Star Architecture

Distinction from Iconic Architecture: Star architecture concerns the commissioning context (celebrity architect, symbolic capital of the author). Iconic architecture concerns the qualities of the building (spectacularity, symbolism, image-value). They often overlap but are analytically distinct. See iconic architecture.

Definition

Star architecture refers to buildings commissioned from internationally renowned, celebrity architects ("star architects") and to the research field studying them. It is defined by reputation markers (prizes, publications, media presence) and is understood as an indicator of a client's desire to commission iconic architecture. The term is closely tied to the transnational flow of elite architectural labour and to symbolic capital in the Bourdieusian sense, which attaches not only to the building but to the star architect and the star institution housed within it.

Key Thinkers

• Nadia Alaily-Mattar — leading researcher on star architecture and its media effects.
• Leslie Sklair — links star/iconic architecture to the transnational capitalist class.
• Peter Eisenman & Santiago Calatrava — signature architects whose monumental public projects illustrate star commissioning and its costs.
• Pedro Levi Bismarck — the star-system architect as the "architect-as-entrepreneur" of the neoliberal metropolis.
• (Related, not yet paged: Reinier de Graaf, Beatriz Plaza, Davide Ponzini — see log.)

Related Concepts

• Bilbao Effect — the economic promise star architecture is commissioned to deliver.
• Enigmatic Signifier — the semiotic feature starchitects are pressured to produce (Jencks's "double bind"); the ambiguous form that star architecture markets.
• Iconic Architecture — star commissioning is a proxy indicator for the desire for iconicity.
• Instagrammability — the platform on which star architecture performs.
• Authorship — the star's authorial/symbolic capital.
• Aspirational Identity Artefact — the star-commissioned icon in its pre-construction, anticipatory phase (Zamparini et al.).

Theme

• The Debate Over Iconic Architecture — the starchitecture era as Phase 5 of the debate.

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• Revitalization, Transformation, and the 'Bilbao Effect' (Patterson 2020) — empirical operationalization of "starchitect" (consecration, aesthetic, global reach, charisma)
• Visuality Peaks, Function Lasts
• Spain Halts Eisenman's City of Culture in Santiago
• The Architecture of the City (in the Age of its Financial Reproducibility)
• Creating the Bilbao Effect (oral history)
• The Age of Spectacle (Dyckhoff)
• Organizing the City through Architectural Projects (Grubbauer & Dimitrova)
• Starchitects, Starchitecture, and the Symbolic Capital of World Cities (Knox)
• Autistic Architecture (Kaika 2011)
• Building the Picture: The Story of Architectural Photography
• Changes are Coming: Interview with Peter Eisenman on the City of Culture of Galicia
• Proposta para a Cidade da Cultura
• Who Wins and Who Loses in the Production of Cultural Iconic Architecture?
• Coda to a Career: Eisenman's City of Culture
• The Iconic Building Is Here to Stay
• Radical Post-Modernism and Content: A Debate
• Architecture and Crisis: Re-inventing the Icon, Re-imag(in)ing London and Re-branding the City
• The Meta-Project, Eisenman, and Capital: Lessons for Critical Architectural Practice
• Iconic Ordure: Review of Sklair's The Icon Project
• Reviewing the 'Bilbao effect' Inside and Beyond the Guggenheim: Its Coming of Age in Sprawling Cultural Landscapes
• Untapped: Redefining 'Iconic' Architecture and Ideals
• The Bilbao Effect: Is 'Starchitecture' All It's Cracked Up to Be?
• Look at Me!
• Iconicity versus Contemporary Architecture
• Compostela's City of Culture to Be Left Unfinished
• Peter Eisenman's Cidade da Cultura Buzzes Back to Life
• The Transnational Capitalist Class and Contemporary Architecture in Globalizing Cities
• Iconic Architecture and Capitalist Globalization
• The Icon Project: Architecture, Cities, and Capitalist Globalization
• The Museum as Destination: The Role of Iconic Museums in Urban Boosterism
• The Edifice Complex: How the Rich and Powerful—and Their Architects—Shape the World
• Can We Still Believe in Iconic Buildings?
• The Maverick (Tomkins 1997)
• Spain's Extravagant City of Culture Opens Amid Criticism
• Iconic Buildings in the Making of City Identity: The Role of Aspirational Identity Artefacts
• Bourdieu for Architects (Webster 2011) — the star architect's symbolic capital as the power to "define objects as rare" by signature/label.
• The Abstractionist (Seabrook 2009) — Hadid as starchitect: Pritzker winner (2004), 45 projects underway during recession, "blocked" from British corporate projects after Cardiff Bay controversy. Illustrates gendered/xenophobic politics of starchitecture commissioning.
• Technologies: The spatial agency of digital praxis (Carraher 2018) — the Ockman transmission: the "Bilbao Effect" as "formally expressive and digitally enabled architecture being used as an economic stimulator through use of 'starchitect' power to stimulate tourism"; the aura thesis — "The aura of Architecture (capital 'A') is total; there is no disappearing act on the part of the author" (Ockman 2004, p. 231) — star authorship as inescapable signature; Gehry as the named instance. See bilbao-effect, authorship.
• Why Architecture Matters (Goldberger 2009) — the critic's account of architecture as institutional logo (the Parthenon, Chartres, the Woolworth Building, Lever House, the Sears Tower, CCTV — pp. 77–78) and of the architect's reputation cycle from celebrity to fashion's discard (Rudolph, Graves — pp. 135–38).
• source-notes/alaily-mattar-et-al-2018-situating-architectural-performance
• source-notes/satterfield-swackhamer-2018-swimming-upstream
• source-notes/swedish-association-of-architects-2010-architecture-for-everyday-life
• source-notes/ulloa-2012-troubled-culture

Open Questions

• Does commissioning a star architect reliably produce iconic architecture, or only the desire for it (a proxy assumption of the Alaily-Mattar study)?