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.
— nytimes.com
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Architecture firms are already a combination of collaborative efforts and inspired vision. Zaha, quintessential starchitect, has Patrik Schumacher. Koolhaas is listed on the company website as one of six partners.
Is it possible that the starchitect is a product of shoddy architectural journalism?
I recently reread the NYTimes review of the Seattle Library. Herbert Muscamp mentioned Joshua Ramus once and in the most obligatory way: "Joshua Ramus of OMA was the partner in charge."
Another response worth reading by James S. Russell:
Sorry, Witold, Architecture is a medium of individual expression. Individual talent, whether local or global, sees the uniqueness in circumstances that architecture can express. Individual talent, not the big faceless, yet prolific HOKs or AECOMs advance the state of the art, whether in amenable energy efficiency or theatrical expression. Yet those big firms are designing cities to house millions around the world. Can they possibly be humane? That is one of the big questions of our time, not whether you like Thom’s or Richard’s style.
The Stupid Starchitect Debate
I don't know how the public could perceive architects and architecture in general as nothing but elitist and detached from the common man. The biggest names in the profession are our worst enemies when it comes to keeping a good face to the public, the names of the biggest offenders are dropped in the article, and for good reason. What reasonable person would respond the same way that Hadid did when confronted over the situation in Qatar? Our standing in the world is in jeopardy because of these people, because they no longer have the best interest of the community they serve, because they may be collaborators with their clients but only collaborate with the wealthy elite, because there aren't enough architects out there that stand for something real. It's the public's perception of our profession that will define the profession, and the public likes the have a name to celebrate or deride, we just need better examples...
Architects aren't relevant for a whole lot of reasons, one of which we care about this whole starchitect debate. We live in a cloister where the outside world is a nuisance.
Thayer-D,
"We live in a cloister where the outside world is a nuisance."
I think it depends on how you define "outside world". Are you talking about the world of industry, the arts, government, academia? Because architects are actually well integrated into those realms. More often than not, my office's clients have been friends or friends of friends of our principals. They are outside the world of architecture, but still inside a world of well educated, culturally aware, well travelled etc. people. Its still a world that is somewhat exclusive, but its definitely not just a cloister of architecture nerds.
I mentioned architecture journalism before. I would imagine that people who write about architecture for a living are more cloistered in a highly design conscious world than practicing architects are. Practicing architects must work and network with non-architects and non-designers in order for their business to function.
Certainly individual architects break the barriers of the stereotype everyday in order to function, but the public perception of architects isn't something the profession should ignore. Don't think it doesn't effect you.
davvid,
That's great about your friends who I'm sure are wonderful people. My comment wasn't ment to be personal in anyway since we all manage our own world as best we can. And your point about the media is well taken since they create the image much of the public sees and unfortunatly, many young architects aspire to. This whole debate about the isolated genious vs. working collaboratively is bull shit though. People will work the way people have always worked, depending on their personalities.
My comment came from thinking about development patterns in the modern world and how architects should be leading the way in dealing with how we build human habitats again rather than car oriented developments. How climate change ties into that and how the social isolation and visual poverty of so many of our communities is both physically and psychologically degrading. We have all these pseudo debates about parametric design or whatever crap we think will revolutionalize the world of design, meanwhile there are real big problems that directly relate to how we live. I know these smaller debates are interesting to many including my own pet interests, but it seems like a whole lot of the public is talking about how we should develope and we're still obsessing over what dress to wear to the party. That's what I mean about the outside world. end of rant.
I write about architecture, not for my living, but I do get paid and regularly contribute to one of the major architectural periodicals. I always try to include the "project architect" as well as any significant contributors, usually one or two additional people, in the interviews I do.
Problem is, when you are trying to fit everything into a certain # of words or length, the first thing to get squeezed is the job captain or project manager talking about process or material selection.
Matthew Friesz' post is spot on, this: "the biggest names in the profession are our worst enemies when it comes to keeping a good face to the public" especially.
In a society where everything is measured by money, media (selling advertising) glorifies big-buck people and projects and celebrates their demise (but only to the extent that it does not interfere with advertising revenue).
Very few survive success with their morals and ethics intact, and many who have achieved success have done so because they don't have any.
I have a few questions:
1. Do we think that "starchitect" firms (like Zaha Hadid Architects, Gehry Architects, OMA, Steven Holl Architects, Ateliers Jean Nouvel, SANAA, Morphosis Architects, Peter Zumthor, Renzo Piano Building Workshop, Herzog and de Meuron, Shigeru Ban Architects, Snohetta, Foster & Partners, Bjarke Ingels Group, Diller Scofidio & Renfro, Studio Daniel Libeskind and Tod Williams and Billie Tsien Architects) are not actually producing outstanding works of Architecture that deserve recognition?
2. How familiar is the general public actually with "starchitects" and elite projects like the World Cup Stadium in Qatar or the MoMA expansion?
I find that many people don't even know who Frank Gehry is.
3. Are these elite "star" firms and projects really the most visible face of our profession to the general public? Or is the most public face of our profession in the everyday buildings of our community (office towers, condo towers, academic buildings, civic buildings, transportation hubs, houses, retail buildings, recreational spaces etc.) which are more likely designed by massive corporate firms?
4. Is the public any more confused by and suspicious of what architects do than they are with what Lawyers, Doctors, Engineers, Politicians, Researchers, Journalists, Artists and Academics do?
you kind of laid it out davvid,
You've listed the usual suspects, the in-crowd of architects who might do great work but whom get all the attention, while the rest of built america get's treated like it didn't exist. Not that we need to do expose's on strip malls and gas stations, but there's so much else that never makes it in the media mostly for ideological reasons. These architects play to the media, which eats it up, and thus produces another crop of young architects who think anything else is bullshit for a consumerist society, as if these guys where working in some altruistic plane.
If you narrow your vision of what is acceptable to the extent that you deny the kind of work many people ask for and live in, then you are living in a cloistered world. Nothing wrong with that, but to then go on about starchitects seems a bit disengenuous.
I find that many people don't even know who Frank Gehry is.
he's been on the simpsons. i don't know who you hang out with, but they don't sound too bright. or perhaps it would be more accurate to say they aren't culturally relevant?
To question #1, davvid, I think some of the starchitects on your list *are* doing amazing works of architecture that further the discipline and contribute to a better public built environment.
But I also think some on your list do buildings that are horrific litter on the built and cultural landscape, and yet they are acclaimed and sought out just as much or more than the ones who do good work.
The problem with the starchitect label is it makes people think the person - the brand - is what matters, not the work.
Well said Donna...
somehow architecture had escaped the reality tv frenzy. Not sure how but I was expecting some ridiculous show called "the architect of Orange County" or something. Theres a show about cake decorators for god sake.
The only real way to counteract this is for people within the profession to be positive forces within their spheres of influence. Also, if a prominent architect/firm behaves in a way one doesn’t agree with, don’t support that practice. For example, I don’t agree with DS + R’s sellout, so I will not purchase any publications prominently featuring that firm. It’s a small gesture, but a gesture nonetheless. This is an approach I try to extend to everything, not just architecture.
davvid, I think you make an interesting point with this statement:
“Is the public any more confused by and suspicious of what architects do than they are with what Lawyers, Doctors, Engineers, Politicians, Researchers, Journalists, Artists and Academics do?”
In line with that sentiment, can one fully understand any other profession unless one has worked in that profession? These types of threads come up fairly regularly on the various architecture blogs and forums, which is fine, but the tone of those conversations is sometimes such that it implies that some people within the profession think architecture is the only profession with this problem, which it certainly is not. Sometimes I think the special snowflake attitude some people project (especially some starchitects) is where the profession gets into trouble.
Donna, this:
“The problem with the starchitect label is it makes people think the person - the brand - is what matters, not the work.”
is, of course, true and is why some starchitects producing horrible work get hired. For some, it’s really no different than buying a very expensive dress, suit, or car purely because a certain brand produced it. Until the values of enough people shift enough for this to change, I don’t see the brand worship going anywhere.
I'm with you on DS+R, jw468. So disappointing.
what is a "stararchitect"? I still don't get it. Aren't most architects who feature in the history of architecture (greek, Persian, egytian, roman,etc.) historical star-architects, albeit circumscribed within their respective cultures and delineations of architectural profession?
In my opinion, there is some triteness here. Look at the greater contemporary populist culture; look at who talks for the masses, who features heavily in their imagination, who constructs a big part of the populist tropes. Celebrities. They can even be talentless provided they resonate with the values, desires and interests of the culture. And the commercial industry closes that loop along with the audience.
The malaise is not in architecture nor does not start there. The malaise is far greater than architecture; the malaise is in the consumerist culture, the culture of the trivial, the culture that values the style of the message over the message itself, the neo liberal destruction of all other values to serve the consumerist value. It is only natural to expect that a certain architectural culture manifest as the symptom of this greater sickness.
No amount of critique that isolates contemporary architectural culture -precluding its context- can expect to really address it judiciously and wisely. but for people who buy starbucks...then complain about stararchitects....you may do that if you wish but it might sound like you're not doing more than whining and nagging...
Donna, I think you bring up a great point about the media promoting the work of those deemed starchitects (their own creation) at the expense of other good work. I just read an article in the London Review of Books where they reviewed the "Guide To The Architecture Of London" by Edward Jones and Chirstopher Woodward. It goes right to your point. "The enduring strenght and weakness of Jones and Woodward's guilde is that it is very much the 'arcitect's take' on the architecture of London. This is the reason every project by a major architect, no matter how minor, is included - if you want to see the worst work by Pugin, Norman Shaw or James Stirling, they'll tell you where to find it."
My other point that ties into the above was that the list above does strictly stand alone sculptural work, so if your not playing the Howard Roark role, lone genius against bourgeois mediocrity, then you are one of them. This is the most pervasive additude that keeps architects isolated from society the same way their work tends to stand alone, for better or (usually) for worse. They are taught to be distainful of popular tastes and therefore tend to encourage this starchitect idolitry that favors the individual expression over the communal. Work that "furthers the discipline" whatever that means, is valued over sense of place. I guess that shouldn't be surprising, since corporate America has long known if you lable something as "new and improved" you'll sell more product.
Most major buildings are not about what we mere mortals think they are - they are monuments to a variety of things, usually more than one. Art museums and such are named after the funders, who typically are more concerned with having their name plastered on the building than they are on what is inside of it. Stadiums are venues for display of corporate ego (ENRON Field, KFC Yum! Center, etc.). Luxury urban development is name-branded for the materially-status conscious. The more money is involved, the more important it is to celebritize and megahype the entire process. Thus the perfect synchronicity of starchitecture and the vapid bullshit of money culture, simply because it's not about anything else.
Thayer, just to answer the question of what do I mean by "further the discipline", in case it's not clear to other people too:
There's an article in Discover this month about neutrinos, and anti-neutrinos, and how some particle collisions cause double-anti-neutrinos but only very very rarely (or something like that). So these researchers in Michigan and Wisconsin are smashing particles together across 500 miles to find these elusive double-antis, that only exist for milliseconds. This seems like an excessively esoteric, specialized area of research, but the more that is understood in this one area, the better is our understanding of bigger issues of particle and astrophysics. The research is furthering the discipline of physics.
Dan Hoffman's main directive to us at Cranbrook, where you defined your own curriculum, was that the work had to further the discipline. You couldn't essentially re-make projects that previous students had done, even if you personally had never cast concrete in burlap or mapped a quarry or whatever, because the whole idea of a graduate-level thesis project is to push collective knowledge forward. That's what I mean.
So in my mind Libeskind, for example, is not doing anything to push the discipline of architecture forward - he had a huge success with the Holocaust Museum, and he's been phoning it in ever since. Just my opinion. Evey starchitect (an non-stars, too) have projects that don't really succeed as good buildings that create a place and enrich a community. The brand-emphasis on starchitects makes it easier to just do a "Gehry-style" or "Zaha-style" building, because when someone buys a name brand they aren't really looking for quality, just style.
I think we depend on brands to guaranty a consistent level of quality over time. When Apple comes out with their new iPhone next month, a tiny group of discerning consumers will dig into the engineering of it. The rest of us will probably trust, to some degree, that Apple is likely to deliver a product of similar quality to previous models, unless we learn otherwise.
I totally agree with you about Libeskind. We should've stopped expecting outstanding work from him years ago. But with Gehry, the opposite is true. He has produced some very sharp and challenging work in recent years that has not received the recognition it deserves because his name is so tied to extravagance and ego.
I'm also wondering about the issue of historical narrative and whether we can even follow advancement in our field over time if we don't follow individuals to some degree. If historians and curators do not follow individuals, should they follow ideas or trends? And if they ignore individuals, should they ignore social structures and how knowledge is transferred from teacher to student or mentor to protege? I just don't understand practically, how we can begin to deemphasize individual talent, inspiration and trajectory.
I agree with you on Gehry, davvid. I think he has constantly explored changes to his work, some of which have been improvements on earlier ideas and some of which haven't. He has no fear of experimenting.
I think your last paragraph raises really challenging questions of how to assess quality work, and how to create more demand for it. If expertise is seen as elitist and suspect, how do we have any basis for agreeing on what is good?
Question: If someone dosen't "push collective knowledge" or "experiment", does that make their work not worth mentioning, less interesting, not relevant, or all the above?
^ In style or function?
Miles, in the sense that they where used in the above quotes. I don't want to speak for those who used these quotes, but I understood them clearly. What's not surprising is the unwillingness to answer my question.
"If expertise is seen as elitist and suspect, how do we have any basis for agreeing on what is good?" I don't think anyone suspects our ability ot follow the building and zoning codes, but rather our declaration's of what's legitimate or not. Some people focus more on setting themselves apart than actually looking for ways to bridge divides. Speaking about 'questioning expertise', do we suspect our politician's expertise?
Unfortunately the essence of design studio in school is about "pushing collective knowledge" and hence the constant irrelevancy of our opinions about society best exemplified by many of the 'starchitects'. You can not push collective knowledge if you do not know what it is. I would recommend schools spent more time studying cities and not learning style from Las Vegas or how to diagram the capitalist market as a glass clad building - calling it architecture. What we have learned so far from knocking off Las Vegas and diagram architecture is we as Architects with a capital A have NO knowledge of the collective. REM KOOLHAAS the god of all starchitects, his greatest contribution to theory in my opinion is a journalist critique (comments only) about the nihilist state of architecture and society - prisoners to our own unconscious delirious desires. Rem is pointing out the dark but no one has seen the light or proposed a version that first builds on the collective. This is important critique so that we may move on, I am not discounting him in any way. Based on Archinect's recent interview with Wigley, my knowledge of what goes on at Columbia, and the recent Dean appointment of WorkAC partner I would suggest some(body) important and relevant has an interest in learning from the collective. My guess we will see less form making and more research and text and data - hopefully we won't jump to conclusions by making diagrams as architecture - BIG has already mastered that. Form has been exhausted. Style is bullshit. The phrase Eye Candy shows forth the apparent lack of substance most these 'starchitects' bring to the collective - often in opposition to the very values that sustain a system that allows them to practice.
Thayer if I'm "unwilling" to answer your question then I guess I don't understand it? What are you asking me?
As to work that doesn't further the discipline through experimentation: I don't mean every building needs to be some formtastic conglomeration of living walls and 3D-H components to be successful, in fact many of those kinds of buildings aren't. But any building of quality (there's that word again) will further the discipline by showing people how good design can have a positive impact. A lovely quiet background building that's very well-made and has perfect scale and appropriate materials for its location isn't experimentation in the same sense as Schumacher's scripts are, but it is still using a creative process to come up with one of infinite possible solutions. I'm saying we can have both.
The down side of the star label is that when a client expects a branded building there is pressure not to push any new boundaries compounded with lack of pressure to make something of quality. So we get Libeskind's condo tower in Kentucky that can be branded A LIBESKIND building but isn't by any metric good.
Donna, glad to hear you say "we can have both", which I think means you understand my question. Chris Teeter's excellent point that "You can not push collective knowledge if you do not know what it is." is incredibly relevant in the context of our discussion becasue he's pointing out that schools tend to focus on this aspect of our profession at the expense of teaching archtitecture. This is further re-inforced by media like this site and the kind of points you made about Gehry et al.
I find it ironic that we always claim to love diversity and working out of the box, yet of the all star line-up list of architects above, they are all doing incredibly similar work. Yes, it all looks different, but it's all of a kind, more or less. Object buildings rather than place making buildings. Be that as it may, I like Archintect for at least providing a forum for these kind of debates that are too often stifled in academia, and ironically for illustrating this pervasive critique of our current state of affairs. Schools idolize starchitects at the expense of our built envoronment, even though 99.9% will never be stars, and some of us don't want to be anyway. At least if it means screwing over towns and streets with grandious projects all striving to be the next big thing.
nice rebuttal from betsky: http://www.architectmagazine.com/architecture/starchitects-are-not-the-real-problem_o.aspx?utm_source=newsletter&utm_content=jump&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=ANW_081414&day=2014-08-14
Yes, I like Betsky's response, but I also like the twitter backlash against it saying it's a false dichotomy - the fact that unknown architects do shitty work doesn't mean that any of Zaha's work (or her attitude towards workers) is good.
Thayer I do enjoy discussing this stuff with you, as I think we agree on a lot of points. I agree with almost everything in your last post, but I'd say the differences in starchitects' work are very obvious to us architects, less so to the regular person on the street.
I firmly believe we NEED a lot of diversity in our built world: historic and new, loud and quiet (I still go back to your 100 Word Manifesto whenever I use the word quiet, Steven), object-ish and placemaking-ish. In my personal pedagogy, no matter the pedagogical stance of the building it should be well-constructed and use materials intelligently with the intent of longevity. This is where a lot of starchitecture really fails for me - all those "sleek" metal panels that end up oilpanning and being held in place by wide globs of caulk. That's just never going to be good.
"You can not push collective knowledge if you do not know what it is."
I tend to think of Architecture culture (or collective knowledge, if you prefer) as one big group conversation that you cannot opt out of. When you create a work of architecture, you are deciding for yourself or your team how to best participate in that conversation. Every contribution nudges the conversation in a direction. I think that "starchitect" firms, like the ones I listed earlier in the thread, are very good at positioning themselves in that conversation.
Quondam,
I don't see how "place-making" buildings are in opposition to "starchitect" buildings. Do you?
Here is a place:
another place:
another:
and another:
one more place:
Ironically, I can't place any specific "place-making" places. When I search for notable place-making projects, I find a lot of "placemakers" and a lot of principles and diagrams about place-making, but not a lot of distinct and locatable places.
Quondam, I guess a place making building is about respecting the local context. I would say buildings which display critical regionalism are "place making buildings" because they reflect place rather than simply creating space. This imo does not mean that they have to be traditional in form...but they in some way reference and react to regional and local forces.
for instance, if you stood in the courtyard of a Barragan house you would know that you are in mexico.
but...the identity of place is always changing...so what is currently alien may eventually become culturally engrained into the local identity.
@Quondam- I am looking at Savannah, GA lately after a few trips out of the way for that historic district, the Oglethorpe diagram interests me.......@ DAVIDD - After my first design studio I felt the disconnect from architectural culture and the social collective. Occasionally a text like "Learning from Las Vegas" or "A Pattern Language" would cross my path and for a short bit it sounded like Architects were trying to jump back into the collective culture but to my dismay most these texts were either intellectual ramblings on laymen understood common sense or just absurd attempts at rule making. The Ockman anthology of arch theory ending with Hans Hollein in 1968 stating 'all is architecture' hinted at a possible re-interjection (by the way log 31 editorial intro notes the Hans Hollein qoute) but then I started absorbing the whole Hays anthology from 1968 to 90's and somehow ended up tumbling into deconstruction, reagonimics and rock stars, analog memory scribbles by libeskind, and Eisenman dueling with Derrida...do you know how silly the term 'deconstruction' sounds to an average person when coming from an architect? Isn't that something a demo contractor does? Then I tried some Logs, some Koolhaas, and the continuation of the Hays anthology I think by Sykes and even some Autopoesis! The majority of these starchitects are pushing an agenda so personal to themselves and so critical of common culture, that the only way to accept them is as 'rock star artists flipping the bird at a system that sponsors their commissions' through an economy where everything is a commodity - where art is a good investment for people with capital to spare. The Van Gogh will never lose value and that artist from hipsterville is like Microsoft when it was a penny stock! Hey don't you want a Guggeheim in your city? Koolhaas is different, see my comment above. Also see the Sam Mockbee essay in Sykes anthology.....@Quondam the new york zoning ordinance says more about place making than many practicing architects who may be serving developers that look at spreadsheets all day. The lobby of a new york city building is another place making example, something out of Delirious in New York... the Eye Candy you are sold is an object, a self centered place maker - it is telling you its the place maker by placing itself there. Its objectification of the body while disregarding its internal workings and the environment (using your analogy). @DONNA in Michael Benedikts little book there is a short sequence covering architectures of ........I feel like nearly all starchitects projects fall into one of those categories..................@anyone - I do not have an alternate answer to any of this other than it would be helpful if starchitects in all their financial glory spent less time stomping their feet and more time researching where and what they were doing. ----So what if you have a theory, especially when it has nothing to do with the price of bread...... In Log 30 in the Elia Zhengalis interview, Elia says something that had never occurred to me as obvious as it did when he said it - paraphrasing and reinterpreting - when traditional architecture was overtaken by modernism all the language and proportions appropriate to the craft of building within its historic and narrated urban fabric; all this was essentially crushed and rendered incoherent and futile. @Quondam so place making at that time was in theory like playing an instrument in a band versus Xenakis making Stochastic math music or John Cage writing a song of silence. As noted above - form has been exhausted and so has its justification......Now that we can do anything we can do nothing at all meaningful.......apologize for no paragraphing on Samsung smartphone.... moreover photos of place making buildings is a bit useless and drawings are even worse - like Henri Lefevre more or less said - architects read and write plans and do not inhabit the spaces or imagine to do so - Enter Bernard Tschumi and the Manhattan Transcripts .
To dig into this...
Is this an ontological matter or an epistemological one : "What is a place-making building?"
I mean, does a place-making building exist, in its nature, as a deliberated entity that holds properties of place-makingness within itself, inherent and indigenous -whether contiguous with its surroundings or not. The example of Barragan buildings is very interesting here because, really, Barragan buildings are more contiguous with a concept of Latin America/ Mexican buildings than necessarily the surrounding built environment. The proof in this is that Barragan buildings are, designerly speaking, contiguous with each other! From that point of view, he is as much a regionalist as Richard Meier (and who is to say that generic modernism based on Le Corbusier cannot be a conceptual "region" - although, within that region, Meier is hardly a critical regionalist but rather as a vernacular regionalist. Indeed, why should not modernism be, conceptually, the "region" within which its principles and elements are used within permutations, variations, appropriations...all these being masks for functional repetition within the cadre of a certain (sub)culture. Critical modernist regionalism (or, perhaps more precisely, modernist critical regionalism) can also certainly exist: I mean, a modernism situating itself within itself with the added foundation of awareness of its self situating: for instance, the Weissenhofsiedlung complex in Stuttgart).
Or is it an epistemological one? For instance, after some time of my being in the UAE, Dubai buildings (and you can't get more more "object" than that) became one integral and resonant part (the rest of the landscape being another part, the inhabitant lifestyles being another, the smells, the sounds, the people,etc) of the place. Dubai was a very very specific place (and not, as touted generically by many, a generic post-capitalist unrooted etc etc global city) and merely seeing its buildings made me feel that, after crossing a stretch of tamed desert land, I had reached it for whatever purpose that was. What I'm saying is that, this city of objects became, with time, with habituation, with associations that the mind inevitably makes, very much a place.
So, I don't really agree with such a rash and rushed acceptance of a Baragan building (as delightful as they are) as an example of "place making" and such an easy condemnation of an "object architecture" as one that necessarily precludes "place making" . If one accepts that term, one can easily see that Oscar Niemeyer buildings, for instance, cannot be but examples of object architectures that cannot but be uniquely identifiable and, indeed, loved places.
What a tired and dead debate.
Put in a nail in that coffin already, take it from Betsky:
http://www.architectmagazine.com/architecture/starchitects-are-not-the-real-problem_o.aspx?dfpzone=home
"How many truly bad buildings have so-called starchitects managed to get built? How many truly dreadful buildings have the anonymous teams Deamer seems to like perpetrated on our landscape? How many of those anonymous firms work for dictators and repressive regimes in comparison with the dubious commissions one or two well-known figures have accepted? The mind boggles at the ratio."
Amen!
To @davidd,
I did a little experiment by quizzing my fiance on your list of starchitects. She's a journalist and a law student, so while she's very knowledgeable of the world in general, she's not an architect. She knew only 3 of the 17 on your list (with knowing being defined as "I've heard of them before"). So it seems likely that this 'starchitecture status' we are debating is one we bestow upon ourselves, and not writ large. (She turned the tables on me, and I only knew 9 of her 23 star journalists... 'starnalists'?)
And to @Quondam,
To comment on placemaking though, I would argue that it's more of an attitude of renewal than an artifact as designed by an architect. It's prominence has also recently been elevated by the National Endowment for the Arts and their funding for placemaking projects. Read Ann Markusen's excellent report on what, exactly, constitutes creative placemaking. Interestingly, while many involve design, few are architecture for architecture sake. They all, however, attempt to elevate their surrounding communities, if only temporarily.
That said, here are 5 placemaking projects - each an individual element, separately distinguished from their surrounding context - that I personally admire and would call your attention to:
Enrique morales market in Barcelona comes to mind too. maybe its a question of building types. I'm not arguing for or against the existence of "place making buildings" just thinking out loud ..Starchitects get commissions for " iconic" buildings... A museum whether designed by Zaha or by zumthor is a museum at the end of the day. It is not really a part of the everyday life of cities or citizens. It's a vault for expensive things. The work seems detached because the program is detached from most of our lives. For instance, There is no possible way to design a condo tower in Tribeca that will create place in the way something public and open like Central Park does. In a way all building are place making buildings, whether they make places better or worse is another question. It's a question of degree. I would say at the best a building can become integral to everyday life of places while adding/reflecting something of the regional context. At the worst, a building exists as a closed fortress witha selectively permeable membrane and melts cars with reflected sunlight.
to Chris Teeter, thanks for swimming through all that text. I love reading your stuff becasue it actually tries to stand on its own feet. Like talking to a non architect with the expectation that they will understand what you are saying becasue you are thinking of how they might understand your words rather than using language to create a barrier. I love what you quoted here...
"Elia says something that had never occurred to me as obvious as it did when he said it - paraphrasing and reinterpreting - when traditional architecture was overtaken by modernism all the language and proportions appropriate to the craft of building within its historic and narrated urban fabric; all this was essentially crushed and rendered incoherent and futile. "
It all goes back to modernism and how they attempted to erase history, both conceptually and literally. Not to say that many developers and politicians didn't see their interests aligned at times (see urban renewal) but symbolism is a persistent thing. Read bestky, if's all been said before. Nothing to look at here, except 1600+ comments on what the public wants. Who knew humans would be so wed to these old ideas of communicating with their buildings!
Quondam, if your still puzzling over the difference between object buildings and place making buildings, I suggest getting away from your computer monitor wiith the neon grid overlay and take a walk. And if you think the historic buildings of Savanah are object buildings with out contributing to the sense of place in Savanah, it's more confirmation of the cloister that our profession's 'intelligensia' inhabits. Time to smell the roses.
Well, the placemaking portion of this conversation was an unnecessary tangent.
And I agree pretty much entirely with Aaron Betsky on this whole "starchitect" debate.
However, I think its pretty clear at this point that the NY Times does not. They published "Are the 'Star' architects ruining cities?" on July 28th, "The 'Starchitect' Image" on August 9, and the Architecture Critic, Michael Kimmelman, hasn't mentioned a specific high-profile architect in a positive light since March when Shigeru Ban won the Pritzker Prize.
Davidd this has been quite the fruitful debate between good thinkers here: quondam, thayer-d, jla-x, tammuz and kimmelmann, no need to kill the mood - we like what we are drinking.............I am a bit burned by all this weeks work but to tammuz's bit, I realized after writing what I wrote - place can indeed become whatever place you are in and through repetition of exposure find its meaning as place: whether you enjoy it or not. I like Savannah and I do not like Las Vegas. Why do I like it does not matter at the moment. To build on the Elia Zhengalis re-paraphrased by me and reposted by Thayer-D - this the issue of GOOD place making....on my phone copy paste is annoying... .. JLa-x clearly notes the typical reason for hiring a starchitect - for something Iconic. A fuck context gesture most often - hence this debate easily fell into place making vs objects. Objects clearly can make the place, but the assembly of objects and the respect between the objects can determine or cause the sensation - ontologically - of being a Good place, one that makes sense for the senses.......the other day I stepped out of the subway on Vesey street to see this whale carcass bone structure by Calatrava, it was exciting at first glance, but thats about it - shock value for its irrelevancy. See that other news post on the Florida Calatrava project, see tammuz's summary of the linked text. Modernism in fields is an abrupt removal from history through abstraction - it has its problems.
Quondam, I'm looking for good info like that and if you have any behind the bookshelves recommendations, let me know...ordering a bunch of books this weekend.
i did say I re-interpreted and paraphrased it and what happened in my mind was light bulb at
"...the architectures invoked have certain immanent and distinguishing properties that are unassailable, like proportion, size, construction, and materials. Once these are violated the architecture collapse. If one examines architecture before the Modern Movement, it becomes instantly evident that questions such as proportion, the relation of the horizontal to the vertical, of floor to ceiling heights, and the volume of space are intrinsic and fundamental to its integrity. At the same time, these are properties that no developer will pay for today"
Zhenglias and I are saying the same thing, i just took the statement more literally and actually believe it to again become Possible (I'm only 50 pages through LOG 31 - I may not be the only one that believes this). Elia said what I'm saying but perhaps within the architectural critique you are reading it the way it should be read - Terry's failure is believing it.
This all goes back to my first comment in this post about Koolhaas and nihilism - that which makes him different than the other 'starchitects', Koolhaas is saying it, he is making it, and everyone drools over it. When you get down to it, all that Koolhaas has done is said to the "collective society" this is what you wanted - a diagram of economies encased in a technical modern envelope generic enough to be manufactured anywhere. A diagram is a building, thank you "late capitalism".
Post-modernism via Las Vegas is Shite. Nihilism is a style just as much as nostalgia...but that's not my point. My point - Modernism as a form of thought exercise that has allowed us to break free from history to be progressive while crushing a connection to the purpose of "historical" connection. (see my music analogy - Xenakis, John Cage, etc...) This isn't some weird historicism proposal, rather I am suggesting the data of cities goes beyond those who make data about cities (census beareau and economists, and developers) it gets into zoning and codes and more importantly understanding the craft (or lack thereof) of making the building happen in that city.
Nihilism is a style? Nostalgia too?
Chris, this doesn't make sense to me. Along with quite a bit of your text which I don't really know where its getting at or coming from. I think taking some steps back would be helpful. For instance, I also don't get how you can say that Modernism is a form of thought exercise. What do you mean by that? What do you mean by Modernism here? Is there just one Modernism? How can it be just one form of thought exercise? Why place it so separately and detachedly from a contiguous history that goes to the englightenement and beyond (to present it as creating a tabula rasa is a myth that should be put to rest already). I just don't understand the base of your logic in order to run with it.
Also, I'm not sure that Koolhaas can really be seen that way, at least not to pick up on one reductive thread -easily convertible into a cliché- and claim this is what Koolhaas' buildings are what they're about.
To be honest, he is one architect I really don't have much to say about because I've not done my research where this research, I believe, is vital to encompass the obvious wealth of his ideas and production. Have you? I only know that my fortuitous discovery of his Seattle library building (I wasn't looking for the building, I came across it by chance) was a very pleasant surprise. If it doesn't really do much for its surroundings at the pedestrian level, I actually blame the city -or at least that part of the city- , not the building. The building drives me to think that the architect is quite "casual" on a few different levels and yet, exceedingly deliberate on others. There is no slavish positivistic/deterministic "following" here. There were many things happening, some even paradoxical (ie completely non positivistic) such as that between the clear and contiguously accessible layer of floors and the semi-hidden labyrinthine looking service floors in-between that seemed almost like the subconscious of the building. There is a lot of intelligence, interpretation and imagination behind this work.
As for the issue of hyper-capitalism, I think this goes back to a pointin a previous post that there is a greater malaise and, in I believe that Koolhaas is well aware that he is practicing within that bubble and as such, he has not chosen to be a spearhead of this ideology but rather a contained practitioner, chronicler and researcher. In reality, aside from the intelligence he affords on this issue, he is probably far less effective in spreading the poison of hyper-capitalism than many other corporate-type firms who do uninteresting bland work meant to serve as a minimum cost shelter for a maximum profit system (isn't that what a hyper-capitalism is about?). Also, to my mind, he is more lithe and graceful in observing his containment within this system casually and yet intelligently than some others who raise neoliberalism (or hyper-capitalism) to the level of a an abstract ideology that could inspire, associatively, architectural concepts and philosophies while, simultaneously, donning the attire of positivistic pseudo-science in declaiming the role of contingent associations and the imagination in their practice (for instance, again, Schumacher)
Also my point about Calatrava had nothing to do with modernism per se. I'm not generalizing. I find that a unique awkwardness in a lot of his contained architecture due to purely tectonic matters. This is not to disparage his work, or more precisely, the perfection his work alludes to even if sometimes it fails to reach. I believe Calatrava architecture is very difficult - even when seeming to be visually so easy, so mathematical or whatnot- it promises a perfection of unity, of harmony, before it is even conceived. His architecture is a very very closed world, aesthetically, very syntagmatic, the whole is more than the sum of parts..and so on...therefore, should there be any awkward intersection or corner, it becomes hundreds of times worse than in an architecture that is not so tied together, that admits ruptures, discontinuities and so on.
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