Archinect - News

Wealth is cemented at the top as starchitects continue to see gains

2021-11-22T14:32:00-05:00

Just in time for the holiday shopping season, a new list from therichest.com has ranked the world’s top ten architects in terms of their total net worth.

Big A architecture remunerates extraordinarily well for some, with the total list’s net worth nearing three-quarters of a billion USD.

Norman Foster took the top spot with an estimated net worth amounting to $250 million. The outspoken 86-year-old has had a windfall of big development contracts in the past few years, which has helped him maintain the position he has held for parts of the last two decades.

Frank Gehry came in a distant second with around $100 million in total worth. Gehry was followed quickly by Moshe Safdie, who also hit the $100 mark, although it was not clear which methodology was used to delineate the two (some publicized estimates have Safdie’s worth significantly higher at around $150 million). Oculus designer Santiago Calatrava was the only other architect to hit the nine-figure plateau. His estimated net ...

BIG, Kengo Kuma, and Studio Gang tapped for Westbank's San Jose masterplan

2021-05-06T11:42:00-04:00

Vancouver-based developer Westbank has unveiled plans for a collection of mixed-use projects in downtown San Jose, California. The development will feature six new or renovated buildings by leading architects including Kengo Kuma and Associates, Bjarke Ingels Group, Studio Gang, James K.M. Cheng Architects, and WRNS Studio. The buildings within the Silicon Valley initiative will combine to deliver 700 new residences and 5 million square feet of workspace, in what Westbank sees as an effort to “inspire the next generation of innovators by creating a healthier, more beautiful community.”

While blending a variety of architectural forms, the six projects are linked by an effort to respond to the climate crisis, with each building targeting deep carbon reductions for both operational and embodied carbon. “What we are proposing is a collection of net zero life cycle carbon buildings adjacent to inspiring residential,” says Westbank. “We propose workspace that merges nature and office spac...

What's new, Miami? A look at the city's latest A-list architecture additions.

2018-12-04T13:37:00-05:00

Miami’s newest wave of designs could be its most ambitious yet. Fitting for a place that cherishes A-listers, virtually every celebrity architect in the world, and many rising stars, have built there in the last decade. The big names include Frank Gehry, Rem Koolhaas, Zaha Hadid, Herzog & De Meuron, Grimshaw, César Pelli, Richard Meier, Arquitectonica, Rafael Moneo, Jean Nouvel and Bjarke Ingels. The impressive results are scattered citywide, from Miami Beach to the thriving Design District.

Sam Lubell takes a stroll from Downtown Miami to the Design District to Miami Beach for a NYT roundup of (fairly) recent additions to the city's impressive portfolio of landmark buildings by noteworthy architects, including Herzog & de Meuron's 1111 Lincoln Road parking garage, OMA's Faena Forum arts center, Zaha Hadid Architects's One Thousand Museum condo tower, Grimshaw's Frost Science Museum, and, of course, the exuberant Museum Garage with facade contributions by J. Mayer H, WORKac, and others.

Garages, so hot right now.

Related: Listen to our podcast episode about Miami's garages, in our conversation with Thom Faulders of Faulders Studio.

Bullet-proof Upper East Side townhouse designed by Rafael Viñoly lists for $50M

2018-09-25T18:42:00-04:00

Rafael Viñoly is best known for designing 432 Park, the tallest residential building in the Western Hemisphere, but he makes time for private homes, too–at least when they have headline-making features like a bullet-proof glass facade. His firm was first tapped to design this Upper East Side townhouse by Argentinian billionaire Eduardo Eurnekian to serve as his home and U.S. headquarters, but it looks like he instead decided to list the finished product for $50 million.

Cube Haus commissions top architects to design modular, affordable homes

2018-05-08T15:57:00-04:00

What if buying a house were more like buying a car? Could the process of choosing between a Ford, Volkswagen or Nissan ever translate into picking between an Adjaye, Rogers or Assemble? Beyond the dream of ever being able to buy a house, the prospect of commissioning an architect-designed home is an impossibly remote prospect for most of us, a luxury confined to the glossy pages of Sunday supplements and Grand Designs.

The founders of Cube Haus have commissioned well known architects such as Adjaye Associates, Skene Catling de la Peña, and Carl Turner Architects to design modular homes at affordable prices. Targeting infill and backland sites in the London area, Cube Haus is looking to fill a small housing niche with well-crafted, off-plan new properties.

Off-site production and lower margins allow the company to produce houses 10%-15% cheaper than equivalent properties in a given area. The trick is to come up with modular designs that can properly adapt to different, awkward sites. Cube Haus aims to create a portfolio of building types that can be scaled up for larger number unit sites—creating affordable housing designed by some of the top names in architecture.

REVEALED: David Adjaye’s Wall Street Tower, his first skyscraper in NYC

2017-05-23T14:45:00-04:00

When it opens in 2019, the building is expected to be one of the tallest in the neighborhood. Views from the skyscraper include the Statue of Liberty, the Woolworth Building, City Hall Park and the East River. The condos will range from $630,000 studios to $4.7 million four-bedrooms.

Three years ago, starchitect David Adjaye completed his first project in NYC, an affordable housing complex in Harlem called the Sugar Hill Development.

Now that he's garnered international fame for his National Museum of African American History and Culture in DC, Adjaye is coming back to the big apple to build his first skyscraper in the city-- a 61-story, 750-foot-tall condominium condo in the Financial District. Known as the Wall Street Tower, it appears as a gold prism against rigid rows of arched windows.

To win recognition, China's smaller cities bet on starchitecture

2017-03-20T14:38:00-04:00

From egg-shaped concert halls to skyscrapers reminiscent of big pairs of pants, China’s top cities are famously full of curious monuments to architectural ambition. But as land prices in the main metropolises have shot into the stratosphere, developers have been scrambling to buy up plots in the country’s second and third-tier cities, spawning a new generation of delirious plans in the provinces.

"From Harbin “City of Music” to Dezhou “Solar Valley”, provincial capitals are branding themselves as themed enclaves of culture and industry to attract inward investment, and commissioning scores of bold buildings to match."

How starchitect culture shifted in 2016

2016-12-16T18:18:00-05:00

This topical review of 2016's News isn't about certain architects' big projects or prizes (those'll have their own lists), but about the culture surrounding those big names, and the way their personalities convey the profession to a wider audience. For your reading pleasure, presented in reverse chronological order:

Jean Nouvel's court battle over the Philharmonie continues

Nouvel had originally filed an unsuccessful suit against the Philharmonie for "defiling" his design by altering it without his consent. He's now filing the complaint with a different French court, to get them to change it back to his original design, bringing up complex issues of intellectual copyright as well as architectural reputation.

Frank Gehry might bail on the U.S. now that Trump's been elected

Dual American-Canadian citizen Gehry mentioned in an interview that French president Francois Hollande had offered him self-exile, although it's unlikely that he'll take Francois up on it. In the same interview, Gehry...

How the Pritzker Prize came to be

2016-03-16T13:15:00-04:00

As native Chicagoans, it’s not surprising that our family was keenly aware of architecture [...] While the architecture of Chicago made us cognizant of the art of architecture, our work with designing and building hotels made us aware of the impact architecture could have on human behavior. So in 1978, when we were approached with the idea of honoring living architects, we were responsive. — Thomas J. Pritzker

A brief history on the family behind "the architecture profession's highest honor", and how the prize was established.

For more, check out Archinect's most recent coverage on the Pritzker Prize:

Why is the Pritzker such a big deal?

Aravena's Pritzker: A Critical Round-Up

"Making A Pritzker Laureate" – Martha Thorne, executive director of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, gives us an inside look at the prestigious award, on Archinect Sessions #48

Chilean architect Alejandro Aravena, director of this year's Venice Biennale, named 2016 Pritzker Prize Laureate

The New East is where western starchitect dreams come true (or turn into nightmares)

2016-01-07T14:00:00-05:00

The rise of international architecture competitions has given western architects an opportunity to make their mark on eastern Europe and Central Asia [...] Regardless of record-high fees, some of their projects are being cancelled half-way through or take a good decade to build. But the ones that are brought to life often become some of the most recognised works of its authors. For starchitects the miles between eastern Europe and Central Asia is the place where dreams and ambitions come true.

What a starchitectural skyline means for the future of New York

2015-09-14T14:25:00-04:00

The latest explosion of Manhattan development has fully and passionately embraced the phenomenon of the global starchitect. [...] As it turned out, the future would be pure real estate ... The future was the privatisation of the sky and a transfer from corporate power to individual wealth, the visual manifestation of the 0.1 per cent. It was a catwalk of anorexic skinnyscrapers by the equivalents of haute-couture designers ... global names with which to sell real estate.

ClickHole's magnificent spoof on starchitects' unbuilt buildings

2015-07-24T17:44:00-04:00

“a barbershop, a beautiful barbershop formed by curves of alabaster stone. It would resemble an albino slug that’s eating a pile of white towels. Instead of sitting on swivel chairs during your haircut, you’d rest on a big egg that rises out of an indoor reflecting pool. [...] Every day, I open the phone book and call a handful of random barbershops to see if anyone is interested, but I have yet to find a barber with the vision and bravery required.” – Zaha Hadid

I had dreamed of the day when the visionary and hysterical ClickHole would lampoon starchitects. Now that day has come, and the resulting listicle does not disappoint.

Here's Frank Gehry's lost project for the "Evil Concert Hall":

"Instead of holding music, the evil hall would just house endless screaming and clanking chains, establishing an intriguing duality that exists not just in the Disney universe but throughout the entirety of the cosmos. The Disney family only approved the good building.”

And poor Santiago Calatrava, disappointed to realize his design wasn't so original after all:

“My best design ever was actually the Taj Mahal, but I found out that it had already been made. It was extremely humiliating, because I learned that while pitching it for a museum in Barcelona. When I unveiled the model, the clients said, ‘This is the Taj Mahal. India has one,’ and I told them I was pretty sure they didn’t, because I had just invented it. We looked up the Taj Mahal, and sure enough, it...

Van Alen auctioning a hot-tub roundtable, helicopter rides, birdwatching with famous architects for spring fundraiser

2015-05-11T09:40:00-04:00

The Van Alen Institute and online auction platform Paddle8 recently opened up their 2015 Auction of Art + Design Experiences that lets eager (and wealthy) bidders opt for basically hanging out with some of today's famous architects and designers.

This year's auction boasts an international list of activities with 24 leading creatives, like sitting in a hot-tub roundtable with Charles Renfro in his beach house, biking through downtown L.A. with Michael Maltzan on his daily route, birdwatching with Jeanne Gang, flying in a helicopter with Norman Foster over the River Thames, and testing the smoke ring generator at Copenhagen's waste-to-energy power plant with Bjarke Ingels and BIG partner Jakob Lange.

After bidding closes on May 20, proceeds will support Van Alen's ongoing cross-disciplinary research, public programs, and design competitions. Additionally, Van Alen will host their annual Spring Party on May 13 at The Surrogate's Courthouse in Lower Manhattan, New York City.

Check out the...

Patrik Schumacher takes to Facebook "In Defense of Stars and Icons"

2015-04-10T14:59:00-04:00

Earlier today, Patrik Schumacher of Zaha Hadid Architects posted a nearly 1,400 word polemic on Facebook denouncing contemporary architecture criticism and defending the “star-system” that has been instrumental in his firm’s success in the last few decades. Instead of “seeing conspicuity and success merely as a red cloth and occasion to knock down icons (and to teach the virtues of the ordinary, obscure and underappreciated),” Schumacher suggests that the role of the architecture critic should be to explicate and defend the work and status of successful architects to an ignorant public.

Schumacher sets out some “heuristic principles” that he hopes could guide his proposed role for the architecture critic. He states that so-called “iconic architecture” is the invention of critics rather than “the architects’ discourse,” which “serves the purpose of filling the explanatory gap that inevitably opens up because the methodology and motivation behind the unusual appearance of a radically ...

Learning from Las Vegas: a look at the Strip through urban planning lenses

2015-02-10T14:07:00-05:00

Al describes CityCenter as the product of “the Bilbao effect: the notion that buildings designed by celebrity architects bring in tourists, and in particular a higher-end type of visitor”. MGM’s version was to bring in name-brand architects such as Daniel Libeskind, Helmut Jahn and Norman Foster [...]. “It goes against the casino design convention,” Al says, “by having towers that let in natural light and meet the street the way buildings do in other cities” – with retail spaces, not gaming.

Architecture’s New Age

2014-11-07T13:56:00-05:00

IS THE NEW ARCHITECTURAL century still stuck in the end of the last one? Yes, but not for long. Asked to take stock of their discipline, architects largely agree that one era is winding down and another is beginning. [...] “The time of the grand sculptural building is over,” says Mr. Sauerbruch, looking back on what he calls architecture’s “Mannerist period,” symbolized by figures such as Frank Gehry and Zaha Hadid.

Mexico City’s new and vivacious architecture

2014-08-26T13:41:00-04:00

They would lead me and two friends through a collection of new and old galleries, museums, neighborhoods, institutions and restaurants, as well as buildings of their own designs, to give me a sense of what stands out to Mexico City architects when they turn their gaze toward home.

Sam Lubell visited Mexico City recently, and was led on tours of the city's architecture (old and new) by Fernando Romero and Michel Rojkind.

Also see previous - The chromatic feats..., wherein Guy Trebay rediscovers Mexico City and the houses of the great Mexican architect Luis Barragán.

Weekly News Round-Up for August 11, 2014: Monumental politics, smart homes and GSAPP's new dean

2014-08-18T12:53:00-04:00

Friday, August 15

Farewell to the Old Okura: The famous Hotel Okura, built in the 1960s in a distinctive fusion of modern and traditional Japanese styles, is closing in response to prohibitive earthquake retrofits and larger, newer hotels in the area.
Samsung Acquires SmartThings, A Fast-Growing Home Automation Startup: SmartThings, an aggregator for all "smart" internet-connected devices in the home, cost Samsung an estimated $200 million —chump change in comparison to Google's $3.2 billion acquisition of Nest.

Thursday, August 14

One ridesharing app to rule them all: Ridescout moves into the competitive world of rideshare: Ridescout aggregates hundreds of ridesharing services to compare trips, and will now include "carpool" options that can help users share trips. The announcement comes after last week's news that Uber and Lyft are now both offering carpooling services.
Revisiting the American Folk Art Museum controversy, through comics: A thoughtful and diplomatic look at AFAM's his...

Editor's Picks #380

2014-08-13T20:11:00-04:00

For the latest edition of Student Works: Justine Testado spoke with project architect, Duncan Baker-Brown, about The Waste House, designed/built by faculty and students from the Faculty of Arts and City College Brighton & Hove.

Olaf Design Ninja_ did some quick math "The numbers tell quite the story...an average of 8 people per work week day for the 15 month project duration. Compared to an equivalent wood frame house in the US that could be an entire subdivision. This should tell you how far industry has to go to do the right thing".

Plus, elementary school librarian, Jennette Neville, shared her top 15 recommendations of architecture books for young children.

News

The NYT published a letter To the Editor: Less Ego in Architects by Peggy Deamer, a partner in Deamer Architects and professor at the Yale School of Architecture. Editors saw an opportunity to start a Sunday Dialogue, and a week later published responses and a rejoinders. davvid had a thought "Architecture firms are alrea...

The ‘Starchitect’ Image

2014-08-11T13:17:00-04:00

Readers respond to a letter by Peggy Deamer, an architect, calling for less arrogance and more collaboration in architecture. [...] It is not only the public that is fed up with this idea of The Architect, but also the profession itself. Having watched ourselves increasingly backed into the corner of aesthetic elitism, we are now more interested in models of practice that do away with the egos and the glamorous buildings they are associated with.

Previously:

Invitation to a Dialogue: Less Ego in Architects

2014-08-04T11:34:00-04:00

Frank Gehry once said that if we didn’t have starchitects, architects (and architecture) wouldn’t be in the media at all. But this kind of coverage, even when positive, we don’t need. It perpetuates a Howard Roarkian image that makes most of us architects cringe — not the least because of the uber-capitalist, Ayn Rand alignment — and also deflates a more productive optimism within the profession that sees these arrogant acts as old school.

NY Times Enters the "Starchitect" Debate

2014-07-30T13:58:00-04:00

Witold Rybczynski, the architect and emeritus professor of urbanism at the University of Pennsylvania, complained recently about “starchitects” who often work in cities they are unfamiliar with, creating buildings that are out of sync with their surroundings. In an interview, he argued in favor of local architectural talent, or “locatecture.” Are superstar architects ruining city skylines?

In this "Room for Debate" at the New York Times, Allison Arieff, Vishaan Chakrabarti, Beverly Willis, and Angel Borrego Cubero all provide their opinions on the much-used and controversial portmanteau.

The Competition: a documentary that exposes how 'starchitects' really work

2014-05-08T15:04:00-04:00

The Competition, which has its UK premiere at the Barbican tonight, follows the trials and tribulations of five stellar practices competing in a doomed bid to build a new national museum for Andorra, back in 2009. As the global financial crisis hit rock-bottom, no job was too small for architects whose dreams of dotting Middle Eastern deserts with their snazzy signatures had been revealed as a hopeless mirage.

Homes of the starchitects recreated in Milan

2014-03-06T12:29:00-05:00

Curator Francesca Molteni filmed each architect's home, and interviewed them about their lives and careers. Working alongside fellow architect and set designer Davide Pizzigoni, Molteni has recreated the private residences of Hadid and co., “by means of real-life videos, images, sounds, comments and reconstructions. The result is an interactive exhibition space that unveils the architects’ visions of living, their choices and their obsessions.”

Miami's new vice – an addiction to star architects

2013-12-03T16:46:00-05:00

The city has become a drop-off point for the migrant tribe of global super-rich, who feel the need to keep homes in London, New York, perhaps Moscow or an Asian city, and now Miami. [...] At times, Miami seems to be following a London formula: property speculation + contemporary art + restaurant boom + cultural diversity = dynamic world city. It is easy to see where it all gets a bit shallow, starting with the sudden mania for collecting big-name architects.

Museums may be his most lasting legacy

2013-11-11T11:43:00-05:00

“It is amazing,” said Mr. Piano...“Looking back, I counted, and I said, ‘Is this true?’ ”

Ted Loos sat down with Renzo Piano to discuss his firm's design for an expansion to the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, opening on Nov. 27. They also discussed the firms history of 25 major museum projects either underway or built, and how Piano has seemingly become the go to "starchitect" for museum commissions.

The ‘Starchitect’ Stereotype

2013-10-10T12:08:00-04:00

Articles like “A Star Architect Leaves Some Clients Fuming” shouldn’t make us architects defensive about our work. It gives a deserved death blow to the “starchitect” and all the unhelpful stereotypes that come with it.... The image that architecture is done by a single genius has never conformed to reality, but particularly in today’s practice — relying as it does on extended technical expertise — it is ridiculous to attribute the design to a single genius.

Starchitect and Love for the Portmanteau

2013-08-08T14:41:00-04:00

There may be better terms but it seems we are going to be stuck with “starchitect” until everybody with a keyboard agrees to retire it.

Guy Horton tackles the subject of starchitect mechanism in a Metropolis article where he quotes some other critics on the subject including yours truly.

Architecture with capital letter A

2013-04-24T18:38:00-04:00

Architecture with capital letter A is a short movie, featuring Architects who might have shaped the concept of Architecture itself in the last decade. The movie combines excerpts of their interviews, speeches or documentaries over the last 70 years. This accumulation of scenes expresses somehow the condition of Architecture today - its moments of Glory and Misery.

The Irrational Exuberance of Rem Koolhaas

2013-04-03T14:44:00-04:00

"Irrational exuberance" seems to me an apt introduction to an understanding of Rem Koolhaas in the '90s and beyond; it foregrounds his great success in navigating the intersection of the pragmatic corporate sector, on the one hand, and the “delirious” and volatile realm of desire and possibility, on the other. ... Koolhaas has encouraged his followers to shed the crippling shackles of critical theory and pick up a surfboard upon which to ride the shock waves of the new economy.

For decades Rem Koolhaas has been not only a leading global architect but also a restless provocateur. On Places, in a chapter from the forthcoming book Architecture and Capitalism, Ellen Dunham-Jones explores Koolhaas's protean career, from the early fantastical projects to the big books and bigger buildings of recent years. It's a career that has come to embody, she argues, "the inevitable contradictions in trying to marry art and capitalism, radicalism and pragmatism, icon-making and city-making."