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

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

By Nicholas Korody

Apr 10, '15 2:59 PM EST

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Patrik Schumacher took to Facebook to lambast architecture critics and "charlatan epigones." Credit: Facebook

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 innovative design cannot be fully explained to the general public.” Basically, Schumacher says that the visual appearance of the work of his firm (and, presumably, unstated others) emerges from complex relations to site and program. That the result appears as “iconic” to the public is merely a symptom of more “radical architectural innovation” that the general public simply cannot understand. Working under his often-stated assumption that his methodology will define the future of architecture, Schumacher says that the iconic status of their buildings is an inevitability until “our methodology and style becomes more widespread.” And it helps with the clients, he adds.
In a similar manner, Schumacher defends the “star-system,” while also dismissing it as an invention of the critic. His basic sentiment here is that “starchitects,” as they are commonly-called, achieve that status through “a long, competitive process of peer selection.” The system helps prevent the usurpation of status from “falling prey to the superficial, short-lived spectacles of the charlatan epigones.” (Woah!) Like a commercial brand, Schumacher argues that a starchitect must still be able to deliver quality work in order to maintain their legitimacy. And like brands, they help condense complexity into legible form for the, once again, assumedly ignorant masses.
Schumacher concludes by condescendly relegating the role of the critic. He states, “The critics only distil [sic] what the expert discourse among architects and architectural theorists has already selected and confirmed through a proliferating influence within the discipline.” Then, moving from vinegar to honey, Schumacher suggests “the foregrounding of the underlying innovative possibilities and the (if sometimes only partial) rationality of the stars’ oeuvre could be attempted as a worthy task for the critics’ informed intelligence and eloquence.”
Schumacher makes some legitimate points in his Facebook rant. Certainly, the idea of the starchitect emerges, in part, from the reduction of complex discourses by critics for a larger audience. But his general elitism is hard to stomach, as is his continued insistence on the perpetuation of a hermeneutic architectural field. Architecture criticism and “the architects’ discourse” have never been, and shouldn’t be, considered distinctly separate. Some of the most fruitful work of the last few decades, it seems, has come out of alliances between critics and architects. And I’m wary, generally, of any architect who tries to preempt critique (of their own work) by relegating the work of criticism to that of explanation. Criticism is not mere explanation of “complex innovations,” (which oftentimes only appear that innovative to their author), but a necessary mode of, yes, translation, but also of critique as critique. Moreover, it seems to me that if “the general public” can’t understand a work of architecture, than perhaps its merits aren’t so great after all. Architecture should not exist only for the propagation of its own discourse. Architecture constructs and instructs lived experience by spacing individuals and objects in relation to one another. Architecture should first and foremost be oriented around this fundamental act, not around the hermeneutics of its own obfuscated rhetoric.
I could go on – there’s a lot to be said about the way Schumacher seems to maintain rather outdated and elitist aspects of architecture, particularly its self-isolating tendencies. Schumacher assumes that criticism of “starchitecture” emerges primarily from jealousy and superficial readings, in the process affirming probably the most salient critique of it: namely, that the current socioeconomic system in which the most visible architectures exist today perpetuates outmoded distinctions between high and low architect/-ures and isolates architecture from necessary interactions with the public and political sphere. I actually agree that critics should spend less time trying to bring down so-called "starchitects," and more time on the more pressing realities facing the field, such as housing shortages, climate change, economic instability, militarism, etc (all of which continue, at great cost, to be largely relegated to the outside of the "architects' discourse.")
Oh, and, as a note, by "charlatan epigones," he probably means you.
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