what is ouroussoff talking about? i have not met a single architect who looks down on starchitects for "selling out" because they design for developers. in fact the ones who have "sold out" the most are the ones that are most revered within the architectural cognoscenti, offices like SHoP.
if anything architects here on this forum and elsewhere react to design as an expression of ego. intrinsically, design for a developer precludes ego because the architect is designing for a client with specific needs. the exception to this is the developer/client that seeks to commodify the architectural ego, i.e. the architectural wonderland of dubai. but even there i would argue it's the quality of the architecture that people find disagreeable more than the the politics of the architect/developer relationship.
jafidler, I agree and further do not buy the artificial juxtaposition he makes to sell his argument; starchitects vs. hacks. I think that some starchitects are potentially dangerous with big developments, mostly because some are expected to bring a sginature 'wavy forms for the sake of wavy forms, etc...'
I do agree with him that ARCHITECTS need to be in bed with developers (some that jafidler mentioned for example).
Well 'sellout' sounds pretty immature, it makes us sound like we're pissed that our favorite band is on MTV.
That said, it is more than a little bit disappointing to see architects we admire changing up their narrative along with the economy: from 'form as autonomous cultural critique' to 'form as commodity and spectacle'.
So in that sense, someone like Gehry, who's never tried to make broader cultural claims about the redemptive or revolutionary qualities of radical formmaking, is much more innocent than say Eisenman and his formalist progeny, who are falling all over each other to work for the most suspect clients out there.
Koolhaas was complicit from the start, you can't really blame him, either. But Peter and his kids (and grandkids)? They're total sellouts.
>>Aside @Archinect: I hate it when this happens, why can't the news items get integrated with the forums somehow so we don't have these double discussions? I never know where to post reactions to a news clip because the really interesting ones get double posted to the forums and we have to make the same points twice. As much as people yell at noobs here for duplicating discussion topics, this is an example where that that's built into the system.<<
a proper analogy may be this: "the usa doesn't use torture because its ideals do not allow for the option of torture."(note: this is an anology, not a fact.) similarly, the starchitect(defined as the critically thinking, socially conscious, as well as design inclined architecture firm) does not design for developers, despotic governments, faceless corporate entities etc. because the starcitects ideals do not allow for that option.
that said however, it seems that architecture is the only realm that continues to live with this outdated notion of a metanarrative to define the integrity of the architect. while the rest of the world gets theirs, architects engaged in capitalist ventures often carry the burden of selling out, architectural ideas apparently cannot coexist with crass commercialism. perhaps this stems from the academies reliance on marxist philosophy, or perhaps its just a reaction to what is a true emptiness of any meaning other than the spectacle. build a spectacle regardless of the politics involved. as is quickly becoming my mantra, "aesthetics is politics and vice versa" the spectacle of the shiny icon with a hole in it cannot be separated from the debacle that the government commissioning the spectacle may be the world's largest violator of human rights. if the spectacle of design eradicates political and economic considerations then why bother reading literary criticism or philosophy. the observations made by these thinkers seem to counter any of what the starchitects are doing. maybe we should just call it a spade a spade and call it the New Nihilism.
word. every great spectacle of architecture has been built by an organization whose profits are derived from exploitation. egypt, rome, the american skyscraper.
but it seems there is no way to avoid this. societies that try to be egalitarian seem to have pretty crappy architecture. did the occupation of architect even exist in the soviet economy?
might as well just go with it and try to make the stuff look good, and be as socially conscientious as possible.
Starchitects are involved with the academy-> academics is tied up with theory and criticism -> theory and criticism are ultimately rooted in marxism.
So yeah, anytime you've got someone with that kind of background building condos for a government that proscribes the death penalty for homosexuals, or making an office building for state media censorship, there's an obvious contradiction.
I also like Ourossoff's observation that the client base for radical academic-based form is no longer just cultural institutions, it's developers looking for a signature style and nouveau rich second world polities looking to buy the newest and shiniest icons with the biggest holes in them.
I personally would hate to see either: 1) academics divorce itself from critical theory (because reading books written by smart europeans is fun), or 2) a complete return to banality in corporate architecture (because watching these projects get built is fun).
I think architecture is just going to have to live with the contradiction for a while, until either the despotic regimes (that are the prime customers for radical form) get liberalized, or until we have a coherent body of critical theory that isn't based on Marx, but is also resistant to commodification (see, you can't even start talking about this stuff without using loaded marxist terminology!).
the ethics of accepting a commission are rarely questioned and that is where the sell out happens. it seems that 'if I get paid, it must be worth doing' is the modus operandi that Nicolai is dancing around. the following statement sums it up:
There are endless cases of architects’ being reduced to the level of decorator: convenient cultural lubricants whose main function is to help the public digest increasingly cynical developments. (The bigger the project and the more money involved, it seems, the more the architect is treated like a lackey.)
Some of the biggest projects coming out of FOG's office are the most urbanisticly (sic) corrupt (not to just focus on them, but they are an easy target) - take grand avenue or atlantic yards. These monstrous redevelopment schemes should have been shut down immediately, yet gehry's brand helped lubricate their approval (at least for grand ave) - as such, the developer got what they were paying for. But where are the ethical considerations that are invoked by Speer, Myanmar, and Dubai?
When was the last time any architect turned down a commission because it was the wrong building, wrong size, and in the wrong place? Or turned down a job because it would have created more sprawl or destroyed natural habitat?
If we (as a profession) lack the spine to say 'no', then we have sold out (and so have the engineers, planners, landscape architects, and everybody else responsible for the destruction of our planet).
I'm kinda inclined to let Frank off the hook here, if only because he's never given lip service to architecture as cultural critique. It's much worse to say one thing and do another (especially when you're an educator), than it is to be explicit about making pretty things, and consequences be damned.
differend - Lyotard's term for a dispute resulting from the fact that one party cannot voice her complaints (or points) because the other insists on speaking within a different language game or genre of discourse (such as one person speaking within narration and the other within speculation). People who are caught in differends find themselves in difficult conversations. Such difficult conversations result from people using terms in different ways while presuming they are using terms in the same way.
someone like lyotard is talking about the destabalization of established systems. the idea of the academic architect is to oppose the status quo, which when i was in school, was a banal corporate architecture and the strip mall. but rather than reverse an institutional force, instead we have a reinforcement and celebration of the instituted force. now in certain circumstances the institutional program of a building typology could be addressed, criticized, subverted in the design of the building. but that is not what we are witnessing in the mega buildings and just add water urbanism that is popping up around the globe. as lyotard writes, and i paraphrase, "knowledge is only useful if it contributes to profit." Reflective Judgement(to steal from Kant) is what is lacking in these cases. And Reflective Judgement is what is needed to resist political and corporate hegemony.
guys, the age of theory ended in the 90s - architecture as critique was always a flawed idea and succeeded in making architecture irrelevant for the last quarter of the twentieth century. even peter eisenman has abandoned that tired old train of thought.
now is it the greenies that are carrying the banner for a "critical architecture"? i sure hope not. that issue seems too important to be marginalized by leftist morality.
i am fully in support of architecture tackling the issues surrounding global climate change. it is imperative. my point is that it needs to work within capitalism and to work with developers to address the issue. "critique" and "opposition" are no longer an option. the new buzz words need to be "partnership" and "engagement," and i believe in a very positive way this is where things are headed.
why return to the post-'68 rhetoric of "selling out"?
765, well, i would say the arizona cardinals football stadium is a far cry from the memorial to holocaust victims, let alone house x...
Seriously though, 'partnership'? 'engagement'? Got some reading to recommend on those topics?
and in regards to this snide little gem, my point is that architecture is moving away from having to justify every move it makes with dated continental theory. it's opening itself up to multidisciplinary practices where you can take as much from deleuze as you can from business management practices or applied sciences.
I frankly do not find anything wrong selling out if you have true capitalistic beliefs. Thats a choice that everyone will have to grapple with. Architects will always have a choice, make more money or do positive change, it is quite rare to have the opportunity to have both.
My question is when is enough enough! When you do realize that you've made enough money and you can produce a positive change to communities and environments by taking on a job that can make a positive difference. I can't imagine that any stararchitect cannot work with local communities and provide daycare facilities for single parents, promote walkable communities to lessen the weight of green house emissions, design healthy work environments. Cients will always want their museum extensions and richard meier multi-million dollar building facades, its up to the architect to make the right decision and say enough is enough.
I just think, as an architect in this environment, you still have to have a kind of framework or bigger picture in order to avoid getting exploited yourself when walking into these meetings. Knowing some business school jargon isn't going to help you when you're asked to do something that's harmful to cultural, urban, or natural envornments.
These questions have more to do with individual persons and individual businesses, not architecture.
When 'enough is enough' is purely a personal decision, no one will have the same answer (nor should they).
Architecture is a business #1, and everything else a very distant 2nd. What is done with it, just as with any business, depends on the person running the show.
I don't see why architecture should carry a burden larger than similar professions. A creative leader can find ways to drive 'good' decisions, such as LEED or quality design, via business.
This is what they don't teach well in school - good design usually means good business, and if not, then it should be examined more closely. Good solutions can lead to good business, whether it be environmental, social, etc.
i'm sorry, but aren't any of you reading Steven Ward's book pick? perhaps if you did, i am currently reading it now, this topic might find some relevance?
look at architecture pre-'68. architects like eero saarinen and craig ellwood were working symbiotically with big business like ibm, john deere and gm to create architecture that enhanced both the function and aesthetics of business. the time for both architecture and business was innovative and progressive. post-'68 all that changes and the general landscape of architecture goes to hell. why? largely because there is a refusal by the avant-garde to address the issues most relevant to business and tangentially society as a whole; we enter into a period of the esoterica of theory. fast forward to 2008, in the midst of a climate crisis, architecture is poised to enter into a meaningful dialogue with business and society about possible solutions and outcomes through architecture. at this point, is it really a good idea to alienate those that have the potential for change in their pocketbooks (thus really only alienating ourselves)?
Saarinen and IBM is a great example, jafidler. It's weird to think of IBM as 'evil', but at the time, there was a growing resistance to computers and the worldview of categorization and control that they represented. People looked at IBM with the same foreboding that we reserve for Google today.
It makes me think of a few things:
Pre '68 (and I'm skeptical in general of the whole '1968 as historical discontinuity' idea, seems to be a particular favorite of baby-boomer critics like Kipnis), but anyway, pre '68, you had European modernism, stripped of its ideological origins in Socialism (there's Marx again), and remade as the signature style of ascendant corporate America.
Similarly today, as Owen Hatherley points out, the aesthetic origins of much contempo architecture can be found in radical, prewar, Soviet work like Suprematism. This aesthetic is reworked and repoliticized in the capitalist utopias of the UAE.
I was in Eisenman's class four years ago, when he was still working on the Cardinal's stadium. And half his rap was about the ability of diagrammatic architecture to resist simple reduction to an icon or commodity. He may have softened his line in practice, but his rhetoric is still very much anti-Spectacle. Ask any current YSOA student for the lecture transcripts.
Check out this NYTimes article, where Ourossoff, who's now the apologist for the sellouts, calls out Eisenman for not sticking to his guns and fighting for the diagram at the Cardinal's stadium.
You can't have it both ways, you can't argue for a resistive architecture when culture and money turn their back on you, and then argue for post-critical engagement when the economy swells and Capital wants Novelty. Not without some careful explaining, anyway.
I'm all for critical engagement and dialogue with the forces that fund architecture, but I've yet to see it happen in the current bubble.
finally i read the article and it seems like a nice christmas/hanukkah card to most of the times' architect subjects and their clients.
merry whatever. it's all good.
'let the times work all the starchitects, all the time'
however, i find mr. ouroussoff's opinions ultimately one sided and dismissing beyond his connections' works. he is just as useless as leaky roof complainers and developer chasers. he is also 'a starcrit.'
i don't see how much attention he pays to cult of starism and its effects on the working architects.
i think so called star architects are very good at what they do, but i find their impact and influence on the overall profession much more complex and something to write about rather than saying, like the author, they are better than the rest of the world in a nut shell.
yeah i agree orhan
a blanket statement saying "X" starchitect is the best architect in the world, just because they are popular
i would say people who know anything about the business know the truth, that while they can be very good, it doesnt mean they are the best
its like with actors
some actors/actresses are very popular and "in", but it doesnt necessarily mean they are the best
they might get a ton of offers though, not necessarily based on their skill
a while ago, O cited Lorcan o'herlihy as the best architect in LA. So does that make lorcan a starchitect? or was he one before O beknighted him?
I don't recall many architects appearing in the movies beyond the recent gehry love fest, the biopic 'my architect' and a few other docudramas. So where is the red carpet and paparazzi chasing after stanley tigerman or rem?
765, I don't understand you saying "theory and criticism are ultimately rooted in marxism."
I think you're mistaken, sir.
What about feminism, structuralism, formalism, perhaps psychoanalysis, even deconstructivism (I mean the real decon, not the archi-flavour - witness Derrida's growing disillusionment with Eisenman in "Chora L")? All theories to understand/explain what's going on on the underbelly. I'm sure there are more, but I haven't finished the book yet ;-)
As I understand it, critical theory is used to criticise & explain, not develop new formative ideas from (the decon problem) - I guess that's research's role (theory without the critical) whether in academia or practice. I don't believe critics should do the architect's job or vice versa. I feel that one of the big problems with criticism today is that critics and architects belong to the same field and so can't really objectively criticise from without.
This story, for example, begs for a dose of the recently fashionable sociologist Pierre Bourdieu and "Distinction" - a classic exchange of cultural for economic capital and an argument of taste vs vulgarity. A much stronger explanation than any Marxist critique could offer methinks.
Ourosoff writes:
"In the end, it is the public’s responsibility to do the hard work of parsing the difference between superficial creations designed to cover up a hidden, cynical agenda, and sincere efforts to create a more enlightened vision of a civilization that is evolving at a brutal pace."
But isn't that what I am doing when I say that the BMW Welt is hardly an answer to what he says we complained about "For decades"?. He writes: "the public complained about the bland, soul-sapping buildings churned out by anonymous corporate offices."
It's less a problem of selling out and more a problem of making similarly anonymous space-age objects which are no more communicative, relevant, spatial or able to bridge Bourdieu's levels of distinction. No? It hardly seems that we should hold the 70s paper architecture schemes up as the gold standard, who wants to live in a walking city or an inflatable building? Only the elites think this is funny. Cheers!
i'm not saying it has to be like this, but i do believe it is a symptom of picking projects to match your agenda versus working with a client to create better built outcomes.
I have to say that I find this discourse somewhat confusing -- especially in the context of all the other threads that float around archinect.
on the one hand, the participants in this forum spend an unusual amount of energy lamenting the poor pay and poor economics of this profession.
then, on the other hand, we spend time here, using a lot of big words and complex philosophies, berating those talented architects with the temerity to maybe tailor their approach to design a little bit in order to capture a little more business -- and, perhaps, just perhaps, provide a little more meaningful employment to a bunch of starving architects.
boys and girls - we can't have it both ways.
is it art or is it business -- recognizing full well that both ideas can co-exist in the same practice -- which, I think, is probably the only sin committed by the targets of this thread.
compromise can be a horrible thing ... unless you have mouths to feed and bills to pay and the need to prepare for retirement.
quizzical - it's not just about art and business, it was teaching that kept a lot of these people going through lean years, the business of teaching. And they made their rent money by engaging idealistic students in discourse. Now that times are good, those same students that paid their salary (via loans for tuition) are now hired back to help create projects that sacrifice those same ideals that were sold at the schools.
Further irony: the wages paid are low enough to qualify for loan deferment, everybody wins!
(still thinking about Mr. Blogster's points, I guess the Marxist thread I'm tracking goes from the Frankfurt school through Foucault to Deleuze/Guattari, with side branches and parallels in the Situ/Everyday side of things. Don't see you around here often enough, Norman!)
I think the poor pay/conditions for the common-or-garden architect are terrible and not entirely linked to the phenomenon of the celebrity architect (architects have always been badly paid), but I don't think the celebritisation of architecture helps the little practitioner either - in fact it certainly skews the profession against him/her. I think the exploitation by the dominant over the sub-dominant is ethically very baaaaaad and probably nothing less than criminal (referring back to marxism - division of labour, production of goods etc).
We have to realise that the profession of architecture is a creation out of nothing. A kind of big bang theory - nobody asked for it - architects decided the world needed them and then we're trying to convince people it's worth something more than just construction. That's the game. Dem's da roolz.
As far as Gehry working with the so-called dark-side - good on him I'd say. He's perfected his game at a ripe old age. I'll still criticise his buildings - at least one of which is great (the only one I've actually been to). But I'm far from a fan of any starchitect, as some may know.
Is architecture an art or business?
Both and neither.
It's a field.
A battlefield perhaps.
(Can you tell I'm in my Bourdieu phase?)
(765 - yeah, I like to catch up here every now and again. Would like to do more so, but am just incredibly busy. Will try and make more of an effort next year.)
this whole debate boils down to two camps on contemporary theory. the first is the old critical theory guys, people like woods and eisenman, who are still, as 765 points out, trying to resist market forces in architecture. the more recent camp is the koolhaas camp that accepts market forces (among others) as an integral aspect of the creation of architecture. (ouroussoff confuses the argument by bringing in the whole starchitect angle, but in principle, he's siding with koolhaas and the "sell outs.") people like woods, sorkin, etc. are going to side with resistance; koolhaas and disciples follow the market.
there's my 100 word interpretation of what's going on.
Lebbeus critique of Nicolai's article is spot on...
It was a pretty wish-washy non-ethical arguement that was "developed"
However i think the below linked post by Lebbeus from a few weeks back actually is more interesting in what it brings to the discussion about developers, staritects and the unholy trifecta of banal and globalized, form over context or substance, buildings.....
i don't know, nam. i think in many ways you could say that woods' perspective in this piece is just as vague and generalizing as ouroussoff's. there is some truth to what he's saying, but an awful lot of "buts" that accompany it.
Architects, rarely leaders in society, have followed corporate trends toward the expansion and consolidation of markets by extending their practices first to the scope of the national, then to the international and global. One result has been the radiation of a new type of generic architecture, one that is reproduced in one city after another, around the world.
yes, but you also have the exportation of the high end stuff as well as the "generic". inversely, you have architects being influenced by different cultures whose influence was far less accessible before global expansion. to me woods' whole argument sounds like very early anti-globalization rhetoric. i believe our perspective on these issues, at least within academia, have advanced quite a bit from this. read sasson, appadurai, harvey...
I adore appadurai, and the work of the organization he started in mumbai/dharavi.
in fact i told a friend of mine to check out his organization when he is in mumbai, just recently..
First off, your correct and i think part of the problem with much of this discussion and ones that have covered similar topics (ie: staritect, selling out etc on archinect previously) is that we are in reality talking about a small group of people out of the total population of architects. Albeit one that perhaps exerts an outsize force on the architectural/cultural sphere....
Additionally however, much architects globally are being influenced by each other i would argue that there are two main dynamics at play.
One is that of the staritect and generic "unique" development. the other one of the alternative which although making up a significant force within academics has not really punched at its weight class yet. Meaning it has impacted a current generation of students and practitioners, but not really impacted the profession as a whole.
You look at most developing cities around the world. From Almaty, to Dubai to even China and there has been in the last 5-10 years a march of global practices which shape much of the archi-/spatial/culture of these new urban areas.
I personally hope for the mega-city slum to become the new model of autonomous, non-hierarchical, plugged in local urbanism.....
While I would applaud the developments that jafidler is describing, these arguments have little to do with the work of the "Strachitects" whom NO is defending. I am hard pressed to see how the work of Gehry, Hadid, Liebenskind, et al with large cap developers has anything to do with the ideas of, for example, Arjun Appadurai (whose work includes grass roots organizational models set up to correct the inequalities created by autonomous global capitalization, among other things). If I am missing something here I will be happy to be enlightened.
I'm just not sure that Developers are becoming enlightened by engaging the Stars. It is branding and novelty, quite simply, and the developers I talk to say it is the perception that you can, for example, charge a 30% premium for condos in a building designed by a famous architect.
Very rarely are developers spending their own money. They are competing for stacks of cash with a huge range of investment vehicles, and it is a very competitve market. When these capital funds consist of pools of money that are traded, combined, and traded again, the money is ultimately severed from any humanistic input that would allow the dymanics of a project to include a "meaningful dialogue with business and society", at least on its own terms.
Money is a commodity like oil or pork bellies, and it tends to flow downhill towards bigger returns. One can argue that projects that are more directed towards "solutions and outcomes" are not necessarly less profitable than market rate developments. But those projects may be perceived as entailing more risk, and capital fund trustees, managing billions of dollars from investors they may never have met, tend not to take a lot of risks. And profit margin differences of fractions of a percent can be significant amounts of money when considering real estate vehicles.
A bit of a digression, but it relates to the dynamic of how developers work and we need to keep a healthy amount of skepticism about the ability of architects of any stripe to engage the market in a way that would nudge it towards broader based societal outcomes.
I would love to be more optimistic so if anyone could give examples of how the work of "Starchitects" on market based projects have resulted in positive and wider ranging benefits, please show me.
aldo,i think it depends on how you define "positive and wide ranging benefits." i think zaha's bmw plant in leipzig was a significant building in that through its spatial composition it began to rethink the dynamics of manufacturing, business, and design. and though it's a public project, i think you could say the same about koolhaas's seattle public library and its rethinking the role and organization of the library. architecture was never meant to cure all the problems of the world. but i do think the more architecture can engage its external context, and here i'm talking about socially, politically, ecologically, etc., i think the better it becomes.
I will be the last one to argue that challenging and innovative design doesn't have an uplifting and positive effect on the culture. I was thinking more specifically about the role of market based, for-profit ventures (eg: large urban mixed use projects) whose primary function is the generation of profit/cash flow, which is the subject of NO's piece.
The distinction I am making is, for example, BMW is spending their own money and are creating a structure that is only indirectly tied to how the company makes money: BMW sells cars; Developers sell buildings. In this context, does the acceptance of famous Architects by Develpoers represent a move towards a more enlightened attitude by these developers?
Call me cynical, but I tend to think it is a reaction to the more wide spread visibility of of these personalities to the general public. Most of the Famous Architects started their careers with an attitude of resistance, and if there is engagement now it is after (and perhaps the result of) many years of resistance early in their careers.
I guess the heart of the matter comes down to the idea of resistance vs. engagement, and the way in which architectcture plays its part in the advancement of the culture (as all relevant Art does). It is great that Frank Gehry gets to design the Grand Avenue project (even though I don't think it breaks any new ground formally), and maybe the result will be better than if some some more conventionally corpoarate firm had taken it on, but I don't think FG's participation has involved much "engagement". The inclusionary housing, the sustainability and transit oriented aspects of Grand Avenue all came about through negotiations with the County through the entitlement process, and were in effect regardless of the Architect.
ahhhh, i understand your distinction now between a corporation and a developer, aldo; didn't get it at first. i see your point, but i think it challenges architects to find some worth in these types of developer-driven projects and be able to convince clients that he or she as a designer is adding something to the project beyond a signature style - not an easy task, particularly when many of these projects are flawed from their conception.
my reaction to that is this is where a more interdisciplinary practice can really challenge developers with good design and show them how good design can positively affect their bottom line. imagine if architects or more specialized disciplines were on board with these developers from the outset of the project rather than just picking it up when the building rolls around. a lot of the idiotic decisions made up front about siting or funding or what-have-you could be avoided. i'm not saying the architect has an answer for all these questions, but a multidisciplinary team, working together, could make far more out of these fairly banal developer-driven projects. it sure beats shrugging your shoulders and writing the whole mess off as the work philistines. this type of interdisciplinary practice is occurring in large corporate architecture office, but i personally believe it has more potential for positive change in smaller offices. i just believe that to make it work we are going to have to leave behind the biases of the old garde critical theory folks and accept the reality of the world we operate in.
yes, they are, and i really like what they're doing. it's a very pro-active approach. rem and oma/amo started this way of thinking on a macro level, but personally i'm more interested to hear ways in which firms have adopted it at a micro scale: methods for public/private partnerships, mapping as a planning tool, scenario planning, etc.
Starchitects as Sellouts?
, posted here in archinect by Barry, deserves some discussion....
related?
Illustration by Wes Duvall
what is ouroussoff talking about? i have not met a single architect who looks down on starchitects for "selling out" because they design for developers. in fact the ones who have "sold out" the most are the ones that are most revered within the architectural cognoscenti, offices like SHoP.
if anything architects here on this forum and elsewhere react to design as an expression of ego. intrinsically, design for a developer precludes ego because the architect is designing for a client with specific needs. the exception to this is the developer/client that seeks to commodify the architectural ego, i.e. the architectural wonderland of dubai. but even there i would argue it's the quality of the architecture that people find disagreeable more than the the politics of the architect/developer relationship.
jafidler, I agree and further do not buy the artificial juxtaposition he makes to sell his argument; starchitects vs. hacks. I think that some starchitects are potentially dangerous with big developments, mostly because some are expected to bring a sginature 'wavy forms for the sake of wavy forms, etc...'
I do agree with him that ARCHITECTS need to be in bed with developers (some that jafidler mentioned for example).
>>Double posted from the news item:
Well 'sellout' sounds pretty immature, it makes us sound like we're pissed that our favorite band is on MTV.
That said, it is more than a little bit disappointing to see architects we admire changing up their narrative along with the economy: from 'form as autonomous cultural critique' to 'form as commodity and spectacle'.
So in that sense, someone like Gehry, who's never tried to make broader cultural claims about the redemptive or revolutionary qualities of radical formmaking, is much more innocent than say Eisenman and his formalist progeny, who are falling all over each other to work for the most suspect clients out there.
Koolhaas was complicit from the start, you can't really blame him, either. But Peter and his kids (and grandkids)? They're total sellouts.
>>Aside @Archinect: I hate it when this happens, why can't the news items get integrated with the forums somehow so we don't have these double discussions? I never know where to post reactions to a news clip because the really interesting ones get double posted to the forums and we have to make the same points twice. As much as people yell at noobs here for duplicating discussion topics, this is an example where that that's built into the system.<<
a proper analogy may be this: "the usa doesn't use torture because its ideals do not allow for the option of torture."(note: this is an anology, not a fact.) similarly, the starchitect(defined as the critically thinking, socially conscious, as well as design inclined architecture firm) does not design for developers, despotic governments, faceless corporate entities etc. because the starcitects ideals do not allow for that option.
that said however, it seems that architecture is the only realm that continues to live with this outdated notion of a metanarrative to define the integrity of the architect. while the rest of the world gets theirs, architects engaged in capitalist ventures often carry the burden of selling out, architectural ideas apparently cannot coexist with crass commercialism. perhaps this stems from the academies reliance on marxist philosophy, or perhaps its just a reaction to what is a true emptiness of any meaning other than the spectacle. build a spectacle regardless of the politics involved. as is quickly becoming my mantra, "aesthetics is politics and vice versa" the spectacle of the shiny icon with a hole in it cannot be separated from the debacle that the government commissioning the spectacle may be the world's largest violator of human rights. if the spectacle of design eradicates political and economic considerations then why bother reading literary criticism or philosophy. the observations made by these thinkers seem to counter any of what the starchitects are doing. maybe we should just call it a spade a spade and call it the New Nihilism.
word. every great spectacle of architecture has been built by an organization whose profits are derived from exploitation. egypt, rome, the american skyscraper.
but it seems there is no way to avoid this. societies that try to be egalitarian seem to have pretty crappy architecture. did the occupation of architect even exist in the soviet economy?
might as well just go with it and try to make the stuff look good, and be as socially conscientious as possible.
Vado's got it spot on:
Starchitects are involved with the academy-> academics is tied up with theory and criticism -> theory and criticism are ultimately rooted in marxism.
So yeah, anytime you've got someone with that kind of background building condos for a government that proscribes the death penalty for homosexuals, or making an office building for state media censorship, there's an obvious contradiction.
I also like Ourossoff's observation that the client base for radical academic-based form is no longer just cultural institutions, it's developers looking for a signature style and nouveau rich second world polities looking to buy the newest and shiniest icons with the biggest holes in them.
I personally would hate to see either: 1) academics divorce itself from critical theory (because reading books written by smart europeans is fun), or 2) a complete return to banality in corporate architecture (because watching these projects get built is fun).
I think architecture is just going to have to live with the contradiction for a while, until either the despotic regimes (that are the prime customers for radical form) get liberalized, or until we have a coherent body of critical theory that isn't based on Marx, but is also resistant to commodification (see, you can't even start talking about this stuff without using loaded marxist terminology!).
to continue along 765's train of thought...
the ethics of accepting a commission are rarely questioned and that is where the sell out happens. it seems that 'if I get paid, it must be worth doing' is the modus operandi that Nicolai is dancing around. the following statement sums it up:
There are endless cases of architects’ being reduced to the level of decorator: convenient cultural lubricants whose main function is to help the public digest increasingly cynical developments. (The bigger the project and the more money involved, it seems, the more the architect is treated like a lackey.)
Some of the biggest projects coming out of FOG's office are the most urbanisticly (sic) corrupt (not to just focus on them, but they are an easy target) - take grand avenue or atlantic yards. These monstrous redevelopment schemes should have been shut down immediately, yet gehry's brand helped lubricate their approval (at least for grand ave) - as such, the developer got what they were paying for. But where are the ethical considerations that are invoked by Speer, Myanmar, and Dubai?
When was the last time any architect turned down a commission because it was the wrong building, wrong size, and in the wrong place? Or turned down a job because it would have created more sprawl or destroyed natural habitat?
If we (as a profession) lack the spine to say 'no', then we have sold out (and so have the engineers, planners, landscape architects, and everybody else responsible for the destruction of our planet).
I'm kinda inclined to let Frank off the hook here, if only because he's never given lip service to architecture as cultural critique. It's much worse to say one thing and do another (especially when you're an educator), than it is to be explicit about making pretty things, and consequences be damned.
differend - Lyotard's term for a dispute resulting from the fact that one party cannot voice her complaints (or points) because the other insists on speaking within a different language game or genre of discourse (such as one person speaking within narration and the other within speculation). People who are caught in differends find themselves in difficult conversations. Such difficult conversations result from people using terms in different ways while presuming they are using terms in the same way.
someone like lyotard is talking about the destabalization of established systems. the idea of the academic architect is to oppose the status quo, which when i was in school, was a banal corporate architecture and the strip mall. but rather than reverse an institutional force, instead we have a reinforcement and celebration of the instituted force. now in certain circumstances the institutional program of a building typology could be addressed, criticized, subverted in the design of the building. but that is not what we are witnessing in the mega buildings and just add water urbanism that is popping up around the globe. as lyotard writes, and i paraphrase, "knowledge is only useful if it contributes to profit." Reflective Judgement(to steal from Kant) is what is lacking in these cases. And Reflective Judgement is what is needed to resist political and corporate hegemony.
vado are you drinking?
guys, the age of theory ended in the 90s - architecture as critique was always a flawed idea and succeeded in making architecture irrelevant for the last quarter of the twentieth century. even peter eisenman has abandoned that tired old train of thought.
now is it the greenies that are carrying the banner for a "critical architecture"? i sure hope not. that issue seems too important to be marginalized by leftist morality.
i guess the architecture schools didn't get the memo.
Critical and even "greenies"-driven architecture hasn't gone away. It is also doing its dammest to remain relevant.
However, it is up to the rest of us to make sure it remains critiqued......
i am fully in support of architecture tackling the issues surrounding global climate change. it is imperative. my point is that it needs to work within capitalism and to work with developers to address the issue. "critique" and "opposition" are no longer an option. the new buzz words need to be "partnership" and "engagement," and i believe in a very positive way this is where things are headed.
why return to the post-'68 rhetoric of "selling out"?
i am working on a leed platinum certified detention center for political prisoners. its going to be kickass!
I thought the new buzzwords were 'rationalization' and 'disassociation', not to mention 'reimbursable'.
Eisenman's abandoned critique? I'm sure his students will be thrilled to hear that.
I agree, jafidler, 'selling out' is tired, how about 'cashing in'? I always preferred that one.
Seriously though, 'partnership'? 'engagement'? Got some reading to recommend on those topics?
well, they probably didn't get the "memo" because those pretty much went away in the nineties too
765, well, i would say the arizona cardinals football stadium is a far cry from the memorial to holocaust victims, let alone house x...
Seriously though, 'partnership'? 'engagement'? Got some reading to recommend on those topics?
and in regards to this snide little gem, my point is that architecture is moving away from having to justify every move it makes with dated continental theory. it's opening itself up to multidisciplinary practices where you can take as much from deleuze as you can from business management practices or applied sciences.
I frankly do not find anything wrong selling out if you have true capitalistic beliefs. Thats a choice that everyone will have to grapple with. Architects will always have a choice, make more money or do positive change, it is quite rare to have the opportunity to have both.
My question is when is enough enough! When you do realize that you've made enough money and you can produce a positive change to communities and environments by taking on a job that can make a positive difference. I can't imagine that any stararchitect cannot work with local communities and provide daycare facilities for single parents, promote walkable communities to lessen the weight of green house emissions, design healthy work environments. Cients will always want their museum extensions and richard meier multi-million dollar building facades, its up to the architect to make the right decision and say enough is enough.
I just think, as an architect in this environment, you still have to have a kind of framework or bigger picture in order to avoid getting exploited yourself when walking into these meetings. Knowing some business school jargon isn't going to help you when you're asked to do something that's harmful to cultural, urban, or natural envornments.
These questions have more to do with individual persons and individual businesses, not architecture.
When 'enough is enough' is purely a personal decision, no one will have the same answer (nor should they).
Architecture is a business #1, and everything else a very distant 2nd. What is done with it, just as with any business, depends on the person running the show.
I don't see why architecture should carry a burden larger than similar professions. A creative leader can find ways to drive 'good' decisions, such as LEED or quality design, via business.
This is what they don't teach well in school - good design usually means good business, and if not, then it should be examined more closely. Good solutions can lead to good business, whether it be environmental, social, etc.
i'm sorry, but aren't any of you reading Steven Ward's book pick? perhaps if you did, i am currently reading it now, this topic might find some relevance?
look at architecture pre-'68. architects like eero saarinen and craig ellwood were working symbiotically with big business like ibm, john deere and gm to create architecture that enhanced both the function and aesthetics of business. the time for both architecture and business was innovative and progressive. post-'68 all that changes and the general landscape of architecture goes to hell. why? largely because there is a refusal by the avant-garde to address the issues most relevant to business and tangentially society as a whole; we enter into a period of the esoterica of theory. fast forward to 2008, in the midst of a climate crisis, architecture is poised to enter into a meaningful dialogue with business and society about possible solutions and outcomes through architecture. at this point, is it really a good idea to alienate those that have the potential for change in their pocketbooks (thus really only alienating ourselves)?
if that is selling out, almost every architect would sell out in a second (me included)
and those who say they wouldnt, are lying
Be your own client...Selling out to oneself is better than having your wares pimped by another....
Saarinen and IBM is a great example, jafidler. It's weird to think of IBM as 'evil', but at the time, there was a growing resistance to computers and the worldview of categorization and control that they represented. People looked at IBM with the same foreboding that we reserve for Google today.
It makes me think of a few things:
Pre '68 (and I'm skeptical in general of the whole '1968 as historical discontinuity' idea, seems to be a particular favorite of baby-boomer critics like Kipnis), but anyway, pre '68, you had European modernism, stripped of its ideological origins in Socialism (there's Marx again), and remade as the signature style of ascendant corporate America.
Similarly today, as Owen Hatherley points out, the aesthetic origins of much contempo architecture can be found in radical, prewar, Soviet work like Suprematism. This aesthetic is reworked and repoliticized in the capitalist utopias of the UAE.
I was in Eisenman's class four years ago, when he was still working on the Cardinal's stadium. And half his rap was about the ability of diagrammatic architecture to resist simple reduction to an icon or commodity. He may have softened his line in practice, but his rhetoric is still very much anti-Spectacle. Ask any current YSOA student for the lecture transcripts.
Check out this NYTimes article, where Ourossoff, who's now the apologist for the sellouts, calls out Eisenman for not sticking to his guns and fighting for the diagram at the Cardinal's stadium.
You can't have it both ways, you can't argue for a resistive architecture when culture and money turn their back on you, and then argue for post-critical engagement when the economy swells and Capital wants Novelty. Not without some careful explaining, anyway.
I'm all for critical engagement and dialogue with the forces that fund architecture, but I've yet to see it happen in the current bubble.
finally i read the article and it seems like a nice christmas/hanukkah card to most of the times' architect subjects and their clients.
merry whatever. it's all good.
'let the times work all the starchitects, all the time'
however, i find mr. ouroussoff's opinions ultimately one sided and dismissing beyond his connections' works. he is just as useless as leaky roof complainers and developer chasers. he is also 'a starcrit.'
i don't see how much attention he pays to cult of starism and its effects on the working architects.
i think so called star architects are very good at what they do, but i find their impact and influence on the overall profession much more complex and something to write about rather than saying, like the author, they are better than the rest of the world in a nut shell.
yeah i agree orhan
a blanket statement saying "X" starchitect is the best architect in the world, just because they are popular
i would say people who know anything about the business know the truth, that while they can be very good, it doesnt mean they are the best
its like with actors
some actors/actresses are very popular and "in", but it doesnt necessarily mean they are the best
they might get a ton of offers though, not necessarily based on their skill
a while ago, O cited Lorcan o'herlihy as the best architect in LA. So does that make lorcan a starchitect? or was he one before O beknighted him?
I don't recall many architects appearing in the movies beyond the recent gehry love fest, the biopic 'my architect' and a few other docudramas. So where is the red carpet and paparazzi chasing after stanley tigerman or rem?
765, I don't understand you saying "theory and criticism are ultimately rooted in marxism."
I think you're mistaken, sir.
What about feminism, structuralism, formalism, perhaps psychoanalysis, even deconstructivism (I mean the real decon, not the archi-flavour - witness Derrida's growing disillusionment with Eisenman in "Chora L")? All theories to understand/explain what's going on on the underbelly. I'm sure there are more, but I haven't finished the book yet ;-)
As I understand it, critical theory is used to criticise & explain, not develop new formative ideas from (the decon problem) - I guess that's research's role (theory without the critical) whether in academia or practice. I don't believe critics should do the architect's job or vice versa. I feel that one of the big problems with criticism today is that critics and architects belong to the same field and so can't really objectively criticise from without.
This story, for example, begs for a dose of the recently fashionable sociologist Pierre Bourdieu and "Distinction" - a classic exchange of cultural for economic capital and an argument of taste vs vulgarity. A much stronger explanation than any Marxist critique could offer methinks.
Ourosoff writes:
"In the end, it is the public’s responsibility to do the hard work of parsing the difference between superficial creations designed to cover up a hidden, cynical agenda, and sincere efforts to create a more enlightened vision of a civilization that is evolving at a brutal pace."
But isn't that what I am doing when I say that the BMW Welt is hardly an answer to what he says we complained about "For decades"?. He writes: "the public complained about the bland, soul-sapping buildings churned out by anonymous corporate offices."
It's less a problem of selling out and more a problem of making similarly anonymous space-age objects which are no more communicative, relevant, spatial or able to bridge Bourdieu's levels of distinction. No? It hardly seems that we should hold the 70s paper architecture schemes up as the gold standard, who wants to live in a walking city or an inflatable building? Only the elites think this is funny. Cheers!
i'm not saying it has to be like this, but i do believe it is a symptom of picking projects to match your agenda versus working with a client to create better built outcomes.
the exception...maybe this guy.
I have to say that I find this discourse somewhat confusing -- especially in the context of all the other threads that float around archinect.
on the one hand, the participants in this forum spend an unusual amount of energy lamenting the poor pay and poor economics of this profession.
then, on the other hand, we spend time here, using a lot of big words and complex philosophies, berating those talented architects with the temerity to maybe tailor their approach to design a little bit in order to capture a little more business -- and, perhaps, just perhaps, provide a little more meaningful employment to a bunch of starving architects.
boys and girls - we can't have it both ways.
is it art or is it business -- recognizing full well that both ideas can co-exist in the same practice -- which, I think, is probably the only sin committed by the targets of this thread.
compromise can be a horrible thing ... unless you have mouths to feed and bills to pay and the need to prepare for retirement.
quizzical - it's not just about art and business, it was teaching that kept a lot of these people going through lean years, the business of teaching. And they made their rent money by engaging idealistic students in discourse. Now that times are good, those same students that paid their salary (via loans for tuition) are now hired back to help create projects that sacrifice those same ideals that were sold at the schools.
Further irony: the wages paid are low enough to qualify for loan deferment, everybody wins!
(still thinking about Mr. Blogster's points, I guess the Marxist thread I'm tracking goes from the Frankfurt school through Foucault to Deleuze/Guattari, with side branches and parallels in the Situ/Everyday side of things. Don't see you around here often enough, Norman!)
quiz-
but We want it both ways!!!!
you may want it "both ways", but there's a lot of history to suggest that "both ways" may not be possible for the vast majority of us.
wait ... you are talking about the practice of architecture ... right ?
I think the poor pay/conditions for the common-or-garden architect are terrible and not entirely linked to the phenomenon of the celebrity architect (architects have always been badly paid), but I don't think the celebritisation of architecture helps the little practitioner either - in fact it certainly skews the profession against him/her. I think the exploitation by the dominant over the sub-dominant is ethically very baaaaaad and probably nothing less than criminal (referring back to marxism - division of labour, production of goods etc).
We have to realise that the profession of architecture is a creation out of nothing. A kind of big bang theory - nobody asked for it - architects decided the world needed them and then we're trying to convince people it's worth something more than just construction. That's the game. Dem's da roolz.
As far as Gehry working with the so-called dark-side - good on him I'd say. He's perfected his game at a ripe old age. I'll still criticise his buildings - at least one of which is great (the only one I've actually been to). But I'm far from a fan of any starchitect, as some may know.
Is architecture an art or business?
Both and neither.
It's a field.
A battlefield perhaps.
(Can you tell I'm in my Bourdieu phase?)
(765 - yeah, I like to catch up here every now and again. Would like to do more so, but am just incredibly busy. Will try and make more of an effort next year.)
Enjoy the commercial break everyone!
if anyone was interested
thanks for sharing, ulterior.
this whole debate boils down to two camps on contemporary theory. the first is the old critical theory guys, people like woods and eisenman, who are still, as 765 points out, trying to resist market forces in architecture. the more recent camp is the koolhaas camp that accepts market forces (among others) as an integral aspect of the creation of architecture. (ouroussoff confuses the argument by bringing in the whole starchitect angle, but in principle, he's siding with koolhaas and the "sell outs.") people like woods, sorkin, etc. are going to side with resistance; koolhaas and disciples follow the market.
there's my 100 word interpretation of what's going on.
@ jafidler...
Nice summarization.
Lebbeus critique of Nicolai's article is spot on...
It was a pretty wish-washy non-ethical arguement that was "developed"
However i think the below linked post by Lebbeus from a few weeks back actually is more interesting in what it brings to the discussion about developers, staritects and the unholy trifecta of banal and globalized, form over context or substance, buildings.....
http://lebbeuswoods.wordpress.com/2007/11/25/the-corporate-model/
i don't know, nam. i think in many ways you could say that woods' perspective in this piece is just as vague and generalizing as ouroussoff's. there is some truth to what he's saying, but an awful lot of "buts" that accompany it.
Architects, rarely leaders in society, have followed corporate trends toward the expansion and consolidation of markets by extending their practices first to the scope of the national, then to the international and global. One result has been the radiation of a new type of generic architecture, one that is reproduced in one city after another, around the world.
yes, but you also have the exportation of the high end stuff as well as the "generic". inversely, you have architects being influenced by different cultures whose influence was far less accessible before global expansion. to me woods' whole argument sounds like very early anti-globalization rhetoric. i believe our perspective on these issues, at least within academia, have advanced quite a bit from this. read sasson, appadurai, harvey...
@ jafidler,
I adore appadurai, and the work of the organization he started in mumbai/dharavi.
in fact i told a friend of mine to check out his organization when he is in mumbai, just recently..
First off, your correct and i think part of the problem with much of this discussion and ones that have covered similar topics (ie: staritect, selling out etc on archinect previously) is that we are in reality talking about a small group of people out of the total population of architects. Albeit one that perhaps exerts an outsize force on the architectural/cultural sphere....
Additionally however, much architects globally are being influenced by each other i would argue that there are two main dynamics at play.
One is that of the staritect and generic "unique" development. the other one of the alternative which although making up a significant force within academics has not really punched at its weight class yet. Meaning it has impacted a current generation of students and practitioners, but not really impacted the profession as a whole.
You look at most developing cities around the world. From Almaty, to Dubai to even China and there has been in the last 5-10 years a march of global practices which shape much of the archi-/spatial/culture of these new urban areas.
I personally hope for the mega-city slum to become the new model of autonomous, non-hierarchical, plugged in local urbanism.....
While I would applaud the developments that jafidler is describing, these arguments have little to do with the work of the "Strachitects" whom NO is defending. I am hard pressed to see how the work of Gehry, Hadid, Liebenskind, et al with large cap developers has anything to do with the ideas of, for example, Arjun Appadurai (whose work includes grass roots organizational models set up to correct the inequalities created by autonomous global capitalization, among other things). If I am missing something here I will be happy to be enlightened.
I'm just not sure that Developers are becoming enlightened by engaging the Stars. It is branding and novelty, quite simply, and the developers I talk to say it is the perception that you can, for example, charge a 30% premium for condos in a building designed by a famous architect.
Very rarely are developers spending their own money. They are competing for stacks of cash with a huge range of investment vehicles, and it is a very competitve market. When these capital funds consist of pools of money that are traded, combined, and traded again, the money is ultimately severed from any humanistic input that would allow the dymanics of a project to include a "meaningful dialogue with business and society", at least on its own terms.
Money is a commodity like oil or pork bellies, and it tends to flow downhill towards bigger returns. One can argue that projects that are more directed towards "solutions and outcomes" are not necessarly less profitable than market rate developments. But those projects may be perceived as entailing more risk, and capital fund trustees, managing billions of dollars from investors they may never have met, tend not to take a lot of risks. And profit margin differences of fractions of a percent can be significant amounts of money when considering real estate vehicles.
A bit of a digression, but it relates to the dynamic of how developers work and we need to keep a healthy amount of skepticism about the ability of architects of any stripe to engage the market in a way that would nudge it towards broader based societal outcomes.
I would love to be more optimistic so if anyone could give examples of how the work of "Starchitects" on market based projects have resulted in positive and wider ranging benefits, please show me.
aldo,i think it depends on how you define "positive and wide ranging benefits." i think zaha's bmw plant in leipzig was a significant building in that through its spatial composition it began to rethink the dynamics of manufacturing, business, and design. and though it's a public project, i think you could say the same about koolhaas's seattle public library and its rethinking the role and organization of the library. architecture was never meant to cure all the problems of the world. but i do think the more architecture can engage its external context, and here i'm talking about socially, politically, ecologically, etc., i think the better it becomes.
I will be the last one to argue that challenging and innovative design doesn't have an uplifting and positive effect on the culture. I was thinking more specifically about the role of market based, for-profit ventures (eg: large urban mixed use projects) whose primary function is the generation of profit/cash flow, which is the subject of NO's piece.
The distinction I am making is, for example, BMW is spending their own money and are creating a structure that is only indirectly tied to how the company makes money: BMW sells cars; Developers sell buildings. In this context, does the acceptance of famous Architects by Develpoers represent a move towards a more enlightened attitude by these developers?
Call me cynical, but I tend to think it is a reaction to the more wide spread visibility of of these personalities to the general public. Most of the Famous Architects started their careers with an attitude of resistance, and if there is engagement now it is after (and perhaps the result of) many years of resistance early in their careers.
I guess the heart of the matter comes down to the idea of resistance vs. engagement, and the way in which architectcture plays its part in the advancement of the culture (as all relevant Art does). It is great that Frank Gehry gets to design the Grand Avenue project (even though I don't think it breaks any new ground formally), and maybe the result will be better than if some some more conventionally corpoarate firm had taken it on, but I don't think FG's participation has involved much "engagement". The inclusionary housing, the sustainability and transit oriented aspects of Grand Avenue all came about through negotiations with the County through the entitlement process, and were in effect regardless of the Architect.
ahhhh, i understand your distinction now between a corporation and a developer, aldo; didn't get it at first. i see your point, but i think it challenges architects to find some worth in these types of developer-driven projects and be able to convince clients that he or she as a designer is adding something to the project beyond a signature style - not an easy task, particularly when many of these projects are flawed from their conception.
my reaction to that is this is where a more interdisciplinary practice can really challenge developers with good design and show them how good design can positively affect their bottom line. imagine if architects or more specialized disciplines were on board with these developers from the outset of the project rather than just picking it up when the building rolls around. a lot of the idiotic decisions made up front about siting or funding or what-have-you could be avoided. i'm not saying the architect has an answer for all these questions, but a multidisciplinary team, working together, could make far more out of these fairly banal developer-driven projects. it sure beats shrugging your shoulders and writing the whole mess off as the work philistines. this type of interdisciplinary practice is occurring in large corporate architecture office, but i personally believe it has more potential for positive change in smaller offices. i just believe that to make it work we are going to have to leave behind the biases of the old garde critical theory folks and accept the reality of the world we operate in.
SHoP is kind of doing that, right jafidler? What do you think of their approach?
yes, they are, and i really like what they're doing. it's a very pro-active approach. rem and oma/amo started this way of thinking on a macro level, but personally i'm more interested to hear ways in which firms have adopted it at a micro scale: methods for public/private partnerships, mapping as a planning tool, scenario planning, etc.
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