Starchitect

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Starchitect is a

Developers around the world have proven eager to sign up "top talent" (i.e., starchitects) in hopes of convincing reluctant municipalities to approve large developments, of obtaining financing or of increasing the value of their buildings.[1]
A key characteristic is that the starchitecture is almost always "iconic" and highly visible within the site or context. As the status is dependent on current visibility in the media, fading media status implies that architects lose "starchitect" status—hence a list can be drawn up of former "starchitects".

The Bilbao Effect

Buildings are frequently regarded as profit opportunities, so creating "

John Portman found that building skyscraper hotels with vast atriums—which he did in various U.S. cities during the 1980s—was more profitable than maximizing floor area.[2]

However, it was the rise of

modernist architecture. In response, Jencks argued for "double coding";[3] i.e., that postmodernism could be understood and enjoyed by the general public and yet command "critical approval". The star architects from that period often built little or their best-known works were "paper architecture"—unbuilt or even unbuildable schemes, yet known through frequent reproduction in architectural magazines, such as the work of Léon Krier, Michael Graves, Aldo Rossi, Robert A. M. Stern, Hans Hollein, and James Stirling. As postmodernism went into decline, its avant-gardist credentials suffered due to its associations with vernacular and traditionalism, and celebrity shifted back towards modernist avant-gardism.[4]

But a high-tech strand of modernism persisted in parallel with a formally retrogressive post-modernism; one that often championed "progress" by celebrating, if not exposing, structure and systems engineering. Such technological virtuosity can be discovered during this time in the work of

chainlink fencing, raw plywood and other industrial materials in designs for residential and commercial architecture. Arguably the most notable practitioner along these lines, at least in the 1970s, is the now internationally renowned architect Frank Gehry, whose house in Santa Monica, California
, bears these characteristics.

The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao by Frank Gehry, along the Nervión River, Bilbao

With urban generation from the turn of the twentieth century picking up,

non-profit organizations hope the use of a starchitect will drive traffic and tourist income to their new facilities. With the popular and critical success of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, by Frank Gehry, in which a rundown area of a city in economic decline brought in huge financial growth and prestige, the media started to talk about the so-called "Bilbao Effect";[5] a star architect designing a blue-chip, prestige building was thought to make all the difference in producing a landmark for the city. Similar examples are the Imperial War Museum North (2002), Greater Manchester, UK, by Daniel Libeskind, the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, Finland, by Steven Holl, and the Seattle Central Library (2004), Washington state, United States, by OMA
.

The origin of the phrase "wow factor architecture" is uncertain, but has been used extensively in business management in both the UK and United States to promote avant-gardist buildings within urban regeneration since the late 1990s.

Design Quality Indicator has been produced by the UK Construction Industry Council
, so that bodies commissioning new buildings will be encouraged to consider whether the planned building has "the wow factor" in addition to more traditional concerns of function and cost.

The "wow factor" has also been taken up by Spanish architecture critics such as

global elites: "If they differ in spirit from the Vanderbilt mansions of the past, it is only in that they promise to be more conspicuous. They are paradises for aesthetes."[8]

Historical overview of the status of architects

Title page of the 1568 edition of Le Vite

The notion of giving celebrity status to architects is not new, but is contained within the general tendency, from the Renaissance onwards, to give status to artists. Until the modern era, artists in Western civilization were generally working under a patron – usually the Church or the rulers of the state – and their reputation could become commodified, such that their services could be bought by different patrons. One of the first records of celebrity status is artist-architect Giorgio Vasari's monograph Le vite de' più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori (in English, Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects), first published in 1550, recording the Italian Renaissance at the time of its flourishment. Vasari, himself under the patronage of Grand Duke Cosimo I de' Medici, even favoured architects from the city where he resided, Florence, attributing to them innovation, while barely mentioning other cities or places further away. The importance of Vasari's book was in the ability to consolidate reputation and status without people actually having to see the works described.[9] The development of media has thus been equally of central importance to architectural celebrity as other walks of life.

While status arising from patronage from the Church and State continued with the rise of

railway stations, and later airports) and public benevolence (the problems of urbanization, public housing, overcrowding, etc.), yet allowing some architects to concern themselves with architecture as an autonomous art (as flourished with Art Nouveau and Art Deco).[10] The heroes of modern architecture,[citation needed] in particular Le Corbusier[citation needed], were seen as heroic[citation needed
] for generating theories about how architecture should be concerned with the development of society.

Such publicity also made it into the popular press: in the post-war era

Álvaro Siza, and Frank Gehry; as is the fashion house Prada for commissioning Rem Koolhaas to design their flagship stores in New York and Los Angeles. However, throughout history the greatest prestige has come with the design of public buildings – opera houses, libraries, townhalls, and especially museums, often referred to as the "new cathedrals" of our times.[12]

Measuring celebrity status

Objectivity in the question of status would seem questionable. However, researchers at

Google hits to 'measure' the degree of celebrity status: "to establish a precise mathematical definition of fame, both in the sciences and the world at large".[13]

Prizes and the consolidation of reputation

Although there are few architects well known to the general public, "starchitects" are held in the highest esteem by their professional colleagues and the professional media. Such status is marked not only by prestigious commissions but also by various prizes. For example, the

Pritzker Prize, awarded since 1979, attempts to increase its own prestige by mentioning how its procedures are modeled on the Nobel Prize.[14]

In his 1979 book Architecture and its Interpretation, Juan Pablo Bonta put forward a theory about how buildings and architects achieve canonic status.

Siegfried Giedion's book Space Time and Architecture (1949) the Finnish architect Alvar Aalto was not mentioned at all. In the second edition he received more attention than any other architect, including Le Corbusier
, who until then had been understood as the most important modernist architect.

However, there is a difference between canonic status and "starchitect": as part of the "wow-factor" aspect of the term depends on current media visibility, it is used only to describe currently practicing architects:

Former starchitects

See also

References

  1. ^ Davide Ponzini and Michele Nastasi, STARCHITECTURE: Scenes, Actors and Spectacles in Contemporary Cities. Turin, Allemandi, 2011. http://www.starchitecture.it/category/book
  2. The Creative City
    : A Toolkit for Urban Innovators    . London; Earthscan, 2003.
  3. ^ Charles Jencks, What is Postmodernism? London, Academy Editions, 1984.
  4. ^ Charles Jencks, "The new paradigm in architecture" in Absolute Motion, Datutop 22, Tampere, 2002.
  5. The Atlantic Monthly
    , September 2002.
  6. ^ The term has been used more often in business management. See for instance: Tom Peters, The pursuit of wow, New York, Vintage, 1994.
  7. ^ Paul Kelso, "Architects urged to go for the 'wow factor' in designs for Britain's new public buildings", The Guardian, November 27, 2000.
  8. ^ Nicolai Ouroussof, "The New New York Skyline", New York Times, September 5, 2004
  9. ^ D. J. Gordon and Stephen Orgel, "Leonardo's Legend", ELH, Vol. 49, No. 2, Summer, 1982.
  10. ^ Spiro Kostof, The Architect: Chapters in the History of the Profession, University of California Press, 2000.
  11. ^ Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen and Donald Albrecht (eds), Eero Saarinen. Shaping the Future New Haven, Yale University Press, 2006.
  12. ^ Justin Henderson, Museum Architecture, Rockport Publishers, 2001.
  13. ^ Mike Martin, "Scientists Use Google To Measure Fame vs. Merit", Sci-tech today.com - May 20, 2004, [1]
  14. ^ Pritzer Home page Archived 2010-01-10 at the Wayback Machine
  15. ^ Juan Pablo Bonta, Architecture and its Interpretation. London, Lund Humphries, 1979
  16. ^ Ferren, Andrew (8 June 2012). "Tracking Turkey's First Starchitect". The New York Times.
  17. ^ "Sinan: The First Starchitect". www.buildingcentre.co.uk. Archived from the original on 2016-05-21.

Tracking Turkey’s First Starchitect

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