratic capitalism. Starchitecture is simply a symptom or an indication of architecture’s adaptation to a new political economic paradigm - globalizing consumer-capitalism. Hero or villain, triumph or tragedy, take your pick.
Juris Milestone
nicely stated, iron temple, but i'd offer as counterpoint juhani pallasmaa's essay in the latest architectural record. near the end he makes some wonderfully sensible comments about globalism and architecture. i can't find online, so i'll transcribe it here over lunch.
See the comments to this recent post,
http://archinect.com/news/article.php?id=60125_0_24_0_C
including mine
"@ Steven Ward
I think there is a clear difference between being known by arch-geeks and the general or at least academic, knowledge worker, public
That is perhaps what makes a starchitect"
pallasmaa: "...with regard to designing outside of one's immediate cultural context, the essence of culture cannot be learned, only lived. designing for such cultural contexts is almost necessarily doomed to turn into a shallow depiction of the overt characteristics of the culture in question, or in the standard case, to remain an alien import, and more and more nowadays, a simple monument to the fluidity of digitalized capitalism. yet great creative individuals often have an amazing capacity to internalize qualities of landscape, light, and cultural traditions. i am here thinking, for instance, of louis kahn's serene, sublime works in ahmadabad and dhaka..."
i think you're saying what i was, nam, except i was being a little facetious.
did louise kahn work for rem? i'll have to check out her work.
One thing that's tangling up the discussion here is that most of us agree that Bruer is good, in addition to being a onetime star. The goodness of more contemporary star architects is till under debate, even if their status as stars isn't. There simply hasn't been enough time for a consensus to develop about good contemporary work.
Steven, Thank you. For the most part I agree with the Pallasmaa quote (I'm not sure Kahn's work is exempt) - designing for culture, instead of, perhaps, from culture, is bound to be 'fake'.
But I wasn't speaking of globalization in this sense. The spread of a 'globalization' paradigm is not exclusive to the 'frontiers' of capital (the West's 'other', 'exotic', 'underdeveloped', or 'developing'). This paradigm works on us too, here 'at home' in the epicenter of Western expansion, to create an hegemony of inevitability, rightness, progress, etc.
So, what I'm saying is that the 'starchitect' is one of many icons of global-capitalism - a poster child (for us) of all that is good (but also bad) about the 'trappings/benefits of modernity' (brilliant, genius, talented, successful, innovative, famous, over-hyped, elite, commodified, commercialized, fad, etc.).
And this is perhaps even an accident, not some kind of characteristic of architecture as a discipline, or architects as personae. Rather, in the more ubiquitous rush to create success in the 'experience economy', to create 'destinations' that can generate income for cities and regions, architectural Diva-hood has morphed from association with a patron class to equality with the celebrity set.
Juris Milestone
it is not globalization. it is style colonization. a term just invented by me.
Kahn's an easy to like star, too, because he's old and dead. Not contraversial.
i'm not sure that anybody who is dead even qualifies as a star...legend maybe...but for some reason i feel that you have to be on the scene today to qualify as a star. from that perspective, i don't really feel that either breuer or kahn are stars.
@ Steven Ward
While you might have been "speaking" facetious i think there is still a point to be had.
We (meaning archinecters) cannot be placed in the same category as the general public, especially when it comes to knowing about and especially criticizing the "staritects".
As i think some of the discussion in the slowhome thread makes clear, the public isn't thinking generally beyond size, and the Wow factor.
This is what staritects generally provide. Especially when placed within the context of marketing/capitalism.
Perhaps not all archinecters are concerned with the "negative" effects of the star system...Personally i think that any problems we may have has as much or little to do with the staritect him/herself as it does with the globalized consumer-capitalistic system of production overall. (and no i am not anti-capitalism, aka a Marxist)
As Iron Temple and Vado make clear there is a "colonization" going on, but it is a global one, including West and East, and the colonizers are in most cases not the staritects themselves, but the marketers or developers etc. It is a colonization of social structures , by economic structures.
And of course there are a million ways in which these issues tie in with the systemic non-sustainble development patterns that now exist around the world.
Although i am not at all blaming the staritects for that...They are after all simply responding to market pressure.....
Although perhaps one could/should?
because we are all relatively young, i think we imagine that this is all a new phenomenon when really it has been going on since the rise of print media.
wtf???
Anti-StarArtist chic?
http://archinect.com/news/article.php?id=60170_0_24_0_C
It was sad when street art became gentrified and the embodiment of the overpowering commercial (colonizing?) forces that it once stood against. Thanks, Mark Ecko!
instead of being a real attack on the commercialization of art, the "splasher" seems to me to simply be out for attention. a real critique takes thought, effort, and substance. splatter paint and stink bombs is more a juvenile prank than a truly substantive attack despite the purported manifestos. (how 20th century is that?)
interestingly, skewering starchitects on blogs while being equally devoid of substance seems far more contemporary. the medium for critique these days seems far more interesting than the critique itself or even starchitect/anti-starchitect debate as a whole.
dropping digital stink bombs since 1997...
I find it sad that when you are allowed critic, then even there the limits are set ; these protesters must all be riods and demolision mashines ,this has to be a fight, and destruction is expected from the emagine of the crowd ,so ancious to expect the star to fall off the heavens.
This is all lies --- who say the demolision mashin would ever smash the stararchitects Icon why ; don't it fall apart all by itself in very few years ?
There are a mountain of money out there Now we can use the word Bold, no hammer are better than dreams about chick lightweight building structures , but out there in the offices of the stararchitects, this is already been reduced into a crowd of wild designers, trying to overtake the scene by destructive tearing down the symbols of the prison cell window gate star formed tower of godwilling purety.
This has to be a violent act, it can not be about the stararchitects turned their back to architecture , it must newer deal with the real issues the production. It all has to be paralysed around a stardom no one would wish for his vorse enemy no one would give up a good stabile life for any of that, so who has the screwed view. Designers just want to build houses, not to rudder demolision tractors.
jafidler - What about The Splasher's manifesto?
Looks to be full of wordy critique, that some people who are soaked in this kind of stuff (architecture students, ahem) would recognize, Gothamist's claim of critical theory ignorance not withstanding.
I actually have some sympathy with Splasher's position, as long as he (they?) keep it in the streets and don't stink bomb galleries and shit. Outdoor walls are fair game, as people like Shephard Fairey, etc. well know.
as long as it's just making a mess maybe it's ok. as soon as there is damage, it's vandalism > criminal activity. wordy critique or not.
free speech/artistic expression is not a pass to damage the personal property of others, outside or inside.
OT, but:
It's damage of damage, that's the whole point. These walls are already totally covered by famous, mainstream 'street artists' who still do illegal work. Then the Splasher comes along and defaces that. He's not hurting the original wall any more than these famous guys already have.
i saw the splasher manifesto. it's nothing, but a glorified zine. i could do as much or you or anyone. my criitique of that is that manifestos are old and out-dated, that the internet offers far more contemporary means of critique and expression. not only is the splasher lazy; he/she is not even with it.
Listen some of it is quite high standard art , I regret proberly only a percenteage a fraction and, these street painters can be directed they listen to sense talk anyway some of them . Architects to can't totaly turn their back to the dictates they already made on astronomic scale ; their wonders are newer displayed with the scale that would even render grafitti ,at distance there are no real dameage and to what.
Beside when you hear demands, these are about flats, jobs money and a lazy life , they also are individual very sentivetive to a particular sort of critic , but not at all to the critic I hear here. While they paint riods in basicly more important already feed a huge hunger for more cheap building sites there they build museums Kill the Icon.
I feel like the splasher is just another empty attempt to get attention. Which works, apparently. Should I start talking about girl scout cookies to get us off the topic?
is easy to dismiss the splatter, but is she/he/they a visual representation of a larger frustration within the art world? is that a similar frustration to the one Nobel writes about in architecture?
If you are frustrated with the art world, just ignore it.
That's much harder to do with the crappy building you are living and working in.
Well Ive tried to read most of this, forgive if I repeat.
If starchitecture is all about media coverage then the argument seems abit silly. If you buy into it, then muscle in and get yours. If you dont, then why worry about it? I mean how much does media attention really do? Does anyone but us really care how famous a person is? I mean theres a potential for false credibility but really ordinary people are going to look at past work, look at an offices real capabilities and make an architecturally ignorant descision. Its like people getting all pissed about Paris Hilton coverage. This presuposes we can trust mass media for anything. Do we really have any reason to take cnn more seriously than the national enquirer at this point?
As far as user generated architecture goes, I mean of course Im all about it in principal. I think its a beautiful idea, I just wish someone would actually make it work.
i don't think rex is doing our tower in louisville because the clients loved josh prince-ramus' portfolio or understood his 'real capabilities'. they're doing it because oma is famous and they were (then) part of oma.
Do you really think city planners think "ooooh oma!" the way we do? I mean how much clout does that really carry with them? They saw seatle, and valid or not bought into the logic and trusted they could pull it off.
planners?! the clients are part of the two local benefactor families and art collectors. they hired deborah berke for their 21c hotel/museum and historian william seale for their restoration of a 19thc farmhouse.
Im speaking general terms.
Im not saying media coverage doesnt account for anything, Im just saying its actual impact is way overplayed by this discussion and by architects in general. Its a brochure. I mean how many clients are really knowledgeable art-buffs? Ask the average person what bilbao is and they'll probably tell you about hobbits.
i was gonna say the museum plaza is being developed by poe. not by the city. oh and they hired my firm to don't forget.
exerpts from a 2004 CNN article...in my opinion, the rise of starchitecture is all about $$$...media is just a powerful tool...if architecture has found a way to provide continuous revenue while promoting itself, i'd say we embrace it and use it to better our profession...
...
In 2001, the Financial Times estimated that the museum had generated 500 million in economic activity for the region during its first three years, plus 100 million in taxes. Even in 2002 -- the worst year in memory for international tourism -- Guggenheim patrons contributed some 160 million to the local economy.
...
The library initially expected to receive 5,000 or so daily visitors. On opening day, 28,000 people showed up. Since then, it's been averaging an estimated 12,000 to 15,000 guests per day. That's good news not only for the library and Koolhaas, but also for any business lucky enough to be located near the attraction. Local newspapers reported that revenues rose 30 to 50 percent at a slew of nearby establishments, from photo developers to taco stands.
...
Attendance tripled in the first year it was open, from about 100,000 a year in a predecessor facility to 350,000 in the new one. What's more, the building is drawing a new, worldly kind of tourist to central Texas.
...
At the Milwaukee Art Museum, the soaring, bird-like structure by hot Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava opened to rave reviews from critics and the public. More than 500,000 people visited the building in its first year, an enormous attendance leap.
the 'average person' is not the average client for a major architectural project. most corporations, museums, libraries, etc are looking for starpower these days. i'm kind of confused where you're coming from, oe, cuz this isn't new news. chipperfield and holl's recent museum projects are good examples, as are projects at major universities (vincent james at tulane, rem at iit, holl in iowa) and most of the asian projects that we hear about over here. you can bet that none of these clients is simply taking proposals and picking the ones they think will be best for the job. they're looking for recognition by association.
is there a difference between starchitect and starchinality (ie the star power persona for good soundbites?) or is it the same thing??? also lets say that a firm that does decent work ie has some talent on board decides to "hire" twenty unpaid interns to crank out a gazillion renderings and models for various competitions. could a firm concievably push itself to stardom this way???
simples, your examples are interesting in that it shows the public will embrace and pay for "good design." while the actual merits of the design of these buildings can be debated, the perception of quality is what counts. as oe points out, perhaps, it's not the starpower that really matters. most people have never heard of rem, but they are impressed by a building that does something different, looks different, etc. that's what a client is looking for, not gehry, the star; that's secondary. all of which i believe should be embraced by the profession.
meanwhile, nobel's anonymous architect continues to make anonymous architecture appreciated by other anonymous architects.
jafidler..."most people have never heard of rem" is a good point...i think it has to do with both persona/known talent and the perception of renowned quality architectural design...after all, how often do we see only starchitects listed in competitions? Media exposes who are the renowned architects today...
it also has to do with controversy (as in bilbao), and the building owner needs to have the "world-renowned design architect" in his/her pocket to "defend/sell" the controversial design...
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