Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim opened his new museum in Mexico City. Fernando Romero, an ex OMA employee is the Museo Soumaya' architect and Slim's son-in law. Slim told Romero before the project started, "There will be two architects on this project—one of them will be me."
WSJ
10 Comments
ohhh Ferando Romero is Slim's son in law. This... explains so much. As per Romero's qualifications, would someone who interned at OMA younger than the age of 25 please tell him he is succeeding on account of nepotism. Thanks.
Not necessarily fair Given, he does have other large international projects to his credit unrelated to family
Related: Archinect ShowCase feature back in August 2009
RE: concerns of nepotism etc... Romero responds in the article When asked indirectly if he's haunted by a specter of nepotism, "Whoever has been designing a building with Rem at [age] 25 can tell me that,"
That's a moronic statement. Many 20-somethings work with Rem, only a few have families rich enough to give them these types of projects.
Stories like this makes architecture so easy to hate.
This story is not new. I recently heard that Bjarke Ingels' family are the developers of his first two projects, and are quite loaded as well.
Zaha Hadid also had a silver spoon in her mouth when born.
The fact is, there are tons of more people who are born in rich families and are complete fuck-ups. So, people like Romero, BIG, Zaha Hadid etc should be applauded for doing something with that kind of money
Props to the embedded GT team who helped rationalize the surface and develop other parts of the museum.
sameolddoctor, a group that shares your view:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/03/fashion/03native.htm
regarding the son in law connection, i previously didn't know this was the case either.
this doesn't take away from the merits of the project and abilities of its architects. the client architect relationship on this project is interesting one. mr. slim's instigation of himself as the 'other' architect noted in a congenial way. also, no discrediting position on mr. romero's relation to his client, other than this relation must be mentioned from the journalistic point of view, relating to the dynamics of the project initiation, development and realization.
it is nothing new that wealthy and privileged children always have a leg up on anything they do, if they do 'anything.' this is specially true in architecture where the large amounts of money and social connections are involved for a project of certain size and up.
eventually, mr. romero's architecture work will be critiqued on its own properties and recorded within that context.
on a more trivial point, i believe i am the first one to call mr. slim as 'sultan slim.' i hope it sticks. it came from relating to his namesake in ottoman history since mr. slim's ancestry was rooted in lebanon. he is not the first sultan s(e)lim either.
however, no sympathy for the architect who does not pay his interns..!
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