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June 21, 2007
Anti-Starchitecture Chic
What’s a budding celebrity architect to do when the winds of change begin shifting away from fame?
Metropolis Magazine
By Philip Nobel
Consider for a moment the plight of the stars. You do some work, you work the press, you aspire and achieve, the world embraces you—you’ve arrived!—and then...
What's the ultimate celebrity architect to do when he's designing Brooklyn's most reviled project in recent memory?
Backlash is in the air, and using the same refined organs that so ably guided their rise, the smart stars can feel it. Consider Frank Gehry: after achieving relatively late and relatively hard-earned fame during his long post-Bilbao ride, he may now be trying to get ahead of a turn in his fortunes. He managed, almost alone, to remain untarnished (so far) by his involvement at Ground Zero, but then he stepped in it at Atlantic Yards, accruing in the last few years more bad press than in all previous decades—including the fallout one might have expected from the amazing 2003 episode of the gunman in his building at Case Western Reserve University, whose capture was delayed by the circuity of his plan. And then there’s the simple, natural swing of the pendulum—both at the scale of his career and the macro level suggested by the unsustainable ubiquity of the starchitecture idea.
Read the full article to find out what critic Philip Nobel did with his f*ck-frank-gehry t-shirt.
NoLandGrab: The turning-point in the media indicating that Gehry is totally overexposed was last week's boo-boo in Architectural Record, where the industry mag confused the developers for Gehry's two largest urban projects.
Posted by lumi at June 21, 2007 6:58 AM