don't forget our "beloved" Charlie Lindbergh not only was into filicide, but was also a Nazi sympathizer...

well werner von braun was a major in the ss and ran slave labor in the nazi rocket program. conveniently all this information vanished as he led the usa to the moon! also, our comments about the nazi ethos is from the big lebowski.

yeah but didn't Mel Brooks take of the Nazis?

a all-time favorite, vado.

she's my soft touch typewriter and i'm the GrEaTdIcTaToR

I just posted an Oppenheim interview on the news section. I really did it because of this question and asnwer (which he actually did not directly answer):

(Bryant Rousseau asks) User-generated content is all the rage right now online, with sites such as YouTube, Flickr, and MySpace transforming the Web. You have a “new frontier” type of project, Cube, that is perhaps somewhat analogous: It’s user-generated design. Let me read to you what you’ve said about Cube: It “creates the possibility for ultimate volumetric flexibility ... [It] promotes its occupants to design vertically, horizontally, and diagonally. … [It’s ] true interactive architecture.” It’s an overused word, but maybe it’s fair to say Cube is quite a radical concept, allowing buyers, to some extent, to shape the final form of the building—and taking some of the control away from the architect. What was its original inspiration?

Oppenheim: The original inspiration was my thesis project at Cornell, an idea of creating a vertical neighborhood, with people building and defining their own domains similar to how they do so in horizontal developments of single-family houses.

But that being said, this project is not an opportunity to put something learned in school into the work of my practice. Whenever we are confronted with a project, we think first of the structural systems to get efficiency and clarity. Before we design, it’s not here is the pretty picture; it’s here is the most efficient and pure and elemental way to design a project in context of the program.

So in examining this project, and the complex configurations of the site, I began having conversations with my engineer. And this building was made possible because of the amazing Yrsael Seinuk, one of the greatest living engineers.

In discussions I had with him, it was, “What if we do the structural system on the outside, a gridded, diagonal bracing, so we don’t need sheer walls to come down internally?” And it was this analysis of how to deal with the structure on the outside, how do we simplify the building, how do we make it more economical, that generated the ideas that led to this steel-structure concept: People buy cubes of space and connect them in whatever way fits their domestic requirements, with all the mechanical systems tapped from the central core.

Buyers can configure the cubes in many ways. You can buy two cubes and place them horizontally, buy three and go with two horizontal, one vertical, et cetera. The idea being you can start to define your own domain; we want people to have the flexibility to dream.

As architects, we’re always creating infrastructure, but what happens inside is up to the occupant. I love that personalization, and this project [enables] it at the massive scale of a high-rise building where the buyers have flexibility and control over the final look of the project. There is a definite appeal to me in letting this randomness affect the architecture.

Thinking about this question made me realize that what we have been saying in this thread seems tangential to what Archigram was saying in the early 1960's. (For reference, I wrote about Archigram, media, and architecture, in my blog a few months back.)

Two thoughts:
Is today's starchitect system a backlash to the idea, that Archigram first proposed, that architecture does not matter any longer, only media.

Second, how does the web and digital 3-D worlds (second life) change Archigram's proposition?

Xchouse me --- you know my bad english behaviour so I guess Im'e exchoused when I ask ; what is this Oppenhiem guy talking about , cubes, structural systems ;

"“What if we do the structural system on the outside, a gridded, diagonal bracing, so we don’t need sheer walls to come down internally?”

--------- This guy can't be talking about 3D-H can he ???

------------ No sorry now I see it ; containers stacked and secured , now That is genious !!!

content exists to be appropriated. the signature building is only a backdrop for james bond or the new bmw advertisement. a thing is only important in that it can be used by the marketing department to package something to sell. this should be pretty obvious by now.

well, it's certainly not "provable" but i'm still inclined to give old johnson the benefit of the doubt and believe that he was more interested in the spectacle & excitement of the early nazi success than having any real interest in the grittiness of politics as it effects most people...i wonder if he ever crossed paths with paris hilton?

by proclaiming to be an antistarchitect one is just looking for media coverage. if antistarchitects don't want the publicity, i advise they keep their traps shut.

i am referring to an idea being coopted by other forces. certainly a work of architecture or a work of art when examined by those embedded in the discipline (and the passionate amateur) will see it for what it truly is and can be. the appropriation is for the short term, the quick and superficial reading.

starchitect system for quilian (a working and evolving description):
-architect makes a new form and discovers innovative way to build it
-the form-building gets press
-the architect becomes a pseudo-celebrity and the building becomes a "style" -the architect starts using the same bag of (increasingly superficial) formal tricks in all consequent projects.
-The press (including architectural) give up really engaging criticism and if said architect does anything it is celebrated as the coming of the messiah for a city, building type, etc...
-The public come to think of that "style" as architecture
-Lesser known architects follow the public's new tastes
-"Architecture" loses yet another battle.

A (very rough) timeline of events that make me say the "system" comes in part as a backlash against Archigram's proposals:
-Archigram's work (in very basic terms) says that architecture no longer has power and we live in he city as media. They create media inspired cities, houses, mostly in paper using the media of the time.
-Rossi and Eisenman backlash against the idea, instead insulating themselves in the world of architecture, "protecting" it until the public is ready again.
-This insulation cares about one and only one thing: form. This is picked up by the press and all that matters now is innovation in form-making.
-Even architects that try to go beyond form get into shape.

What called my attention about the Oppenheim is the way the question is framed.

vado that is also nobel's position. I do not think that is viable answer.

qr i am not proposing that as an answer. i am proposing that as the phenomenon of marketing/advertising in that any "image/object" is fair game and can be used in any (con)text that the appropriater sees fit. it is consumerism uber alles. the advertising/marketing machine consumes content and shits it out to suit its own end which is to promote the consumption of products/images/objects.

Fuck Christian values! I am very disturbed by that sort of manipulative appropriation of Biblical grandstanding. & really really loathe EVANGELISM as an approach.

I don't mean this as coming out in favor of a system by which the profession is publicly distilled into several figureheads who have little to do with most individual practitioners. But just think about how you are going about analyzing this!!!

We have media darlings of "social" architecture... but not because they are building many beloved major structures but because they are prominent sources of pull quotes in the media about ethical humane sustainable design. They are building significant behavioral and organizational structures, if not structures made of glass - metal- wood - earth! But isn't that analagous to the mostly-paper-starchitect? If the problem is with "fame" in itself then why is that any different? It is just shunting the criteria for fame from one set of qualities to another.

Wrong --- stararchitecture produce newspaper articles that make you puke . Make you sick on the behave of the architecture you just want to forget about, the pseudo academic frases " the Hero Master computer in person, son of the gun.
"By innovative enginous, and steel and wood IS Architecture , Math in a dance of skillfull mastering blah. blah blah."

Now just look from where I tried to translate the blubble babble nonsense spetacular herotic innovative blah blah blah ;

http://ibyen.dk/Kunst

And a picture to ;

http://ibyen.dk/kunst/anmeldelser/article329822.ece

I often wondered how it feel to know a bit of the truth about it .....

"Louisiana åbner i dag en udstilling, der helt i tråd med emnet sætter en tårnhøj standard for skønhed. For talmagikeren Cecil Balmonds forskning åbner nye muligheder for arkitekturens formsprog."

The arts museum Louisiana today open an exebition that set a Tower High standard for Beauty . For the counting magic and master Cecil Balmonds research open new options for the formlanguage of architecture".

----------- I wonder who made the emporors clotches, just the looks of them.

***

He approved of what he saw. "The German green uniforms made the place look gay and happy," he wrote in a letter. "There were not many Jews to be seen. We saw Warsaw burn and Modlin being bombed. It was a stirring spectacle." As late as 1940, Mr. Johnson was defending Hitler to the American public. It seems that only an inquiry by the Federal Bureau of Investigation - and, presumably, the prospect of being labeled a traitor if America entered the war - led him to withdraw completely from politics.

Today, any debate over an important figure with a fascist or Communist background easily becomes an occasion for blame games between right and left. Mr. Johnson is no exception. Morally serious people can have different views of his personal culpability.

***

1
2

???

modernism is a strange thing. if one looks at it one way one can see the dictitorial possibilities, particularly in architecture. architecture i think had more faith in the machine changing the world. well it did change but not necessarily in a good way. moderinism in the other arts was much more ambiguous and about throwing off the constraints of the social convention. ie "did you paint this painting monsieur picasso? no, monsier goehring. you did."

stephen, glad you're back, don't leave again...

Although starchitecture may come at the expense of the built environment, I see little evidence that Architecture actually is about the built environment. Most of the buildings that we worship are in other countries, cities, or even if local are private homes inaccessible to our personal experience.

That being the case, their representations carry much more weight than the structures themselves, and it only follows that the Architects emphasis would turn towards the creation of these representations rather than the buildings as an end of themselves. I suspect I am not the architect since Le Corbusier who during the design phase of a project has thought about how the project will look in a photograph.

Architecture culture has returned to a preoccupation with the picturesque - that which is made in anticipation of its representation - and as Vado and Peter Burger have pointed out, representations are easily and happily appropriated. Since there is nothing that can be done about this, the best we can do is remain conscious of the mechanics of appropriation, and use the same techniques to our own ends.

So what is an alternative practice? I tend to agree with treekiller - it is the ideas based work of people like Cameron and McDonough, and probably even more so by nearly anonymous consultancies like DEGW.

Certainly Archigram cannot be said to work outside the Starchitecture system, since their work was entirely (and consciously) representational. While they do not represent an alternative practice per se, they do show that it is quite possible to shape policy and the material world if the representations that you create are explicitly rhetorical. As a Los Angeles resident, one of my favorite civic moments is at local sporting events when Randy Newman's "I love LA" plays and everyone sings along to the line: "Look at those mountains, look at those trees, look at that bum over there, he's down on his knees, look at these women, ain't nothing like them no where... ...We love it!" No matter how blithely most people mouth the words, everytime it plays someone thinks about that line.

As for Philip Johnson, a good part of his genius was how he managed his fascist past once it became unfashionable. It has also been pointed out that however lamentable, his political occupations during the 30s were actually quite commonly held. Kazys Varnelis wrote an article some time ago which touched on some of these issues. I think it was also treated quite heavily in his dissertation. http://varnelis.net/articles/we_cannot_not_know_history

Now computers do that different --- the intire structure ,the exact shaped compute part generated from an actural 3D model, point to very a very different way to build the actural individual building structure .

Very very different and new design tools, promise an accurate production and a bill,case you master the intire process ,know the options digital projecting can yield wonders all architecture trends, with a new skill.
But ofcaurse there are the hassard than now "anyone" can then become an architect.

The Lions of this new architecture then become cheap ,safe houses and a new architecture an architecture that as all other trends been decided by the materials and the technikes. Then emty those bottles and go out and make that mountain of money, stop talking about it we just end up dead in the water discussing dead artists , was that the call ????

vindpust, when I saw that you were the last one to post on this thread, I knew you were going to get around to blaming the whole starchitecture phenomenon on not enough people using your 3DH software...

No I would newer do that ,ofcaurse I hope enough young designers will realise the new architecture and the obvious total freedom with it, but this is a fight against the old and "this is how we build a house" , but it was not me who attemted it to be a fight , I just happily share a vision about a new architecture and how to build at a third four times stronger allowing the computer to be the fantastic tool it havn't yet been allowed to be.

It is true that the system I promote don't make a window as a hole in a brick wall ---- the window are in the 3D drawing subtracted from the Solid box and then a framework are generated sort of, around the window. The walls to are not individual vertical panels but sort of "grow" without anyone "laying" the foundations for the walls or the floors , and the walls and floors is a part of the basic structure, not individual parts so to say but parts of the framework where each part support any other so to add maximum structural strength.

Allow these idears and there will be a new architecture, one that none of the okd hero's could even emagine.

And yes I realised years ago ,that this voice telling about how the computer shuld be used. had to be stopped , stripped the artists name and at best the credits given to some dead hero , not one obvious borrow, not two not many borrowing the system I happily shared , will ever raise your etics gentlemen, if nothing else stripping my name prove that, prove what "rights" artists are allowed under strict academic rule, no happy messeage unless it praise a stararchitect, no new engenious method can unfold while a method is not architecture as you dictate.

Now is this bound to repeat over and over again -- is Per Corell bound to point to his original sharing his method every time a frame structure again win a contest, will Per Corell for every time ask the same rude questions and in his silli way ask his name to be restored and the harm done compensated ???

I wish there were a backlash against starchitecture, that would be great. Then maybe we could stop talking about Archigram at all.

The the big problem witht he 'Starchitect' phenom is that it essentially trivializes Architecture. It provides a brand, a name to drop, without requiring any deeper understanding. The question then becomes: does that matter? I suppose when one buys athletic shoes simply because LeBron James endorses them is one thing, but given the enormous impact buidlings have on the environment, the economy, politics, etc., is it not important to at least attempt to communicate the architect's attitude towards these issues? And to begin to distinguish how different architects approach these issues?

If the 'Starchitects' were using their fame to communicate the complexity of their works and the impact the work has on the culture, that would be one thing. But a great deal of what I hear is more about communicating to other Architects, which is OK, but we do that anyway, fame or not.

I think the detrimental effect wotrks in both directions. I sometimes question how much Frank Gehry, for example, concerns himself with the impacts of his architecture. He is not hired to do much beyond creating a 'Frank Gehry'.

Of course if our attitude is that architecture doesn't impact these things and we don't really have to concern ourselves with them, then the 'Starchitect' is the only model we have to gauge the success of our work. Perhaps that is the crux of the issue.

So then the problem is really the people who fail to hold stars accountable?
The problem is with those of us who fail to ask them what their ideas are and explain the problems with those ideas, or lack of ideas? Or am I just naive?

i was at the indianapolis museum of art this weekend using their reference library to copy the "what is art" book that we are reading for the archinect book club. the library had all its current periodicals out on display. several of these journals were from different museums around the country. the denver, kansas city museums both had their new buildings on the cover. so, they are proud and are using the noterity of their new designs for branding, profile escalation, etc. most people do not wish to entertain any ideas beyond the superficial in regards to thinking about anything. whether a building or the state of the world.

probably wouldn't have gotten the attention in the first place without the name, though it certainly would still have deserved any attention it might still have gotten. the more we looked at it, the more impressive/accomplished it revealed itself to be.

good question, and one i've considered a few times when looking at buildings around here by relative unknown firms. many just as much worth the effort to keep.

hard to say with the grosse pointe library. personally, i was more impressed with the building itself than the fact it was designed by breuer. the only other breuer building that i was aware of at the time was the whitney museum in new york so i certainly didn't think of him as a starchitect. even within the grosse pointe community much of the preservation emphasis has more to do with either a.) money factors in which people don't want to pay for a new building or b.) personal nostalgia, even though many of the locals that i met and spoke to didn't realize that it was designed by breuer they did have their own memories of the building and didn't really want to see it torn down for specious reasons. oddly enough, several people that i met freely admitted that they didn't personal care for the modern style of the building but that wasn't stopping them from objecting to its demolition.

if the breuer name played any role, i think it had to do with stirring the ire within the architecture/design community...of which a number of us wether via archinect or otherwise saw fit to express our displeasure to the library's board of trustees.

oh, i agree that the breuer name played a role in the initial post...in fact, i specifically referenced his name in the title of that thread because i figured it would draw more attention among an audience of architects rather than referencing the library itself or grosse pointe or any other possible angle.

but outside of our architecture community, 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 they tend to be more impressed with local firms who've actually built things that they are familiar with.