ORIGINAL QUERY:
Date: Sun, 25 October 2009
From: Steve Wassell -
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The question seems simple enough, but it quickly raises additional questions. How do we measure "major"? Do we use media coverage as a basis? Or public sentiment (and if so, how do we measure this)?
Or architectural quality and significance (and if so, how do we measure these)? In any case, I'd like to get the collective opinion of the NNJ readership. Your list can be as short or as long as you like. You can give reasons for your choices or just give a list. And just to be specific, let's agree that "of today" means the architect must be living. Can anyone come up with someone older than Oscar Niemeyer (age 101)?!
Comments
Most architects I know do not aspire to be "major" in or for themselves, but rather to have some rôle ("major", perhaps) in bringing a "major" work to fruition. The question I find more important is: "What allows us to designate as "major" a given work of contemporary architecture?". One might then ask with regard to each "major" work: "Who is or are the architect(s) who took part in the design?", followed by a proper appreciation of credit where credit is due -- and, no doubt, extending credit to the enlightened clients and other participants without whom outstanding works could not happen. If it so happened that a single architect appeared so regularly on the list of authors of "major" works that this latter should be synonymous with his "oeuvre", it would be interesting but anecdotal.
An example: I would be tempted to answer that Peter Zumthor is a "major architect of today" -- in a certain way it is obviously true -- but my critical opinion doesn't have much to do either with the man, whom I do not know personally, or with "today". A good number of his (firm's) built works are clearly remarkable. I think they are demonstrably "major", and I've learned a great deal from close examination of them, but it is probably because they are also not, or not only, "of today", and their conditions of possibility include the Swiss financial and artisanal context! It takes a certain amount of cultural good fortune, plus time, measured in years, decades or centuries, for a "major" work to deliver on its promises.
I would therefore propose the following reformulation of the question in two parts:
1. "What works of contemporary architecture have, have had, and are likely to continue to have "major" effects on our understanding of things?"
2. "To whom should we give credit for having helped to make such important things possible?"
A more established list:
USA: Meier, Gehry, Stern
UK: Rogers, Foster, Chipperfield, (Quinlan) Terry
France: Nouvel, Portzamparc, Perrault
Spain: Moneo, Calatrava
Portugal: Siza
Switzerland: Herzog and de Meuron, Botta
Italy: Piano
Australia: Murcutt
Japan: Ando, Maki, Ito
Brazil: Niemeyer
Mexico: Legoretta
Finland: Leiviska
1. The value of an architect is given by:
1.1. the sum of the values of its works, and
1.2. the value of the sum of its works.
2. The value of an oeuvre is classified the cultural character of each stage of society. At each stage, the following items should be considered:
2.1. to have at least more than one innovative conception,
2.2. to have a continuous evolution along its architectonic conceptions.
3. In the present stage, the morphocontinuous behaviour should be taken into consideration (cf. (L. CONSIGLIERI and V. CONSIGLIERI, Continuity versus discretization, Nexus Network Journal 11 :2 (2009), 151--162. dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00004-008-0086-x).
In conclusion, the today architects that meet these requirements Office for Metropolitan Architecture [OMA] www.oma.eu/
Right from his earliest publication "Anchoring," (1989) Steven has been a self-professed user of The Golden Mean. In this book of his early work, the Golden Mean can be seen in his early theoretical typological studies and he specifically mentions its use in the Telescope House, but it also can be seen in the Pool House, Stretto House, and Berkowitz House in Martha's Vineyard. Other works where the Golden Mean is found are the Chapel of St. Ignatius in Seattle, Kiasma: Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, and Student Housing at
MIT. (Most likely it is present in everyone of his works, but I haven't looked that hard or extensively.)
In his early work of the 80's, Holl tended to use the Golden Mean to structure the whole and major subdivisions, but since 90's he has tended to use the Golden Mean as a "refinement tool," once he has established the schematic design in a more intuitive way.
For example in the Helsinki Kiasma Museum he selected 1500 mm, the eye height of the average person viewing art in the museum, and constructed a series up and downward using multiples and divisions of the Golden Mean. (Source: private conversations in his office in NY.) He then used this 'scale' in Corbu fashion to fine-tune dimensions and proportions. In the MIT student housing he uses the window/screen wall module opening as the basis of his scale, which he appears to create new for each project.