Home Page Radio - Wither Starchitects?

Home Page Radio

Wednesday October 16, 2024, 12 Noon WPKN 89.5FM www.wpkn.org

A century of top-down architectural determination is over. Regimes of conferring worth via station and prestige have been replaced with the number of “likes” and “followers” accruing as if the entire world is one polling station. We have reached intellectual democratization, where popularity trumps insights (good or bad) – our world is becoming unending popularity contests and beauty pageants, where everyone is the judge and the contestant – “the most eyeballs wins”. So much so that the remaining organizations are trying to ban Tik Tok, control Artificial Intelligence and social media and limit access based on age. But the cow has left the barn.

As a result, in architecture, the Starchitect, the image of the Power of Style has left the building.

All media is losing its editorial guardrails as the internet’s overwhelming universal, free and open access to exposing every and any aspect of everyone’s life becomes the basis of cultural evolution. The elitist sensibility of anointing “important work” in controlled, highly exclusive journalistic exposure of architecture is collapsing.

Popular culture critic Kate Wagner voiced the power of democratic revolution in media: “We all live in the world. We all deserve to participate in it. We all also deserve to see our own lives reflected in architectural media, not just the spaces of the rich and famous. That requires reshaping everything, even vernacular or popular design media culture.”

Today we have two people who know the past, present and perhaps can see a future for architecture. Martin Pedersen is a New Orleans based writer, critic and editor, and is the executive director of the Common Edge Collaborative. John Connell is the co – founder of Yestermorrow, an Architect and Urbanist.