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Tomorrow's Starchitects Today, Rejecting Fame

[panel 1, Intern Architects in Hell, via pintday.org]

Metropolis Magazine has an article about the turn of the worm, so to speak, in regards to our love affair with the culture of celebrity architects. It's over. The kids in architecture school want nothing of it. They just want to build without all the fame baggage. Via Metropolis:

We’re bored with the stars. More important, I’ve spoken to many students in recent years—even at such previously starstruck schools as Princeton, Col­um­bia, and Yale—who are rejecting stardom as an aspirational model and are looking for other, perhaps more grounded ways to build a practice. Some of them also report a widespread dissatisfaction among their peers with the type of ­teaching—typically image-heavy and form-centric—that ­starchitecture has imposed on so many schools. In a related development, younger firms are more often using generic titles (albeit often in the mode of OMA) rather than marketing themselves exclusively as name-brand stars on the hoof. The example of Frank Gehry wearing a shirt that said "Fuck Frank Gehry" is also cited as a curious, yet telling moment of Frank rejecting all his fame and mocking it through a self-referential moment that was picked up by every conceivable news outlet and discussed endlessly, which unintentionally reinforced his starchitect status. Poor Frank Gehry, he'll never win.
· Anti-Starchitecture Chic [Metropolis]
· Gehry Taunts Ladies At Gym [Curbed LA]