Witold Rybczynski, Slate’s architecture critic takes a look at how architects brand themselves.
What makes an architect into a brand? Part of the recognition of a brand depends on what people who study such things call its “personality.” Foster & Partners, whose Web site lists projects ranging from a congress hall in Kazakhstan to the Elephant House of the Copenhagen Zoo, is an international brand with a definite personality: Technical Solutions to Difficult Problems. Foster’s chief rival is the Renzo Piano Building Workshop. The Piano brand, which conveys a sense of bespoke elegance, has been affixed to museums, airports, and office towers. It’s more like Stylish Solutions to Any Problem.
Interestingly, neither Foster nor Piano has a house style; their designs vary considerably from project to project. This goes against the traditional notion that the work of celebrated architects should be individual and identifiable. But style can be a trap, as Richard Meier, with his persistent white walls and expanses of glass, found at the Getty Center, which seems to me like too much of a good thing. Michael Graves’ Tuscan colors and simplified Classical forms likewise sometimes appear constraining. When I mentioned to a friend that Graves had recently built a building in Philadelphia, she said, “I didn’t know that it was a real Graves; I thought it was a knockoff.” Even Frank Gehry, who has perhaps the strongest architectural franchise in the world today—and recently designed a line of jewelry for Tiffany & Co.—sometimes seems hemmed in by his own success, as he builds yet another whimsical tour de force. The Tiffany necklace, by the way, looks like a very long key chain.
Facebook
Twitter
Digg
Reddit
StumbleUpon
