Spoiled by Fame: Why We Need to End the Cult of Celebrity in Architecture

For a very long time, a microculture of celebrity in architecture has placed an undue focus on the individual, undercutting the profession by keeping architects from organizing on a large scale. This prevents the ability to push an agenda or have any appreciable measure of control over the built environment, in turn ceding this power to larger, less sensitive interests. To have any chance at realistically addressing the problems architects are trained to solve, the illusion surrounding this cult of celebrity needs to be dismantled and the profession realigned toward consensus building.

Via Time and Rushka Bergman

Take a moment to consider the numbers behind these famous architects:

Norman Foster: 400-plus architects employed, including 10 partners
Bjarke Ingels: 250-plus architects employed, including 12 partners
Robert A.M. Stern: 300-plus architects employed, including 16 partners

This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. It’s well known to both architects and the general public that there are many people working behind the production of today’s landmark buildings. However, if you google any of the projects completed by these architect’s firms, a significant portion of the results will list the founder’s name, by itself, ad nauseam. While an individual person is often best suited to shepherd a vision, we know that person couldn’t possibly be responsible for even a majority of the work that goes into a large piece of architecture.

So why are bold-faced names constantly presented as if this were the case?

“Knowing an individual name behind a high-profile building helps people sound intelligent at dinner parties.”

Contemplating the cultural longevity of musicians, the author Chuck Klosterman recently posited: “When we recount history, we tend to use the life experience of one person — the ‘journey’ of a particular ‘hero,’ in the lingo of the mythologist Joseph Campbell — as a prism for understanding everything else.” This statement couldn’t be more accurate when applied to architecture. Noteworthy buildings tend to be giant and complicated, but what we’re taught about them is often framed through the lens of a single creator. This makes it easy for us to identify with our collective history and attribute significance to it, but it also reveals an unusual truth: Even though we’re aware of the group, we prefer the individual.

When it comes to architects understanding other architects, the single-creator myth takes on a vicarious bent, fueling a belief along the lines of “if they can do it, so can I.” In the eyes of the public, knowing an individual name behind a high-profile building helps people sound intelligent at dinner parties. Either way, this perception is exploited by famous architects for profit — and who can blame them for doing so? The issue here isn’t capitalistic gains made by a few, but a delusion perpetuated by the many. A fame-forward culture permeates the world of architecture so thoroughly — from the individually oriented format of its education to the outsize personas of its senior practitioners — that it underpins the entire profession.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe stands alone with a model of the Illinois Institute of Technology’s Crown Hall; via the Red List.

The problem this culture generates is a set of conditions for architects to continually splinter off into their own practices, seeking individual recognition instead of unifying into much larger groups. A lack of large-scale organization means a lack of large-scale consensus between professionals who should otherwise be responsible for the majority of the built environment — a missed opportunity that allows this influence to be subsumed by interests far larger and more cohesive than any current group of architects.

“Architects … continually splinter off into their own practices, seeking individual recognition, instead of unifying into much larger groups.”

Had a high level of organization been historically common within architecture, it’s not inconceivable that we’d be living in a much different world right now. Heavy political clout may have been enough to push concerns like sustainable building techniques, championed by individual architects for quite some time, into mainstream practice long ago. Prototypes such as George Keck’s solar-oriented house, designed in 1940 as a model for a pending mass suburbanization, may have been able to overcome the influence wielded by large developers like Levitt & Sons, typically credited for the proliferation of site-ignorant, energy-inefficient homes most people live in today.

When the pendulum of planning wisdom swung back in the other direction, an architect-majority voice with enough sway to inform the direction of federal subsidies and tax breaks could have ensured that walkable, transit-oriented development was economically favored as far back as 30 or 40 years ago. Instead, architects rallied only to watch an internal fight unfold between the figureheads of New Urbanism and landscape urbanism, who, to the unindoctrinated observer, are still arguing merely over aesthetics.

Could these talented architects join forces to create global change? Image via Archute

“What if there were an architecture firm the size of Shell, Honda or General Electric?”

Consider this: The largest architecture firm in the world is Gensler, which claims around 5,000 employees. But what if there were an architecture firm the size of Shell (94,000), Honda (199,000) or General Electric (305,000)? Such an organization would have the power to stand up to the heavyweight corporations of other industries and offer realistic challenges to the lifestyle choices those behemoths can otherwise force on the public.

The architecture profession could have an infinitely greater reach if it weren’t commonly accepted wisdom that top talent should peel off and start their own offices. Instead, they could work to build consensus in ever-larger arenas. Consider this a call to end the cult-of-personality endemic in the profession and instead focus on organizing a viable architectural constituency with enough influence to fully realize large-scale solutions to the pressing problems of our era. As a new generation of architects approaches professional maturity, the opportunity should be taken to break the cycle of history and move forward with a pragmatic unity.

Let’s get it right this time.

Top image via Time and Rushka Bergman