Starchitect
Encyclopedia
Architect
An architect is a person trained in the planning, design and oversight of the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to offer or render services in connection with the design and construction of a building, or group of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the...
s whose celebrity and critical acclaim have transformed them into idols of the architecture world and may even have given them some degree of fame amongst the general public. Celebrity status is generally associated with avant-gardist novelty. Developers around the world have proven eager to sign up "top talent" (starchitects) in hopes of convincing reluctant municipalities to approve large developments, of obtaining financing or of increasing the value of their buildings. A key characteristic is that the architect's designs are 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 and the rise of 'wow-factor' architecture
Buildings are frequently regarded as profit opportunities, so creating 'scarcity' or a certain degree of uniqueness gives further value to the investment. The balance between functionality and avant-gardism has influenced many property developers. For instance, architect-developer John PortmanJohn Portman
John C. Portman, Jr. is an American architect and real estate developer widely known for popularizing hotels and office buildings with multi-storied interior atriums....
found that building skyscraper
Skyscraper
A skyscraper is a tall, continuously habitable building of many stories, often designed for office and commercial use. There is no official definition or height above which a building may be classified as a skyscraper...
hotels with vast atrium
Atrium (architecture)
In modern architecture, an atrium is a large open space, often several stories high and having a glazed roof and/or large windows, often situated within a larger multistory building and often located immediately beyond the main entrance doors...
s - which he did in various US cities during the 1980s - was more profitable than maximizing floor area.
However, it was the rise of postmodern architecture
Postmodern architecture
Postmodern architecture began as an international style the first examples of which are generally cited as being from the 1950s, but did not become a movement until the late 1970s and continues to influence present-day architecture...
during the late 1970s and early 1980s that gave rise to the idea that star status in the architectural profession was about an avant-gardism linked to popular culture
Popular culture
Popular culture is the totality of ideas, perspectives, attitudes, memes, images and other phenomena that are deemed preferred per an informal consensus within the mainstream of a given culture, especially Western culture of the early to mid 20th century and the emerging global mainstream of the...
- which, it was argued by postmodern critics such as Charles Jencks
Charles Jencks
Charles Alexander Jencks is an American architectural theorist, landscape architect and designer. His books on the history and criticism of Modernism and Postmodernism were widely read in architectural circles and beyond....
, had been derided by the guardians of a modernist architecture. In response, Jencks argued for "double coding"; 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
Léon Krier
Léon Krier is an architect, architectural theorist and urban planner. From the late 1970s onwards Krier has been one of the most influential neo-traditional architects and planners...
, Michael Graves
Michael Graves
Michael Graves is an American architect. Identified as one of The New York Five, Graves has become a household name with his designs for domestic products sold at Target stores in the United States....
, Aldo Rossi
Aldo Rossi
Aldo Rossi was an Italian architect and designer who accomplished the unusual feat of achieving international recognition in four distinct areas: theory, drawing, architecture and product design.-Early life:...
, Robert A.M. Stern, Hans Hollein
Hans Hollein
Hans Hollein, is an Austrian architect and designer.Hollein achieved a diploma at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna in 1956, then attended the Illinois Institute of Technology in 1959 and the University of California, Berkeley in 1960...
, and James Stirling
James Stirling (architect)
Sir James Frazer Stirling FRIBA was a British architect. He is considered to be among the most important and influential British architects of the second half of the 20th century...
. 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.
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 Norman Foster
Norman Foster, Baron Foster of Thames Bank
Norman Robert Foster, Baron Foster of Thames Bank, OM is a British architect whose company maintains an international design practice, Foster + Partners....
, Renzo Piano
Renzo Piano
Renzo Piano is an Italian architect. He is the recipient of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, AIA Gold Medal, Kyoto Prize and the Sonning Prize...
, and Richard Rogers
Richard Rogers
Richard George Rogers, Baron Rogers of Riverside CH Kt FRIBA FCSD is a British architect noted for his modernist and functionalist designs....
, the latter two having designed the controversial Pompidou Centre (1977) in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, which opened to international acclaim. What this so-called high-tech architecture
High-Tech Architecture
High-tech architecture, also known as Late Modernism or Structural Expressionism, is an architectural style that emerged in the 1970s, incorporating elements of high-tech industry and technology into building design. High-tech architecture appeared as a revamped modernism, an extension of those...
showed was that an industrial aesthetic - an architecture characterized as much by urban grittiness as engineering efficiency - had popular appeal. This was also somewhat evident in so-called Deconstructionist architecture
Deconstructivism
Deconstructivism is a development of postmodern architecture that began in the late 1980s. It is characterized by ideas of fragmentation, an interest in manipulating ideas of a structure's surface or skin, non-rectilinear shapes which serve to distort and dislocate some of the elements of...
, such as the employment of chainlink fencing
Chain link fencing
A chain-link fence is a type of woven fence usually made from galvanized or LLDPE-coated steel wire...
, 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
Frank Gehry
Frank Owen Gehry, is a Canadian American Pritzker Prize-winning architect based in Los Angeles, California.His buildings, including his private residence, have become tourist attractions...
, whose house in Santa Monica, California
Santa Monica, California
Santa Monica is a beachfront city in western Los Angeles County, California, US. Situated on Santa Monica Bay, it is surrounded on three sides by the city of Los Angeles — Pacific Palisades on the northwest, Brentwood on the north, West Los Angeles on the northeast, Mar Vista on the east, and...
bears these characteristics.
With urban generation from the turn of the twentieth century picking up, economists forecast that globalization
Globalization
Globalization refers to the increasingly global relationships of culture, people and economic activity. Most often, it refers to economics: the global distribution of the production of goods and services, through reduction of barriers to international trade such as tariffs, export fees, and import...
and the powers of multi-national corporations would shift the balance of power away from nation states towards individual cities, which would then compete with neighbouring cities and cities elsewhere for the most lucrative modern industries, and which increasingly in major Western Europe and US cities did not include manufacturing. Thus cities set about 'reinventing themselves', giving precedence to the value given by culture. Municipalities and 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
Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao is a museum of modern and contemporary art, designed by Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry, built by Ferrovial, and located in Bilbao, Basque Country, Spain. It is built alongside the Nervion River, which runs through the city of Bilbao to the Atlantic Coast. The...
in Bilbao
Bilbao
Bilbao ) is a Spanish municipality, capital of the province of Biscay, in the autonomous community of the Basque Country. With a population of 353,187 , it is the largest city of its autonomous community and the tenth largest in Spain...
, Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
, by Frank Gehry
Frank Gehry
Frank Owen Gehry, is a Canadian American Pritzker Prize-winning architect based in Los Angeles, California.His buildings, including his private residence, have become tourist attractions...
, 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 factor"; 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
Imperial War Museum North
Imperial War Museum North is a museum in the Metropolitan Borough of Trafford in Greater Manchester, England. One of the five branches of the Imperial War Museum, the museum explores the impact of modern conflicts on people and society. It is the first branch of the Imperial War Museum to be...
(2002), Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
, UK, by Daniel Libeskind
Daniel Libeskind
Daniel Libeskind, is an American architect, artist, and set designer of Polish-Jewish descent. Libeskind founded Studio Daniel Libeskind in 1989 with his wife, Nina, and is its principal design architect...
, the Kiasma
Kiasma
Kiasma is a contemporary art museum located on Mannerheimintie in Helsinki, Finland. Its name kiasma, Finnish for chiasma, alludes to the basic conceptual idea of its architect, Steven Holl. The museum exhibits the contemporary art collection of the Finnish National Gallery founded in 1990...
Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki
Helsinki
Helsinki is the capital and largest city in Finland. It is in the region of Uusimaa, located in southern Finland, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, an arm of the Baltic Sea. The population of the city of Helsinki is , making it by far the most populous municipality in Finland. Helsinki is...
, Finland
Finland
Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...
, by Steven Holl
Steven Holl
Steven Holl is an American architect and watercolorist, perhaps best known for the 1998 Kiasma Contemporary Art Museum in Helsinki, Finland, the 2003 Simmons Hall at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the celebrated 2007 Bloch Building addition to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City,...
, and the Seattle Central Library
Seattle Central Library
The Seattle Public Library's Central Library is the flagship library of The Seattle Public Library system. The 11-story glass and steel building in downtown Seattle, Washington was opened to the public on Sunday, May 23, 2004...
(2004), Washington, USA, by OMA
OMA
-Communication:* .oma, extension for files encrypted by OpenMG Audio for Sony's ATRAC3 format* OMA, Open Mobile Alliance, a standards body for the mobile phone industry* OMA, Outlook Mobile Access, a mobile phone email program using Microsoft Exchange Server...
.
Design Quality Indicator
The Design Quality Indicator is a toolkit to measure the design quality of buildings.Development of DQI was started by the Construction Industry Council in 1999 and the toolkit was launched as an online resource for the UK construction industry on the 1 October 2003...
has been produced by the UK Construction Industry Council
Construction Industry Council
The Construction Industry Council is the representative body for the professional bodies, research organizations and specialist business associations in the construction industry in the United Kingdom...
, 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 American architecture critics such as New York Times architecture critics Herbert Mushamp and Nicolai Ouroussof, in their arguments that the city needs to be "radically" reshaped by new towers. Discussing a project for a new skyscraper at 80 South Street, near the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge
Brooklyn Bridge
The Brooklyn Bridge is one of the oldest suspension bridges in the United States. Completed in 1883, it connects the New York City boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn by spanning the East River...
, by Spanish Starchitect Santiago Calatrava
Santiago Calatrava
Santiago Calatrava Valls is a Spanish architect, sculptor and structural engineer whose principal office is in Zürich, Switzerland. Classed now among the elite designers of the world, he has offices in Zürich, Paris, Valencia, and New York City....
, Ouroussof mentions how Calatrava's apartments are conceived as self-contained urban refuges, $30,000,000 prestige objects for the 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."
Historical overview of the status of architects
The notion of giving celebrity status to architects is nothing 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 VasariGiorgio Vasari
Giorgio Vasari was an Italian painter, writer, historian, and architect, who is famous today for his biographies of Italian artists, considered the ideological foundation of art-historical writing.-Biography:...
's monograph Le Vite delle più eccellenti pittori, scultori, ed architettori (in English, Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects), first published in 1550, recording the Renaissance (rinascita) 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
Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
, attributing to them innovation, while barely mentioning other cities or places further away. The importacne of Vasari's book was in the ability to consolidate reputation and status without people actually having to see the works described. 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 Enlightenment
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
and capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
(e.g. the position of architect Christopher Wren
Christopher Wren
Sir Christopher Wren FRS is one of the most highly acclaimed English architects in history.He used to be accorded responsibility for rebuilding 51 churches in the City of London after the Great Fire in 1666, including his masterpiece, St. Paul's Cathedral, on Ludgate Hill, completed in 1710...
in the patronage of the British Crown, the City of London
City of London
The City of London is a small area within Greater London, England. It is the historic core of London around which the modern conurbation grew and has held city status since time immemorial. The City’s boundaries have remained almost unchanged since the Middle Ages, and it is now only a tiny part of...
, the Church of England
Church of England
The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St...
and Oxford University during the Seventeenth century), there was an expansion in artistic and architectural services available, each competing for commissions with the growth of industry and the middle-classes. Architects nevertheless remained essentially servants to their clients: while Romanticism
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
and Modernism
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
in the other arts encouraged individualism, progress in architecture was geared mostly to improvements in building performance (standards of comfort), engineering and the development of new building typologies (e.g. factories, 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
Art Nouveau
Art Nouveau is an international philosophy and style of art, architecture and applied art—especially the decorative arts—that were most popular during 1890–1910. The name "Art Nouveau" is French for "new art"...
and Art Deco
Art Deco
Art deco , or deco, is an eclectic artistic and design style that began in Paris in the 1920s and flourished internationally throughout the 1930s, into the World War II era. The style influenced all areas of design, including architecture and interior design, industrial design, fashion and...
). The heroes of modern architecture, in particular Le Corbusier
Le Corbusier
Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, better known as Le Corbusier , was a Swiss-born French architect, designer, urbanist, writer and painter, famous for being one of the pioneers of what now is called modern architecture. He was born in Switzerland and became a French citizen in 1930...
, were seen as heroic 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 Time magazine occasionally featured architects on its front cover - for instance, in addition to Le Corbusier
Le Corbusier
Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, better known as Le Corbusier , was a Swiss-born French architect, designer, urbanist, writer and painter, famous for being one of the pioneers of what now is called modern architecture. He was born in Switzerland and became a French citizen in 1930...
, Eero Saarinen
Eero Saarinen
Eero Saarinen was a Finnish American architect and industrial designer of the 20th century famous for varying his style according to the demands of the project: simple, sweeping, arching structural curves or machine-like rationalism.-Biography:Eero Saarinen shared the same birthday as his father,...
, Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright was an American architect, interior designer, writer and educator, who designed more than 1,000 structures and completed 500 works. Wright believed in designing structures which were in harmony with humanity and its environment, a philosophy he called organic architecture...
, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was a German architect. He is commonly referred to and addressed as Mies, his surname....
. In more recent times Time magazine has also featured Philip Johnson
Philip Johnson
Philip Cortelyou Johnson was an influential American architect.In 1930, he founded the Department of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and later , as a trustee, he was awarded an American Institute of Architects Gold Medal and the first Pritzker Architecture...
, Peter Eisenman
Peter Eisenman
Peter Eisenman is an American architect. Eisenman's professional work is often referred to as formalist, deconstructive, late avant-garde, late or high modernist, etc...
, Rem Koolhaas
Rem Koolhaas
Remment Lucas Koolhaas is a Dutch architect, architectural theorist, urbanist and "Professor in Practice of Architecture and Urban Design" at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University, USA. Koolhaas studied at the Netherlands Film and Television Academy in Amsterdam, at the Architectural...
and Zaha Hadid
Zaha Hadid
Zaha Hadid, CBE is an Iraqi-British architect.-Life and career:Hadid was born in 1950 in Baghdad, Iraq. She received a degree in mathematics from the American University of Beirut before moving to study at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London.After graduating she worked...
. Eero Saarinen is a particularly interesting case because he specialized in building Headquarters for prestigious US companies, such as General Motors
General Motors
General Motors Company , commonly known as GM, formerly incorporated as General Motors Corporation, is an American multinational automotive corporation headquartered in Detroit, Michigan and the world's second-largest automaker in 2010...
, CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
, and IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
, and these companies used architecture to promote their corporate images: e.g. during the 1950s General Motors often photographed their new car models in front of their HQ in Michigan
Michigan
Michigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....
. Corporations have continued to understand the value of bringing in Starchitects to design their key buildings. For instance, the manufacturing company Vitra
Vitra
Vitra can refer to:* Vitra : a Swiss manufacturer of designer furniture. Vitra is the European manufacturer and retailer of the works of many internationally renowned furniture designers....
is well-known for the works of notable architects that make up its premises in Weil am Rhein
Weil am Rhein
Weil am Rhein is a German town and commune which is a suburb of the city of Basel in Switzerland. It is situated on the east bank of the River Rhine, and close to the point at which the Swiss, French and German borders meet. It is the most southwesterly town in Germany.-Geography:Weil am Rhein is...
, Germany; including Zaha Hadid
Zaha Hadid
Zaha Hadid, CBE is an Iraqi-British architect.-Life and career:Hadid was born in 1950 in Baghdad, Iraq. She received a degree in mathematics from the American University of Beirut before moving to study at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London.After graduating she worked...
, Álvaro Siza and Frank Gehry
Frank Gehry
Frank Owen Gehry, is a Canadian American Pritzker Prize-winning architect based in Los Angeles, California.His buildings, including his private residence, have become tourist attractions...
; as is the fashion house Prada
Prada
Prada S.p.A. is an Italian fashion label specializing in luxury goods for men and women , founded by Mario Prada.-Foundations:...
for commissioning Rem Koolhaas
Rem Koolhaas
Remment Lucas Koolhaas is a Dutch architect, architectural theorist, urbanist and "Professor in Practice of Architecture and Urban Design" at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University, USA. Koolhaas studied at the Netherlands Film and Television Academy in Amsterdam, at the Architectural...
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.
Measuring celebrity status
Objectivity in the question of status would seem questionable. However, researchers at Clarkson UniversityClarkson University
-The Clarkson School:The Clarkson School, a special division of Clarkson University, was founded in 1978 as a unique educational opportunity. The School offers students an early entrance opportunity into college, replacing the typical senior year of high school with a year of college...
have used the method of Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
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".
Architect Michael Sorkin
Michael Sorkin
Michael Sorkin is an American architecture critic. He is a Distinguished Professor of Architecture and Director of the Graduate Program in Urban Design at the Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture, City College of New York, part of the City University of New York , and the founder of...
has analysed a more specific example, in an article titled "Does The New York Times architecture critic Herbert Mushamp keep writing about the same things?" Sorkin statistically showed that Muschamp had a favored circle of architects he consistently promoted. Tied for first on the list were Rem Koolhaas
Rem Koolhaas
Remment Lucas Koolhaas is a Dutch architect, architectural theorist, urbanist and "Professor in Practice of Architecture and Urban Design" at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University, USA. Koolhaas studied at the Netherlands Film and Television Academy in Amsterdam, at the Architectural...
and Frank Gehry
Frank Gehry
Frank Owen Gehry, is a Canadian American Pritzker Prize-winning architect based in Los Angeles, California.His buildings, including his private residence, have become tourist attractions...
, who were each mentioned in 37% of Muschamp's articles. Sorkin's list: Rem Koolhaas
Rem Koolhaas
Remment Lucas Koolhaas is a Dutch architect, architectural theorist, urbanist and "Professor in Practice of Architecture and Urban Design" at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University, USA. Koolhaas studied at the Netherlands Film and Television Academy in Amsterdam, at the Architectural...
(37%); Frank Gehry
Frank Gehry
Frank Owen Gehry, is a Canadian American Pritzker Prize-winning architect based in Los Angeles, California.His buildings, including his private residence, have become tourist attractions...
(37%); Peter Eisenman
Peter Eisenman
Peter Eisenman is an American architect. Eisenman's professional work is often referred to as formalist, deconstructive, late avant-garde, late or high modernist, etc...
with ANY, Cynthia Davidson, Greg Lynn
Greg Lynn
Greg Lynn is owner of the Greg Lynn FORM office, an o. Univ. Professor of architecture at University of Applied Arts Vienna, a studio professor at the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture, and the Davenport Visiting Professor at the Yale School of Architecture. He was the winner of the Golden...
, Jeff Kipnis
Jeff Kipnis
Jeffrey Kipnis is an architectural critic, theorist, designer, film-maker, curator, and educator. Not a registered architect, Kipnis first came to prominence through his association with avant-garde architect Peter Eisenman, and their joint collaboration with French philosopher Jacques Derrida...
(28%); Peter Eisenman (22%); Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio
Diller Scofidio + Renfro
Diller Scofidio + Renfro is a New York City-based interdisciplinary design studio that integrates architecture, the visual arts, and the performing arts. Originally founded by Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio in 1979, the firm is particularly well known for its interdisciplinary approach to...
(16%); Philippe Starck
Philippe Starck
Philippe Patrick Starck is a French product designer and probably the best known designer in the New Design style...
(13%); Christian de Portzamparc
Christian de Portzamparc
Christian de Portzamparc is a French architect and urbanist. He graduated from the École Nationale des Beaux Arts in Paris in 1970 and has since been noted for his bold designs and artistic touch; his projects reflect a sensibility to their environment and the town is a founding principal of his...
(13%); Philip Johnson
Philip Johnson
Philip Cortelyou Johnson was an influential American architect.In 1930, he founded the Department of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and later , as a trustee, he was awarded an American Institute of Architects Gold Medal and the first Pritzker Architecture...
(11%); Tod Williams and Billie Tsien
Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects
Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects are a husband-and-wife architectural firm founded in 1974, based in New York....
(11%); James Stewart Polshek (11%); Jean Nouvel
Jean Nouvel
Jean Nouvel is a French architect. Nouvel studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and was a founding member of Mars 1976 and Syndicat de l'Architecture...
(11%); Robert Venturi
Robert Venturi
Robert Charles Venturi, Jr. is an American architect, founding principal of the firm Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates, and one of the major figures in the architecture of the twentieth century...
(11%); David Childs
David Childs
David M. Childs is the Consulting Design Partner at Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. He is best known for his redesign of the new One World Trade Center in New York....
(10%); Rafael Vinoly
Rafael Viñoly
Rafael Viñoly is an Uruguayan architect living in the United States.-Biography:He was born in Montevideo, Uruguay to Román Viñoly Barreto, and Maria Beceiro ....
(10%); Zaha Hadid
Zaha Hadid
Zaha Hadid, CBE is an Iraqi-British architect.-Life and career:Hadid was born in 1950 in Baghdad, Iraq. She received a degree in mathematics from the American University of Beirut before moving to study at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London.After graduating she worked...
(8%); Greg Lynn
Greg Lynn
Greg Lynn is owner of the Greg Lynn FORM office, an o. Univ. Professor of architecture at University of Applied Arts Vienna, a studio professor at the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture, and the Davenport Visiting Professor at the Yale School of Architecture. He was the winner of the Golden...
(8%); Little-known architects (6%); Women not in partnership with the top cited men (6%); articles that do not mention Koolhaas, Gehry, or Eisenman (30%); Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright was an American architect, interior designer, writer and educator, who designed more than 1,000 structures and completed 500 works. Wright believed in designing structures which were in harmony with humanity and its environment, a philosophy he called organic architecture...
(11%); Le Corbusier
Le Corbusier
Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, better known as Le Corbusier , was a Swiss-born French architect, designer, urbanist, writer and painter, famous for being one of the pioneers of what now is called modern architecture. He was born in Switzerland and became a French citizen in 1930...
(11%).
Prizes and the consolidation of reputation
Who is a "starchitect," as opposed to an "architect"? The number of architects well known to the general public is small. However, virtually all the architects regarded as "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, which in turn also carry prestige. For example, the Pritzker PrizePritzker Prize
The Pritzker Architecture Prize is awarded annually by the Hyatt Foundation to honour "a living architect whose built work demonstrates a combination of those qualities of talent, vision and commitment, which has produced consistent and significant contributions to humanity and the built...
, awarded since 1979, attempts to increase its own prestige by mentioning how its procedures are modelled on the Nobel Prize
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...
,, while in turn professional journals refer to it as the "nobel prize for architecture".
In his 1979 book Architecture and its Interpretation, Juan Pablo Bonta put forward a theory about how buildings and architects achieve canonic status. What he argued was that a building and its architect achieve iconic or canonic status after a period when various critics and historians build up an interpretation that then becomes unquestioned for a significant period. If the text itself receives canonical status, then the status of the architect is further endorsed. For example, in the first edition of Siegfried Giedion's book Space Time and Architecture (1949) the Finnish architect Alvar Aalto
Alvar Aalto
Hugo Alvar Henrik Aalto was a Finnish architect and designer. His work includes architecture, furniture, textiles and glassware...
was not mentioned at all. In the second edition he received more attention than any other architect, including Le Corbusier
Le Corbusier
Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, better known as Le Corbusier , was a Swiss-born French architect, designer, urbanist, writer and painter, famous for being one of the pioneers of what now is called modern architecture. He was born in Switzerland and became a French citizen in 1930...
, who until then had been understood as the most important modernist architect. The prestige of Aalto and Giedion's book fed each other.
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.
Media creation of a "starchitect"
Jeanne GangJeanne Gang
-External links:* official website* "Jeanne Gang: The Art of Nesting"...
, a Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
-based architect whose formally-striking, 82-story Aqua Tower neared completion in the city's Lakeshore East development in 2010, provides an interesting example of the potential creation of a "starchitect". With its undulating balconies and pools of glass, the tower can make a local claim for "iconic" status amidst a number of arguably non-descript skyscrapers. And Gang—despite a still-limited number of completed works to her credit and having designed little outside of Illinois
Illinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...
by 2010—was quickly celebrated in the US media for her achievement, in large part because the tower is purported to be the tallest building in the world designed by an architectural firm headed by a woman. In June 2008, Gang and Aqua appeared on the front cover of the US architecture magazine Metropolis, and in June 2010, Aqua graced the cover of Architectural Record
Architectural Record
Architectural Record is an American monthly magazine dedicated to architecture and interior design, published by McGraw-Hill Construction in New York City. It is over 110 years old...
. Furthermore, Blair Kamin
Blair Kamin
Blair Kamin is the Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic of the Chicago Tribune, a post he has held since 1992. Kamin has held other jobs at the Tribune and previously worked for The Des Moines Register. He also serves as a contributing editor of Architectural Record...
, the Pulitzer Prize-winning architectural critic for the Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune
The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...
, declared her a "starchitect" nearly two years before the tower itself was complete. Gang has since secured commissions for buildings elsewhere in the US, such as in Greenville, South Carolina
Greenville, South Carolina
-Law and government:The city of Greenville adopted the Council-Manager form of municipal government in 1976.-History:The area was part of the Cherokee Nation's protected grounds after the Treaty of 1763, which ended the French and Indian War. No White man was allowed to enter, though some families...
, as well as a new residential tower in Hyderabad, India. Whether Gang will be regarded as a "starchitect" will in the future depend, following Bonta's theory, on whether her buildings achieve lasting iconic status and become part of the canonical history of architecture.
Current starchitects
- Norman FosterNorman Foster, Baron Foster of Thames BankNorman Robert Foster, Baron Foster of Thames Bank, OM is a British architect whose company maintains an international design practice, Foster + Partners....
- Daniel LibeskindDaniel LibeskindDaniel Libeskind, is an American architect, artist, and set designer of Polish-Jewish descent. Libeskind founded Studio Daniel Libeskind in 1989 with his wife, Nina, and is its principal design architect...
- Jean NouvelJean NouvelJean Nouvel is a French architect. Nouvel studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and was a founding member of Mars 1976 and Syndicat de l'Architecture...
- Renzo PianoRenzo PianoRenzo Piano is an Italian architect. He is the recipient of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, AIA Gold Medal, Kyoto Prize and the Sonning Prize...
- Wolf Prix (Coop Himmelb(l)auCoop Himmelb(l)auCoop Himmelbau is a cooperative architectural design firm primarily located in Vienna, Austria and which now also maintains offices in Los Angeles, United States and Guadalajara, Mexico...
) - Santiago CalatravaSantiago CalatravaSantiago Calatrava Valls is a Spanish architect, sculptor and structural engineer whose principal office is in Zürich, Switzerland. Classed now among the elite designers of the world, he has offices in Zürich, Paris, Valencia, and New York City....
- Richard RogersRichard RogersRichard George Rogers, Baron Rogers of Riverside CH Kt FRIBA FCSD is a British architect noted for his modernist and functionalist designs....
- Frank GehryFrank GehryFrank Owen Gehry, is a Canadian American Pritzker Prize-winning architect based in Los Angeles, California.His buildings, including his private residence, have become tourist attractions...
- Herzog & de MeuronHerzog & de MeuronHerzog & de Meuron Architekten, BSA/SIA/ETH is a Swiss architecture firm, founded and headquartered in Basel, Switzerland in 1978. The careers of founders and senior partners Jacques Herzog , and Pierre de Meuron , closely paralleled one another, with both attending the Swiss Federal Institute of...
- Thom MayneThom MayneThom Mayne is a Los Angeles-based architect. Educated at University of Southern California and the Harvard University Graduate School of Design in 1978, Mayne helped found the Southern California Institute of Architecture in 1972, where he is a trustee...
(Morphosis) - Rem KoolhaasRem KoolhaasRemment Lucas Koolhaas is a Dutch architect, architectural theorist, urbanist and "Professor in Practice of Architecture and Urban Design" at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University, USA. Koolhaas studied at the Netherlands Film and Television Academy in Amsterdam, at the Architectural...
- Bernard TschumiBernard TschumiBernard Tschumi is an architect, writer, and educator, commonly associated with deconstructivism. Born of French and Swiss parentage, he works and lives in New York and Paris. He studied in Paris and at ETH in Zurich, where he received his degree in architecture in 1969...
- Toyo ItoToyo Itois a Japanese architect known for creating conceptual architecture, in which he seeks to simultaneously express the physical and virtual worlds. He is a leading exponent of architecture that addresses the contemporary notion of a "simulated" city, and has been called "one of the world's most...
- Tadao AndoTadao Andois a Japanese architect whose approach to architecture was once categorized by Francesco Dal Co as critical regionalism. Ando has led a storied life, working as a truck driver and boxer prior to settling on the profession of architecture, despite never having taken formal training in the field...
- Steven HollSteven HollSteven Holl is an American architect and watercolorist, perhaps best known for the 1998 Kiasma Contemporary Art Museum in Helsinki, Finland, the 2003 Simmons Hall at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the celebrated 2007 Bloch Building addition to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City,...
- Oscar NiemeyerOscar NiemeyerOscar Ribeiro de Almeida Niemeyer Soares Filho is a Brazilian architect specializing in international modern architecture...
- César PelliCésar PelliCésar Pelli is an Argentine architect known for designing some of the world's tallest buildings and other major urban landmarks. In 1991, the American Institute of Architects listed Pelli among the ten most influential living American architects...
- Massimiliano FuksasMassimiliano FuksasMassimiliano Fuksas is an Italian architect, born in Rome in 1944 to an Jewish Lithuanian father and Italian Catholic mother. He received his degree in architecture from the La Sapienza University in 1969 in Rome, where he opened his first office. Subsequent offices were opened in Paris and Vienna...
- Robert Stern
- Sheila Sri PrakashSheila Sri PrakashSheila Sri Prakash is an architect and planner of Indian origin. She founded Shilpa Architects in Chennai, India in 1979 and has the distinction of being the first woman in India to have started and operated her own architectural firm...
- Bjarke IngelsBjarke IngelsBjarke Ingels is a Danish architect. He heads the architectural practice Bjarke Ingels Group which he founded in 2006. In 2009 he co-founded the design consultancy KiBiSi...
- Richard MeierRichard MeierRichard Meier is an American architect, whose rationalist buildings make prominent use of the color white.- Biography :Meier is Jewish and was born in Newark, New Jersey...
- Christian de PortzamparcChristian de PortzamparcChristian de Portzamparc is a French architect and urbanist. He graduated from the École Nationale des Beaux Arts in Paris in 1970 and has since been noted for his bold designs and artistic touch; his projects reflect a sensibility to their environment and the town is a founding principal of his...
- Rafael VinolyRafael ViñolyRafael Viñoly is an Uruguayan architect living in the United States.-Biography:He was born in Montevideo, Uruguay to Román Viñoly Barreto, and Maria Beceiro ....
- David ChildsDavid ChildsDavid M. Childs is the Consulting Design Partner at Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. He is best known for his redesign of the new One World Trade Center in New York....
- Zaha HadidZaha HadidZaha Hadid, CBE is an Iraqi-British architect.-Life and career:Hadid was born in 1950 in Baghdad, Iraq. She received a degree in mathematics from the American University of Beirut before moving to study at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London.After graduating she worked...
- Greg LynnGreg LynnGreg Lynn is owner of the Greg Lynn FORM office, an o. Univ. Professor of architecture at University of Applied Arts Vienna, a studio professor at the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture, and the Davenport Visiting Professor at the Yale School of Architecture. He was the winner of the Golden...
- Rafael MoneoRafael MoneoJosé Rafael Moneo Vallés is a Spanish architect. He was born in Tudela, Spain, and won the Pritzker Prize for architecture in 1996. He studied at the ETSAM, Technical University of Madrid from which he received his architectural degree in 1961. From 1958 to 1961 he worked in the office in Madrid...
Former "starchitects"
- Frank Lloyd WrightFrank Lloyd WrightFrank Lloyd Wright was an American architect, interior designer, writer and educator, who designed more than 1,000 structures and completed 500 works. Wright believed in designing structures which were in harmony with humanity and its environment, a philosophy he called organic architecture...
- Robert VenturiRobert VenturiRobert Charles Venturi, Jr. is an American architect, founding principal of the firm Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates, and one of the major figures in the architecture of the twentieth century...
- Kevin RocheKevin RocheKevin Roche is an Irish-American architect known for his creative work with glass.Born in Dublin, Roche spent his formative years in Mitchelstown, Co. Cork before he graduated from University College Dublin in 1945. He then worked with Michael Scott from 1945-1946...
- Michael GravesMichael GravesMichael Graves is an American architect. Identified as one of The New York Five, Graves has become a household name with his designs for domestic products sold at Target stores in the United States....
- Ludwig Mies van der RoheLudwig Mies van der RoheLudwig Mies van der Rohe was a German architect. He is commonly referred to and addressed as Mies, his surname....
- Peter EisenmanPeter EisenmanPeter Eisenman is an American architect. Eisenman's professional work is often referred to as formalist, deconstructive, late avant-garde, late or high modernist, etc...
- John PortmanJohn PortmanJohn C. Portman, Jr. is an American architect and real estate developer widely known for popularizing hotels and office buildings with multi-storied interior atriums....
- IM Pei
- Mario BottaMario BottaMario Botta is a Swiss architect. He studied at the Liceo Artistico in Milan and the IUAV in Venice. His ideas were influenced by Le Corbusier, Carlo Scarpa, Louis Kahn. He opened his own practice in 1970 in Lugano.-Career:...
Canonic architects
- Alvar AaltoAlvar AaltoHugo Alvar Henrik Aalto was a Finnish architect and designer. His work includes architecture, furniture, textiles and glassware...
- Marcel BreuerMarcel BreuerMarcel Lajos Breuer , was a Hungarian-born modernist, architect and furniture designer of Jewish descent. One of the masters of Modernism, Breuer displayed interest in modular construction and simple forms.- Life and work :Known to his friends and associates as Lajkó, Breuer studied and taught at...
- Daniel BurnhamDaniel BurnhamDaniel Hudson Burnham, FAIA was an American architect and urban planner. He was the Director of Works for the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. He took a leading role in the creation of master plans for the development of a number of cities, including Chicago and downtown Washington DC...
- Le CorbusierLe CorbusierCharles-Édouard Jeanneret, better known as Le Corbusier , was a Swiss-born French architect, designer, urbanist, writer and painter, famous for being one of the pioneers of what now is called modern architecture. He was born in Switzerland and became a French citizen in 1930...
- Philip JohnsonPhilip JohnsonPhilip Cortelyou Johnson was an influential American architect.In 1930, he founded the Department of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and later , as a trustee, he was awarded an American Institute of Architects Gold Medal and the first Pritzker Architecture...
- Antoni GaudíAntoni GaudíAntoni Gaudí i Cornet was a Spanish Catalan architect and figurehead of Catalan Modernism. Gaudí's works reflect his highly individual and distinctive style and are largely concentrated in the Catalan capital of Barcelona, notably his magnum opus, the Sagrada Família.Much of Gaudí's work was...
- Paul RudolphPaul Rudolph (architect)Paul Marvin Rudolph was an American architect and the dean of the Yale School of Architecture for six years, known for use of concrete and highly complex floor plans...
- Bruce GoffBruce GoffBruce Alonzo Goff was an American architect distinguished by his organic, eclectic, and often flamboyant designs for houses and other buildings in Oklahoma and elsewhere.-Early years:...
- Walter GropiusWalter GropiusWalter Adolph Georg Gropius was a German architect and founder of the Bauhaus School who, along with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier, is widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters of modern architecture....
- Louis KahnLouis KahnLouis Isadore Kahn was an American architect, based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. After working in various capacities for several firms in Philadelphia, he founded his own atelier in 1935...
- Adolf LoosAdolf LoosAdolf Franz Karl Viktor Maria Loos was a Moravian-born Austro-Hungarian architect. He was influential in European Modern architecture, and in his essay Ornament and Crime he repudiated the florid style of the Vienna Secession, the Austrian version of Art Nouveau...
- Ludwig Mies van der RoheLudwig Mies van der RoheLudwig Mies van der Rohe was a German architect. He is commonly referred to and addressed as Mies, his surname....
- Aldo RossiAldo RossiAldo Rossi was an Italian architect and designer who accomplished the unusual feat of achieving international recognition in four distinct areas: theory, drawing, architecture and product design.-Early life:...
- Eero SaarinenEero SaarinenEero Saarinen was a Finnish American architect and industrial designer of the 20th century famous for varying his style according to the demands of the project: simple, sweeping, arching structural curves or machine-like rationalism.-Biography:Eero Saarinen shared the same birthday as his father,...
- James StirlingJames Stirling (architect)Sir James Frazer Stirling FRIBA was a British architect. He is considered to be among the most important and influential British architects of the second half of the 20th century...
- Frank Lloyd WrightFrank Lloyd WrightFrank Lloyd Wright was an American architect, interior designer, writer and educator, who designed more than 1,000 structures and completed 500 works. Wright believed in designing structures which were in harmony with humanity and its environment, a philosophy he called organic architecture...
- John Lautner
- Gianlorenzo Bernini
- Andrea PalladioAndrea PalladioAndrea Palladio was an architect active in the Republic of Venice. Palladio, influenced by Roman and Greek architecture, primarily by Vitruvius, is widely considered the most influential individual in the history of Western architecture...
- MichelangeloMichelangeloMichelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni , commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art...
- Filippo BrunelleschiFilippo BrunelleschiFilippo Brunelleschi was one of the foremost architects and engineers of the Italian Renaissance. He is perhaps most famous for inventing linear perspective and designing the dome of the Florence Cathedral, but his accomplishments also included bronze artwork, architecture , mathematics,...
- Leon Battista Alberti