Except half of those aren't international.

it would be a challenge (though possibly not impossible) to find the same level of commonality in the architects listed above that hitchcock/johnson found in the architects' work that they included in their int'l style show.

what does that mean, unicorn? these are all global practices.

and steven, i wasn't talking about commonality so much as the "universalizing" nature that this type of architecture has taken on. plopped as architectural non-sequitirs in the middle of a range of cultural contexts.

I will admit I completely misread what you trying to make a point about.

I had to read his sentence four times to make sure I understood it, but I agree with Steven.

But are we skipping over Johnson/Wigley's DeCon show? I think the work of the participants in that exhibition had a lot of commonality.

More to your second post, kishkash, it's not only architecture universalizing merrily along in contemporary culture. I snapped a photo yesterday of a flatbed truck loaded with pallets of bananas driving cross snow-covered northern Indiana USA.

But as I seem to have posted frequently lately: contemporary architecture isn't solely comprised of the eight firms on your list. Everywhere in the world are architects doing impressive regional work - it's just not getting as much press.

I would say HOK is more representative of international architecture at the moment.

Smart, yes. Daring, no. Statement making, uh.

Better than most but not really riveting.

rob't ivy, editor of arch record, said pretty much the same thing in the question/answer period after his lecture here in louisville on wed.

he said the magazines are fashion. some firms will make the fashion magazines consistently, some will make it sometimes. what gets included in the mags is what is likely to provoke, to teach, possibly to move the architecture discussion forward.

but those architects not making the fashion magazines have a no less important job, being the ones that are responsible for a greater part of our built environment.

he said that rather than fashion designers, we should think of our obligation to be more akin to that of surgeons: a good surgeon's best work may not get published, but that surgeon has to be as great as he/she can be, every time. if not, the results can be very bad indeed.

probably a bad paraphrase, but that was the gist of it.

and, sorry, that was a thread hijack. back on topic...

also, whereas international style modernism wasn't just about *high profile* buildings, its proponents actually had a driving ideology that was intended to have implications for architecture *generally*, to be applied to everyday buildings, etc., I think most of those architects listed above seem to me more in the category of *spectacle architecture*, high end, high profile one off works than something that affects what my house should look like, or what my supermarket should look like...

But maybe there is a subtle less obvious thread between those architcets that I am missing, something that is not style diven? SANAA for example has such a vastly different style than gehry or zaha for example, they are all doing very different things, and stylistically different IMHO... Or are they?

Some of those seem to me to be varying levels of departure from modernism, still maybe offshoots of modernism...

Kishkash, I really have to question your understanding of the work of the architect's listed above.

Speaking of Gehry and Mayne's in particular, because I'm in LA; there has been a consistent attempt by both to generate an architecture emphatically rooted in its time and place.

Especially Gehry's early work - its about as responsive to a specific culture and climate as any architecture ever has been.

unicorn, i actually agree with the HOK comment, but im talking about architecture on a discursive level... it seems like the offices i've listed contribute a lot of ideas for the minions working away at firms like SOM, HOK, Gensler, P+W, among others.

silverlake, while i appreciate your critique, i'm talking about the work that gehry and mayne are producing now. gehry post bilbao, morphosis over the last decade.

i know that mayne champions this idea of an architecture rooted in place, but i think that the argument falls flat when you look at his new projects.

bRink, good point about design for the masses being a key goal of the Internationals.

LB, pay heed that a lot of canonical modernist projects were for very wealthy clients-- look at mies and corbu's early villas, for instance. it's important to think about what early modernism's polemical claims stated in relation to architectural practice.

i would argue that the firms on my list still, officially, champion the same sort of modernist agendas, all the while catering to an elite client base.

I recall hearing Gehry speak at a lecture once in response to a question about his form making and stylistic extravagence and place in modern architecture... He talked about what he does in this way (paraphrasing based on my own recollection and interpretation): I do what I do and my clients like what I do, but I'm not trying to start some kind of Gehryism or anything, I don't think society is in any danger of falling into a Gehry movement, and I don't think every building should be like one of my buildings...

I sort of feel the same way, these works are interesting and some offer clients some bang for their buck and have a specific function, may be interesting form making but they are more or less harmless...

kishkash - I was talking about the work they're producing now too. Their similarities to each other notwithstanding, they're always site-specific.