Design in Overdrive
There is a great article in the Wall Street Journal today by Witold Rybczynski entitled When Buildings Try Too Hard which explores the phenomenon in which architecture is purposefully conceived as an icon as oppossed to earning the status when it becomes “…a popularly recognized symbol of something larger than itself…”. Rybczynski cites examples of buildings that have earned their status: Frank Gehry’s Bilbao Guggenheim and those that have failed: Frank Gehry’s Experience Music Project in Seattle. So maybe nobody has a lock on iconic architecture (or design of any kind for that matter). If the goal was revised to accomplish good design, in the natural course of things, we might end up with more successful built environment overall.
Witold Rybczynski is an interesting guy, to say the least. Educated as an architect in Canada (although I can’t determine the extent of his time in practice), award-winning architectural critic and author, he is currently a Professor of Urbanism at the prestigious Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. His writings are particularly interesting because they speak in very clear terms to a broad audience – no architect-speak.
