Star architecture and urban transformation: introduction to the special issue

ABSTRACT

For nearly as long as there have been urban centres, exceptional architecture projects have contributed to transforming city form and city fortunes. In this special issue of ‘European Planning Studies’, we focus on star architecture and its ability to contribute to urban transformation, with articles on the phenomenon of star architecture from a range of disciplines. Star architecture is a topic where concerns about place, identity, economy, innovation and communication intersect. In this introduction to the special issue, we overview how star architecture participates in urban transformations, and address how research into star architecture connects to ideas of identity and branding, the media, the economy, urban governance and architecture itself. We also overview methodologies for studying star architecture and urban transformation: the choice of research methods and research approach affects the problematization and the types of research questions that can be answered. Studying star architecture offers insight into disparate fields including network analysis, media studies, geography, planning, cultural economy, identity, branding and spectacle. By looking beyond economic effects, researchers can expand the audience for studies of star architecture, and more fully understand its role in urban transformation.

KEYWORDS:

• Architecture and identity
• architecture and the media
• geographies of architecture
• methodologies
• star architecture
• iconic architecture

Intoduction: Why star architecture

For nearly as long as there have been urban centres, exceptional architecture projects have contributed to transforming city form and city fortunes. Architectural history books catalogue examples of building works conceived to shape communities which subsequently became enduring symbols of place long after construction concluded. The pyramids of Giza in ancient Egypt and the Gothic cathedrals in Europe of the High and Late Middle Ages are early examples of such projects. More recently, the Eiffel Tower, Sagrada Familia and the Sydney Opera House each demonstrate how an exceptional built artefact can be used to locate a city, to metaphorically ‘put it on the map’.

In some sense, this sort of locating aligns with imaging a city as conceptualized by Lynch (1960), but at a larger scale. A single building can act as a synecdoche for a city or a region, serving as a landmark in the global mental map any individual might have. The Eiffel Tower represents Paris, whether in movies where one shot can establish the location or in themed locations across the world, such as the Paris Las Vegas Hotel & Casino, which uses a simulacrum – a small replica of the Eiffel Tower – as a prop for a restaurant serving French cuisine on its upper floors. The Sydney Opera House does the same for the Australian city, where the exceptional building sits out in the harbour, identifying the place as ‘Sydney’ in the popular imagination in a way that the nearby botanical gardens or historic district do not.

What these examples have in common is that the extent of their outreach is related to the mobilization of their iconic potential. In 2005, Charles Jencks suggested that ‘While the amount of iconic building that goes on today is unique, the practice is old’ (Jencks 2005, 23). We contend that buildings can achieve iconic status in ways other than through iconic architecture, which according to (Jencks 2011) utilizes enigmatic signifiers. Indeed, some architecture projects have become iconic because of their anti-iconic architectural stance, such as, for example, Peter Zumthor’s Therme Vals in Switzerland. In addition to formal iconicity, the programme, the location, the recognition status of the architect, the project’s development trajectory and narrative and the outreach efforts of its proponents each play a significant role in making buildings icons of a city.

Since the late 1990s, when the term ‘Bilbao Effect’ was popularized, the idea that exceptional built artefacts can become agents of change for urban settings, wider social and cultural processes, and the economic trajectory of cities has been becoming increasingly prominent. The apparently transformative agency of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao (GMB) resulted in pilgrimages to Bilbao by city officials from around the world eager to learn about the so called ‘Bilbao effect’ in the hope of emulating it back home. Many local authorities around the turn of the Millennium went on to commission exceptional architecture projects as ‘Jahrhundertprojekte’ – projects of a century – in anticipation of the transformative effects that could adjust the fate of their cities for the coming generations. A 2018 special issue in the ‘Journal of European Planning Studies’, edited by Heidenreich and Plaza, addressed the Bilbao Effect by focusing on the role of museums in the renewal of industrial regions in Europe. Although they did not focus specifically on architecture, Heidenreich and Plaza (2015) introduced the need to flesh out the role of architecture in urban renewal. Alaily-Mattar and Thierstein (2018) responded to that call with a special issue of the ‘Journal of Urban Design’, which moved beyond programmatic considerations to focus on exceptional architecture’s role in transforming cities.

Now, in this special issue of ‘European Planning Studies’, we focus on star architecture and its ability to contribute to urban transformation. We deliberately use the term ‘star’ as a qualifier of architecture to indicate a focus on recognition status – of the architect, of the project, or of the final building. A star architecture building might not be iconic architecture: it might not be monumental, spectacular or a signature. Nor is it necessarily designed to become a flagship or contribute to city or place branding. Instead, it might be a formally quiet building but designed by an internationally famous architect; or the building project as a process might get extensive media coverage, elevating the final building to a ‘star’ regardless of what it looks like or who designed it. We do not use the term ‘starchitecture’ (Ponzini and Nastasi 2016; Gravari-Barbas, Renard-Delautre, and Oakman 2015), as the term is contentious and negatively charged, especially in architecture circles. In our opinion, the merging of star and architecture into a new word suggests an implicit nod to the instrumentalization of architecture.

In line with Alaily-Mattar, Ponzini, and Thierstein (2020), we stress two things. First, any investigation of star architecture must acknowledge and differentiate between star architecture as an output – i.e. as a built work – and star architecture as a process – i.e. as a project that starts with an initiation of an idea and ends with an occupied building. Second, the power of stardom must be understood beyond its capacity to brand places, to also include its contribution to the political and symbolic legitimization of contested projects. Star architecture projects are often risky, expensive and contentious (Flyvbjerg, Bruzelius, and Rothengatter 2003). Sudjic (2005) argues that they soothe the ‘edifice complex’ of the rich and the powerful; for Sklair (2006b) they reflect the representational needs of the transnational capitalist class, and Kaika (2010) goes so far as to argue that they ‘produce a new identity for elites or institutions in need of reinvention’ (Kaika 2010, 454). When the public sector is involved, the development of such projects is justified on the basis that they serve collective interests. However, this is often entangled with the pursuit of power that serves the political interests of narrow groups, even when the declared goal is to use architecture to aid the construction of collective identities (Heynen 1999; Vale 1992). In the European context, this means that taxpayers’ money might be used to serve interests that might not be collectively shared. As concerns about over-tourism – which according to (Wang 2020) is the flip side of star architecture – and sustainability only increase, the hitherto hidden and long-term costs of architecture’s performance on a global stage are increasingly exposed. It is likely that the willingness to pay the social and environmental price for asserting identity within a globalized world will be scrutinized.

It is only if we understand the different facets of this phenomenon, including the methods with which we research it, that we can begin to discuss the degree to which the motivations underlying its deployment are legitimate, the logic for it is rational, and its repercussions are worth the cost. In this special issue, we have collected contributions on the phenomenon of star architecture from a range of disciplines to highlight the diversity of ways in which star architecture is researched and problematized. In the next sections, we overview how star architecture participates in urban transformations, and address how research into star architecture connects to ideas of identity and branding, the media, the economy, urban governance and architecture itself. We also overview methodologies for studying star architecture and urban transformation, as the methods employed fundamentally change the questions that can be answered.

Mobilizing the iconic potential of star architecture for identity and branding

Because the two are often conflated, it is important to distinguish between star architecture – which can refer to the architect, the process, or the final building – and iconic architecture. Iconic architecture is a slippery term, with icon being sometimes used in the original meaning, as a small or simplified mnemonic device, and sometimes in the manner of Jencks (2005) to refer to a building that symbolizes its own allegiance to formal grandiosity. Sklair fleshes out the term icon in both his book (2017) and a review (2006a) of three seminal books on architectural iconicity (namely, Glendinning (2004); Jencks (2005) and Sudjic (2005)). In this special issue, in contrast, iconicity is not the sole focus of analysis, but one aspect of investigation into the effects of star architecture.

Five papers in this issue address iconicity and star architecture. Broudehoux and Cheli (2021) demonstrate how buildings, which often are, but need not be, examples of star architecture, can become icons in the old mnemonic sense of the term – that is, they are representations of larger events, designed to remind. It connects other research on memorial museums (Stevens and Franck 2015) and the importance of memorials as part of the strategies actively used by various states to promote democracy, peace and reconciliation (Young 2000). Their analysis works to understand how architecture itself contributes to the visceral experience of memory, and how architecture can become a repository of memories for entire cities. How that plays into the city brand is an avenue for further research – how should cities plan to create space for memory? And what role can star architecture play in this process?

Ponzini and Alawadi (2021) draw on the idea of spectacle (Debord 1970) to place the current tallest building in the world in a long tradition of recognition and symbolism around tall buildings and international tourism. Conversely, Lindsay and Sawyer (2021) explain that star architecture buildings work as icons for cities not only for international audiences, but for residents as well. Local papers, in addition to referring to star architecture projects as harbingers of cultural economies and financial transformations for the city, connect signature buildings to existing structures, supporting residents’ creation of complex cognitive maps of the city with the buildings serving as icons of districts or nodes (Lynch 1960), as opposed to of the entire city.

(Vanolo 2021) also addresses local concerns in his study of a local star architecture building, which was planned to house retail but repurposed as a cultural venue and then a shopping mall. As the function of the building changed, so did the ideas it represented, not least because of the narrative created around the project’s success and failure. His work demonstrates that even when star architecture buildings become icons, the meanings given to the icon can shift and sway. That is, iconic architecture is not predetermined, nor are the meanings given to the icon. In contrast, Heuer and Runde (2021) use the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg as a case of a building successfully becoming an icon of a city – specifically, of the re-emergence of an existing identity. They provide a nuanced comparison to the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao: there, a building was used to reverse city-wide economic decline and completely rebrand the city on the international stage. In the case of the Elbphilharmonie, the building solidified an existing identity for Hamburg as a centre of culture and especially music. Their work connects to ideas of urban and regional identity (Cheshmehzangi 2015; Zimmerbauer 2011) as well as to social positioning theory (Lawson and Morgan 2021). Together, these two papers emphasize the importance of function in the success of star architecture buildings. They also point to the importance of media in creating icons out of star architecture projects.

Star architecture and the media

The power of iconic buildings to transform their cities relies heavily on mediation (Foster 2008); to turn a building into an icon, the building must first be transformed, condensed and abstracted into ‘immutable mobiles’ (Latour 1987), something that can travel to and with people. In turn, people can travel to the building itself, enacting a sort of pilgrimage to see the full-size embodied building. The building’s mediation is then replicated and augmented by photos shared on social media platforms, like Instagram and Flickr, with seemingly insatiable appetites for visual content. Iconic architecture and its mediation, then, is closely tied with tourism and iconicity (Urry 2002; Smith and Ebejer 2012). Buildings serve as mnemonic devices, intentionally stylized and subsequently mediated to be useful on postcards, birds-eye view drawings, small keepsakes and more recently websites and apps. But that iconicity is impossible without the media. It is through media formats that star architecture buildings gain their rhetorical and metaphorical weight, signalling that this building is important and carries meaning. Without media coverage, any given example of star architecture is just another building.

Five papers in this special issue address ideas of star architecture and the media. In studying what newspaper articles say when they talk about star architecture buildings and projects, Lindsay and Sawyer (2021) uncover the important role that local newspapers and media coverage play in urban transformations. In contrast, Plaza, Aranburu, and Esteban (2021) look internationally, grounding their research in the notion that some buildings act as celebrities in the global media. As buildings are imaged and referred to in ‘The New York Times’, for example, their name recognition can elevate other buildings named in articles to the same level of fame, creating a globalized network of a Who’s Who of buildings positioned in relation to one another. Heuer and Runde (2021) and Vanolo (2021) similarly highlight the importance of media narratives and media chatter in the success or failure of a star architecture project.

In his paper, Banks (2021) highlights the importance of social media in branding places. In an Instagram economy, places are leveraging the power of posts and images to establish authenticity and lifestyle choices. Images of buildings (non-star architecture buildings, in the places he studies) help create an identity for small post-industrial towns in the industrial North of the US. His work demonstrates the importance of social media and the interrelationship between the built environment and media generally that shape perception of place. These are the same processes that elevate buildings to stars and help rebrand places like Bilbao that are more frequently studied in the star architecture literature. Placing his paper in this special issue serves to raise the question of whether costly and risky star architecture projects are needed if some of the intended effects can be achieved via other tools or strategies.

Star architecture and the economy

The most common issue addressed by studies of star architecture is an economic one (e.g. Fuerst, McAllister, and Murray 2011). Especially since the success of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in transforming the fortunes of Bilbao, Spain (Plaza 2006), cities use star architecture projects to drive culture-led urban regeneration (Evans 2003; Miles and Paddison 2005). Because star architecture buildings are highly visible, they carry an increased risk for the institutions and cities that commission and fund them; because the buildings often use materials and form in unique and innovative ways, they can cost more, expenditures that must be justified to a public if it is public money spent.

Four papers in this special issue tackle the issue of transformations in the urban economy. Patterson (2021) addresses financial concerns directly, conducting a rigorous study of the economic and demographic effects of star architecture buildings, which he calls iconic architectural developments or IADs. His work establishes that the local effects are locally transformative and economically positive: the number of cultural workers or cultural establishments increases, as do rents, in places with IADs. Higher rents and more cultural workers living nearby or more arts establishments can come with other problems of gentrification and displacement (e.g. Mathews 2010; Sze 2010); Patterson’s research can help municipalities make informed decisions about where to locate star architecture buildings, if indeed they want them at all.

Less specifically, Ponzini and Alawadi (2021) highlight the importance of global capital in making star architecture projects possible and profitable, as the media buzz generated by erecting the world’s tallest building is enrolled in selling shares in the development company responsible for it. Plaza, Aranburu, and Esteban (2021) compare star architecture buildings to human celebrities, engaging with issues of the economics of superstars and fame. Although their argument in this paper is not purely economic, crossing over into media studies, their conclusions have implications for the longevity of architectural fame and thus city fortunes. This information about the possible long-term economic effects of star architecture buildings and projects can help expand discussions about the economic viability of complex and expensive iconic or signature building projects in a city. Banks (2021) demonstrates that these ideas about how star architecture operates are salient for cities or towns even without a star architecture building – that is, places can take part in the economy of Instagram fame and supply ‘instant gramification’ (FitzGerald 2020) without needing to have a signature building.

Star architecture as process

Four papers in this special issue demonstrate that the process of developing a star architecture project has the capacity to drive innovation. The designs of star architecture buildings are often more complex and innovative in form and in use of materials than typical buildings. Whether it is the height (Ponzini and Alawadi 2021) or the form (Grubbauer and Dimitrova 2021; Dreher and Thiel 2021), designing and constructing these buildings requires international expertize; yet star architecture projects also rely on local builders, materials and, perhaps most importantly, political knowledge to come into existence (Held 2020). In this way, the design of such a building represents a potential shift in the social field (Gieryn 2002) in the home city and in the international flow of ideas and design as they simultaneously reflect existing practices but also allow for new ones.

Specifically, Grubbauer and Dimitrova (2021) find that star architecture projects stretch norms and standards for construction practice in the German context. The requirements of the building necessitate changes to the official rules and the unofficial practices of construction – and the profile of the project makes those changes possible when other projects might be required to fit within existing norms. Dreher and Thiel (2021) map the geographic influences to come out of that innovation to illuminate the flows of knowledge that make building star architecture possible. Relying on the four windows of opportunity theory (Davies et al. 2014), their paper demonstrates that star architecture projects require a globalized network of professionals to be built and create ripple effects and those experts move to other transnational projects. Similarly, Ponzini and Alawadi (2021) highlight the mobility of international expertise required to realize hyperbolic building projects. These papers acknowledge that creating a star architecture building requires communities of practice (Wenger 1998) that are international. Further research could map the geographies of architecture (Kraftl 2010) and star architecture communities of practice, as Dreher and Thiel (2021) allude to in their mapping of expertise.

Star architecture as architecture

A systematic quantitative literature review by Alaily-Mattar, Hall, and Thierstein (2021) in this issue assesses how star architecture is researched by various disciplines, finding that the voices and perspectives of the architecture field contribute only marginally to the scholarly discussion of star architecture. This suggests that star architecture is not significantly or clearly problematized in the discipline that enables it to take shape and that indeed other disciplines drive the discourse on star architecture and the issues associated with it. However, to fully understand star architecture projects and their roles in urban transformation, it is vital to understand the ‘architecture’ of star architecture, in addition to the mediation and economies of it.

Four papers in this issue work to rectify this lacuna. Broudehoux and Cheli (2021) look at memorials to understand how places shape the memory brand of a city; but they also look at how the architecture itself is implicated in creating experience, a set of ideas of concern to architects and architectural researchers generally, beyond the field of either planning or memory studies. By studying the form of memorials as examples of architecture, they contribute to architectural understandings of place, meaning, material and form. Buildings are large objects in the landscape, and star architecture projects loom larger than other buildings – often literally but always metaphorically. Ponzini and Alawadi (2021) and Vanolo (2021) directly address the oversized nature of star architecture projects in the urban imaginary and in processes of urban transformation. Ponzini and Alawadi’s (2021) case study is literally big, as the tallest building in the world, and they frame their research in the idea of Bigness taken from Koolhaas (OMA and Mau 1995). It is its architecture itself that attracts the funding, expertise, regulatory exemptions and marketing strategies required for the building to succeed as a physical thing, as a financial proposition, and as a spectacle. For Vanolo (2021), similarly, architecture is the nexus of other ideas; buildings are artefacts that embody and reflect social relations (citing Goss 1988), and part of a critical geography of processes and meanings. But, it is the architecture that enables those processes; the building itself can act as an agent in constructing meanings and relations. Dreher and Thiel (2021) take a different perspective on networks of relations, and although their paper is focused on innovation networks, it has implications for architecture as well. In planning for urban transformation, cities would do well to consider the global flows of knowledge to engage with – how can any given project employ local knowledge while also harvesting the transnational expertise of star architecture projects?

Methods to study star architecture

Based on their systematic quantitative literature review, Alaily-Mattar, Hall, and Thierstein (2021) state that the dominant research methods used to understand star architecture are qualitative, followed by mixed research methods and theory; quantitative research methods are the least used. This special issue collects articles that use different research methods, in order to illustrate the spectrum of research approaches and their associated limitations. Single case studies, multiple case studies and quantitative approaches involving large-n cases differ in the types of research questions that can be asked and the scope of the possible answers.

Four papers in this issue use case study methodology as the basis for their conclusions. In their case study of process, Dreher and Thiel (2021) use the glass of the façade of the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg as a node of innovation – one of many required to realize the design by Herzog & de Meuron. The case study points to a method for understanding the geography of knowledge networks and the geographies of innovation. Heuer and Runde (2021) also study the Elbphilharmonie, but through the lens of identity studies, seeking to understand the effects of the building after it is built on people’s perception of Hamburg and on the HafenCity quarter where it is located at the waterfront. Ponzini and Alawadi (2021) use their case of the Burj Khalifa to explore the role of international experts, global capital, governments and government agents and development norms and trends in selling urban spectacle in the form of tall buildings. At the other end of the spectrum, Vanolo (2021) uses a star architecture building to unravel how building projects can succeed or fail at the local level due to local and localized concerns.

Even as these papers all employ a case study in their research design, the data each collects to describe, understand and explain the buildings varies widely, depending on the focus of the study. Case study data can include field notes, newspaper articles, press documents, interviews, autoethnography and photographs. Even when data is collected that could lend itself to quantitative analysis, qualitative approaches usually typify case studies, yielding grounded and subtle conclusions. The challenge with case studies is their findings can be difficult to generalize to other contexts with different starting conditions. But what is gained from case studies is an understanding of particularities and nuances, which might not be applicable to ‘all’ other cases, but can be quite useful to ‘some’ other cases. Additionally, a single case study can engage with multiple literatures and other existing fields, using the case as a lens through which to refract and reflect ideas drawn from multiple sources. While it can be helpful to understand generalized findings such as one might get from large-n studies, cities and institutions also look for specific stories to create narratives in support of their own transformations.

Four papers in this special issue use multiple buildings in a single place or of a single type as their case studies. Such research says less about the individual buildings and more about the place or typology. Broudehoux and Cheli (2021) leverage multiple cases of the same typology but across countries and continents to build an understanding of how memorial architecture can be an example of star architecture without engaging in the economic arguments of the Bilbao Effect. Three others, in contrast, use multiple cases to understand local effects – in the case of Lindsay and Sawyer (2021), studying the media effects of multiple buildings in the same regional city demonstrates that star architecture projects serve the need of place-making for local residents. Grubbauer and Dimitrova (2021) use multiple buildings in a single country to demonstrate how star architecture projects respond to norms and regulations, offering a basis for comparison in other contexts. Banks (2021) uses multiple cities and towns operating under the regime of a network of regional grant schemes, highlighting the need to understand single buildings or multiple buildings as parts of systems or networks.

Just as in case studies, nested case studies employ a wide variety of data to learn about star architecture. Data include in-depth interviews, newspaper articles from online archives, site visit photographs, plans, grant submissions and public social media posts. Analysis techniques range from quantitative textual analysis, to grounded discourse analysis, to detailed analysis of form. Regardless of the data types collected, though, looking at more than one building (even within a larger case of a building type or location) offers generalizable knowledge, moving from the particularities of an individual design to understanding a category of buildings or the place they might get built.

In our special issue, the studies that address a broader scope with more data and more cases tend to answer questions related to economics or the media. Here, instead of the thick description (Geertz 1973) possible in case studies or the comparative or categorical knowledge that the nested case studies reveal, large-n research focuses on establishing patterns across space or time. The data collected might be co-citations in newspaper articles, job type, rent costs and other economic data, or articles published in scholarly journals; regardless, the analysis used is quantitative and statistical. Two papers in this special issue utilize such an approach.

Plaza, Aranburu, and Esteban (2021) use articles published in ‘The New York Times’ as the pool of data from which to find instances of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao being invoked when other museums are discussed. By looking across twenty years, they can draw conclusions about the lasting influence of any individual architectural project and the nature of networks of celebrity. Patterson (2021) selects 142 neighbourhoods with star architecture buildings to serve as the units of analysis in his study of population, rent price, inhabitant occupation and establishment type. By using such a high number of neighbourhoods, he can conclude that in general, these buildings do have local transformative effects. He finishes with two small case studies to help explain the nuances of his findings: even when dealing with large-n studies, some local knowledge and individuation of cities are helpful to fully understand the effects of star architecture projects.

The choice of research methods and research approach affects the problematization and the types of research questions that can be answered. Single cases address more topics, offering insight into intertwined and complex nodes of research, while larger studies can provide more generalizable conclusions. Each approach yields different types of findings and different levels of generalizability and applicability to other fields of research. In that diversity is strength: to focus only on single star buildings would mean the body of research would lose some of the important knowledge about systems and geographies. Conversely, focusing only on large-n studies of systems would elide much of the nuance and emplaced knowledge that research is built on.

Conclusion

Star architecture is a topic where concerns about place, identity, economy, innovation and communication intersect. Studying star architecture, thus, offers insight into disparate fields including network analysis, media studies, geography, planning, cultural economy, identity, branding and spectacle. Since the economic success of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, and the positive effect that the building and associated infrastructure works had on the city’s fortunes, much of the research into star architecture has focused on the economic impacts of star architecture buildings. However, this special issue demonstrates that star architecture projects have an impact on cities and urban transformation in complex and nuanced ways, and while economic considerations are vital, they are not unique in their importance. The phenomenon of star architecture – and the ideas of celebrity, innovation, identity and communication that it raises – reaches beyond economic concerns into fundamental ideas about what public and private actors in cities do as they engage in the development in star architecture projects, and how. By looking beyond the economic effects, researchers can expand the audience for studies of star architecture, and more fully understand its role in urban transformation.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).