starchitect Concepts

Cities in the Sky: The Quest to Build the World's Tallest Skyscrapers

by Jason M. Barr · 13 May 2024 · 292pp · 107,998 words

Prescott rejected the inquiry, Livingstone felt vindicated. The bullet shape and diagonal gray and green glass panels make the Gherkin, designed by star architect, or starchitect, Lord Norman Foster, one of the world’s most unusual skyscrapers—like a giant Fabergé egg. But it’s a success story and has emboldened

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for the civic realm. Of course, developers can use their buildings to enhance their reputations, but it’s their own prerogative. In the United States starchitects are a form of charity, but in London they are tithes. Or rather, as two London School of Economics (LSE) economists, Paul C. Cheshire and

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Gerard H. Dericks, see it, the hiring of starchitects is a form of rent seeking—the making of a payment or the expenditure of resources solely to get access to a valuable “prize.” In

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associated with these “signature” buildings—often as high as an additional 15 percent—they are worth it. Cheshire and Dericks conclude that, on average, a starchitect’s “reputation gets an extra 14 floors on a given site. So even factoring in the extra visible costs, a

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[starchitect] boosts the value of a typical site in central London by 152%, apparently capturing ‘economic rents’ of £148 million.” And in that way, London’s

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Tsim Sha Tsui, directly across from Central, the skyscraper demonstrates Asia’s “crazy richness.” Not content to produce a stolid glass box, Zhao hired a starchitect to give it a twisting form, like an old oak tree in an ancient forest. The building is a showcase of seemingly impossible futuristic technology

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China headquarters followed five years later (1990; 72 floors, 1,205 feet). The bank was eager to express the power of rising China and hired starchitect I. M. Pei, whose father had been a director in the 1920s. Though not limited by flight-path restrictions, the bank “settled” for the tallest

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to advertise the riskiness of erecting supertall buildings. Just as infamous is the CCTV Headquarters in Beijing (2012, fifty-one stories), which was designed by starchitect Rem Koolhaas, as two buildings that each appear to be leaning and are connected at the top by an L-shaped sky bridge. The effect

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from the occupants. Other studies look at the value—or not—brought by the architect. The global demand for iconicity has given rise to the “starchitect industrial complex” whose novel designs create instantly recognized images, from those such as Frank Gehry, Renzo Piano, Norman Foster, Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas, Adrian Smith

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because the architecture world awards a handful of prestigious prizes and medals. Research in London and the United States confirms the market value of the starchitect. Tenants will pay more—between 5 and 17 percent—to be inside a prizewinning architect’s building. The problem here is that while we know

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Civilization Skyscrapers and Their Discontents Billionaires’ Row, New York City, in 2023 BILLIONAIRES’ ROW In 2010, New York developer Harry Macklowe visited the office of starchitect Rafael Viñoly, seeking a design for a supertall apartment building at the future address of 432 Park Avenue. Viñoly looked around the room. In the

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with efficiency and good planning. When we think of skyscrapers, we tend to think of high-end luxury condos or splashy corporate headquarters designed by starchitects. But they are bespoke projects for those with big bank accounts. Building medium- or high-rise housing for the middle classes need not be so

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psychological impacts and, 265–68 regulation and, 39, 252, 253–54, 255–56, 258, 260 revenue streams of, 222 social science research and, 268–71 starchitect industrial complex and, 227–28 technological design evolution of, xxi–xxii, 166–68 urbanism and, 268–72, 292–93 as vault delivery systems, 22 VEAM

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), 103 Special Economic Zone (SEZ), 138, 139, 150, 157 St. Paul’s Cathedral (London), 87, 103, 263 St. Petersburg, Lakhta Center tower (2019), 124, 237 starchitects, 110–11, 227–28, 245 Starrett, Paul, 31, 32 Starrett, William, 31, 32 Starrett, William Aiken, Sr., 31 Steinway Tower (2021) (New York City), 241

Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time

by Jeff Speck · 13 Nov 2012 · 342pp · 86,256 words

their chance to design the figural object building that will land them on the cover of a hero architect magazine. And then there are the starchitects, most of whom don’t care about figural space at all. A fairly typical battle in this war was fought at the Mayors’ Institute on

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, sitting atop a series of block-filling bases, shown in blue, that shaped the streets beautifully. “That’s a really interesting plan,” said the one starchitect at the table. “Just get rid of the blue bits and you’ll have something special.” Wow. First of all, when a designer says something

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creating well-shaped public spaces. We are being banished to the grasslands once again—but at least this time the grasslands are made of grass. Starchitects of course adore landscape urbanism, as the vast distances between buildings allow each sculptural object to be seen to best effect. We can give the

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FRIENDLY AND UNIQUE FACES STEP 10: PICK YOUR WINNERS STEP 9: MAKE FRIENDLY AND UNIQUE FACES Invisible parking; Sticky versus slippery edges; Attack of the starchitects; Too much of a thing; Boring nature If only safety and comfort were enough. More Americans would stay in their marriages, we would eat the

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of building, but that is not to say that they are any more motivated to engage the pedestrian. Evidence would suggest that, among the leading starchitects, creating street life still ranks low on the list of priorities, somewhere down there with staying on budget and keeping the rain out. In most

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cities, however, the culprit is less likely to be a starchitect than a Rite Aid, as pharmacies and other national chains refuse to put windows where shelves can go. These standards can be overcome, but only

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, any awning larger than a certain tiny size had to be sprinkled for fire suppression. We got rid of that rule first. ATTACK OF THE STARCHITECTS We’ve come a long way since the seventies, when every city endeavored to build its own version of Boston’s fortress-like City Hall

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was characterized by walls so abrasive they could rip your arm open. Happily, this technique is no longer in vogue, but many architects, especially the starchitects, still build blank walls where they least belong. The Spaniard Rafael Moneo, my old professor, is probably the leading blank wall composer, a veritable Copland

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Sierra Club Skinny Streets program (Portland, Ore.) skyscrapers Sloan, Alfred, Jr. SmartCode Shareware Smith, Adam Smith, Rick Sottile, Christian Speck, Jeff Spivak, Alvin Standard Oil “starchitects” Stonehenge stop signs streetcars Street Smart algorithm Streets of San Francisco, The (TV show) Suburban Nation (Duany, Plater-Zyberk, and Speck) suburbia; car dependency in

Public Places, Urban Spaces: The Dimensions of Urban Design

by Matthew Carmona, Tim Heath, Steve Tiesdell and Taner Oc · 15 Feb 2010 · 1,233pp · 239,800 words

restaurant quarters; obsolete warehouses becoming chic lofts, plus an iconic/signature building or two (or more) preferably designed by one of a limited number of ‘starchitects’ (see below). FIGURE 5.6 Inner Harbor, Baltimore (Image: Doshik Yang). Since its regeneration in the 1970s and 1980s, Baltimore’s Inner Harbor has spawned

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is typically unbuilt (even unbuildable), yet well-known through frequent reproduction in the architectural and popular media. This is also associated with ‘signature architects’ and ‘starchitects’. Signature architects are those who place unique signatures, in the sense of recognisable features, on their buildings (Sklair 2006a: 31). Despite differing sites and contexts

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, designing a highly contextually responsive building may jeopardise their signature, which, in part, was the reason for their appointment. A contraction of ‘star’ and ‘architect’, starchitects are those architects whose celebrity and critical acclaim goes beyond the architectural world and who have some degree of fame among the general public. As

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celebrity status is generally associated with delivering the ‘wow factor’, the starchitect’s designs are almost always intended to be iconic. Iconic Buildings and Civic Boosterism The principal rationale for deliberately created iconic architecture is civic boosterism

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–182amorphous squares 182 closed squares 181 dominated squares 182 enclosure 180 freestanding sculptural mass 180 grouped squares 182 monuments 180 nuclear squares 182 shape 180 Starchitect 125, 127see alsoicon, iconic Stevens, Quentin 205, 208, 211–213, 372, 375, 382, 385 Sternberg, Ernst 14 Street furniture 196–198 Street Reclaiming 80 Streets

A Short History of British Architecture: From Stonehenge to the Shard

by Simon Jenkins · 7 Nov 2024 · 364pp · 94,801 words

slopes and planes. The exhibition was a success. It put architecture on the map and a point was made. It was the birth of the ‘starchitect’. The modernist style, insofar as it was definable, was already diversifying. In 1977 the historian Charles Jencks had attempted to supply a new nomenclature in

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fruit, a Venetian gondola and other eccentricities, from both Johnson and others such as Charles Moore and Michael Graves. Leading the age of the postmodern starchitect was Frank Gehry and his Bilbao Guggenheim (1997), which appeared to stimulate the economic revival of an entire city. Like the Pompidou Centre and Sydney

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was crammed with slabs and walls of luxury flats, at times obliterating views of the power station itself. The overdevelopment was supposedly mitigated by using starchitects for the residences, with facades by Frank Gehry and Norman Foster. Thoroughfares were named after Malaysian cities in the hope of attracting overseas money. London

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Petersburg 117, 134, 265 Hermitage 91 Stafford 167 stage design 72, 74–5, 158 Stalag Luft III (prisoner-of-war camp) 202 Stamp, Gavin 190 ‘starchitects’ 246, 249, 251 Starr, Sir Ringo 253 stations see London Underground; railway stations Staunton Harold (Leicestershire) 79 Steinbach family (masons) 65 Stephenson, Robert 141 Stevenage

Vanishing New York

by Jeremiah Moss · 19 May 2017 · 479pp · 140,421 words

I’d been searching for, and moved in soon after. Much more recently, however, Astor Place has become unrecognizable. “Undulating.” That was the word that starchitect Charles Gwathmey used for his newest creation, “Sculpture for Living.” A twenty-one-story glass condo tower with a “limited collection of 39 museum-quality

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least a dozen oversize, upscale developments had come to the old skid row. All around, the Bowery’s little side streets similarly exploded with opulence, starchitect-designed hotels and condos replacing lumber yards and mechanic shops almost overnight. The building where Jean-Michel Basquiat made art and overdosed on heroin became

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meant the tide was surging yet again. Even the luxury designers that had helped make the area a glittering playground could no longer survive. The starchitect-designed Whitney Museum was under construction, promising more tourists and even higher rents. But tourists weren’t buying $2,000 purses and $1,500 shirts

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, called the school’s plans “simply monstrous, like an Orwellian, Stalinist, or dystopian campus of factories.” Still, Columbia won. Now their Science Center, designed by starchitect Renzo Piano, rose into the sky, a hulking silver box that seemed to be off-gassing, humming with alien energy. I headed east, carrying a

Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design

by Charles Montgomery · 12 Nov 2013 · 432pp · 124,635 words

the happy city must begin out here, in the landscape of the infinitely repeated form, on the plains of dispersal. For every new urban plaza, starchitect-designed tower, or sleek new light-rail network, there are a hundred thousand cul-de-sacs out in the dispersed city. This is the environment

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in downtown apartments. Formerly low-status neighborhoods such as Manhattan’s East Village have been invaded by the upwardly mobile, and condominium towers designed by starchitects are sprouting between the tenements. New generations are growing up with a different mental library of stories that shape their domestic tastes. Errors from Above

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are some of the most desolate. Back in the late 1990s, civic boosters hoped that the Disney Concert Hall, a stainless steel–clad icon by starchitect Frank Gehry, would pump some life into L.A.’s Bunker Hill district. The city raised $110 million in bonds to build space for more

The Caryatids

by Bruce Sterling · 24 Feb 2009 · 387pp · 105,250 words

forward. “I have Frank Osbourne waiting for you.” Freddy was glad for the change of subject. “Let’s have a word with the gentleman.” The starchitect’s avatar appeared in a corner of the Family’s situation map. “So, Frank,” said Freddy, “you’re in a simulation at the moment?” “Gotta

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! Congratulations.” “No kidding?” said Osbourne. “Swell!” “Except for a power outage,” Guillermo put in sourly. “I told you to let me handle the power!” the starchitect shouted. “I told you I needed full command over the grid! I told you that! I told you all that from day one!” “We did

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’s power base. So: Radmila moved the gymnasium into the former Situation Room. Radmila hired—not Frank Osbourne, he was too much the seasoned establishment starchitect—but one of Osbourne’s best disciples, a younger woman freshly gone into her own practice. This young architect was ambitious, modish, and contemporary, and

Radical Cities: Across Latin America in Search of a New Architecture

by Justin McGuirk · 15 Feb 2014 · 246pp · 76,561 words

zooming through time and you’ll see the development of computer-aided drawing software and a resurgent global economy on converging tracks until – voilà! – the ‘starchitect’ is born. What happened in the first decade of the 2000s is easy to parody, and will continue to be, until a more forgiving future

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inevitably resuscitates the starchitects as heroes. The era of the ‘icon’, whether we mean blobs and other parametric forms or indeed icy minimalism, was the result of pure architectural

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utopia. It’s so easy now, isn’t it, to blame architects for servicing an economy of the spectacle? In our mid-recession world, the starchitects are soft targets and ‘spectacle’ has become an easy epithet. But this book will take you to places that are also, in their own way

Lonely Planet Switzerland

by Lonely Planet · 3,002pp · 177,561 words

-52; h10am-4.30pm) The striking white-cube-design of this high-altitude restaurant atop the Glacier de Tsanfleuron is the contemporary handiwork of Swiss starchitect Mario Botta, with gastronomic dining on the top floor and a self-service terrace and picnic area below. From here, the ski back down to

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, commanding fine lake views, then you’ll descend on a path with panels detailing the fossils and their excavation sites. Revamped and expanded by Ticinese starchitect Mario Botta, Meride's Museo dei Fossili (Fossil Museum; GOOGLE MAP ; www.montesangiorgio.ch; Via Bernardo Peyer 9; adult/child Sfr12/6; h9am-5pm Tue

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) The Tshuggen Bergoase is not only a grand spa but also an architectural statement, thanks to Mario Botta, one of the country's best-known 'starchitects'. Bold, beautiful and respectful to its surrounds with its leaf-inspired forms and wood and granite textures, you could do worse than book a treatment

The Rough Guide to New York City

by Rough Guides · 21 May 2018

Berlin

by Andrea Schulte-Peevers · 20 Oct 2010 · 638pp · 156,653 words

quickly swooped on the real estate of the former death strip (which was several hundred metres wide here) and pretty soon an international cast of ‘starchitects’, including Helmut Jahn, Renzo Piano and Rafael Moneo, got to work. Their goal: to create an urban quarter that would be as dynamic and vibrant

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309, Richard-Wagner-Platz, then 145 The reign of Frederick the Great saw the addition, in 1746, of the New Wing by his buddy and ‘starchitect du jour’ Georg Wenzelaus von Knobelsdorff. Here you’ll find the palace’s most beautiful rooms, including the confectionlike White Hall, a former banquet room