Urban transformations through exceptional architecture: introduction to the special issue

The nexus between architecturally exceptional projects and the city is the focus of this special issue of the Journal of Urban Design. Ever since the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao, designed by Frank Gehry, opened its doors in 1997, the promise of duplicating or copying the transformative effects generated by architecturally exceptional projects has been travelling in the worlds of planners, city authorities, real estate promotors and scientific observers alike. ‘Exceptional architectural projects’ come in many shapes and colours; the terms ‘signature/branded’ (McNeill 2009) and ‘iconic’ (Jencks 2004; Sklair 2006) are used in the literature as adjectives to describe certain aspects of the architecture of exceptional projects. These nuanced but not mutually exclusive aspects are captured in the terms ‘star architecture’ and ‘starchitecture’ (Ponzini and Nastasi 2011; Gravari-Barbas, Renard-Delautre, and Oakman 2015). ‘Flagship’ (Weidenfeld 2010), ‘monumental’, ‘landmark’ and ‘destination’ architecture (Phaidon editors 2017) set the focus on the impact of architectural exceptionality. Architecturally exceptional projects play significant roles in urban transformation processes. The central concern of this special issue is that more research is needed to analyze this nexus and that new perspectives will enrich our understanding of the impacts of these projects on their cities. The special issue addresses the following questions: how can the complexity of these projects be comprehended? What roles do the political contexts play in the commissioning of such projects and what audiences do these projects serve? How has the granting of professional recognition for architects changed and what will this change mean to measures of exceptionality in architectural design? What roles do the architectural competitions play in the process of commissioning the design of architecturally exceptional projects and do design competitions as an urban planning tool grant high value designs? Architecturally exceptional projects are situated in physical urban fabrics. How can situatedness be analyzed and what different values does the urban design dimension of these projects add? This pins the development of these projects to short term. By considering diverse aspects of architecturally exceptional projects, the papers in this special issue utilize a variety of research methods. They bring into dialogue a range of themes regarding the architectural, urban design and political aspects of these projects.

Alaily-Mattar et al. argue that the development of star architectural projects is a complex process that has economic, architectural, urban and social dimensions, investigations of which would cross the boundaries of single disciplines. They propose a conceptual impact model to organize the understanding of star architectural projects as complex processes. Their model illustrates the particular offerings of star architectural projects and the underlying hypotheses that link these offerings to intended and effective impacts. They use the empirical lens of three case studies to show how inter-disciplinary evidence-geared investigations of the roles of these particular star architectural projects in the repositioning of their respective cities can be better steered. Their discussion of particularly the Kunsthaus Graz and phaeno in Wolfsburg shows that these projects address inward and outward audiences. This discussion resonates with Lindsay’s paper, in which she argues that it is important to consider who the intended audiences for these projects are. Based on a qualitative analysis of the Denver Art Museum, Lindsay demonstrates that the project was used both to brand the city for potential tourists and to engender civic pride in Denver. Lindsay also reflects on the motivation of the project’s proponents to select the architect Daniel Libeskind. She states that a major consideration was the design of a signature building to enable the project to attract gifts and collections, not only from Colorado but also from around the world. This finding draws attention to the role attributed to the star status of the architect and the question of how symbolic capital in architecture is determined.

Roudbari’s paper focuses on architectural awards to determine how architects acquire the status of being leaders in their field. He argues that the transformation of architectural awards ‒ from juried to crowdsourced ‒ means that the basis of symbolic capital in architecture is evolving from one related to distinction to one related to exposure. As a result, the basis of what constitutes star architecture is shifting. His analysis of global architecture awards shows that new international, web-based design awards are lowering barriers to entry into the star architecture system, enabling the production and consumption of recognition transnationally at a scale previously unseen, and democratizing recognition by crowdsourcing the judgement of projects. He argues that these awards have ushered in a new paradigm in the global production and consumption of recognition, and in doing so recognition has expanded from a source of distinction to a source of exposure. He makes the case that scholars of urban regeneration, city branding and competitive cities need to attend to this changing basis of architectural recognition as the effects of the new system of recognition make their way into what constitutes the flagship architecture of cities.

This notion of overlapping spheres of influence from local to global brings to the fore the question of the relevance of local politics and planning in negotiating these binaries of local provinciality and global cosmopolitanism. Ruopola’s and Ponzini’s paper provides insights from the case study of the Guggenheim museum architecture competition in Helsinki. They present findings on the democratic debate that accompanied the project. They show how a local government can tackle a transnational initiative in other ways than simply receiving it, including modifying it, adapting it to local conditions or rejecting it altogether. Ruopola’s and Ponzini’s contribution draws attention to the role of the architectural competitions in the development of exceptional architectural projects. Architectural competitions increasingly precede the development of exceptional architectural projects. Two papers in this special issue focus on the architecture competitions. Bern’s piece suggests that beyond the inner workings of the architectural competition there is a need to engage with questions of how an architectural competition is situated in a broader socio-political context. He argues that the architectural competition is a powerful tool to dismiss and move past political challenges. He analyzes the views and arguments of the proponents and opponents of the architectural competition of the Fjord City plan in Oslo, Norway, with particular attention given to the architectural competition for the new Edvard Munch Museum. Bern shows that the appropriateness of an architecture competition as a method of making a design selection was not contested. Nevertheless, by creating pressure to have its winner design realized, the design competition masked prior contestations related to the location of the project. As such, Bern concludes that the competition offers no democratic opening in a system that already has democratic deficits.

The paper of Davison et al. on the other hand focuses on the urban design outcomes of architecture completions. They investigate the impacts of mandatory design competitions on urban design quality in Sydney, Australia. A unique design control initiative in Sydney, Australia, requires that all major property developments are subject to a design competition before they can be approved. By systematically investigating 25 projects completed under these provisions, Davison et al. present findings which indicate that mandated design competitions have helped force a general raising of urban design quality by re-distributing decision-making control and enabling what they term as a broad but non-prescriptive approach to the regulation of design excellence. Davison et al. point to the lack of agreement about what constitutes ‘good’ urban design. They argue that the design competition facilitates agreement, but they leave the question open as to what conceptual categories are useful to analyze the urban design dimension of these projects.

Radford’s and Oksala’s paper offers an approach to such an analysis. They suggest the concept of responsive cohesion as being useful and apply this concept systematically to five urban sites in the city of Helsinki, Finland. Quoting a senior official who says that hiring a megastar name to produce the architectural design could be compared to having a monologue with the future, they argue that ‘monologue’ suggests fixed cohesion, the imposition of a point of view. A ‘dialogue with the environment’ suggests a two-way interaction between new and existing where the outcome is good for both. Their contribution reminds us of the importance of considering the spatial dimension of exceptional architectural projects and their long-term impacts. This is resonated in the paper of de Oliveira Sanchez and Essex. In many cases, architecturally exceptional projects are developed as part of larger development strategies in their respective cities, frequently in the context part of mega events, such as the Olympics or, in the case of Europe, the event of the European Capital of Culture. De Oliveira Sanchez and Essex provide a critical comparative review of the approaches employed to secure a transition from spaces designed for a short-term mega event into successful long-term uses. The conceptual impact model developed by Alaily-Mattar et al. shows that beyond the specificity of architecturally exceptional projects ‒ namely their offering of spectacle, signature, icon, pictures/talks and experience ‒ the outputs of these projects are of course also functions and physical buildings. The latter might be indeed the output of these projects, which has the most long-term impact. It pertains to the spatial dimension of these projects, which history has shown us might remain long after their spectacularity has faded or their functions have transformed or even disappeared. Any discussion of architecturally exceptional projects must keep the spatial aspect of these projects in focus as well. This special issue illustrates that multi-disciplinarity might as well be the best strategy to balance the risks of over simplification and the challenges of complexity in analyzing the nexus between architecturally exceptional projects and the city in its ever-transformative process.

Funding

This work is supported by the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG) under grant number [TH 1334/11-1], titled, “Star architecture and its role in re-positioning small and medium sized cities”.