Wednesday, March 18, 2009
'Bigger. Faster. Stronger. Shinier': Norman Foster's Swiss Re building, London. Photograph: Philippa Lewis/© Edifice/Corbis
"Today, as architects of the global stature of Frank Gehry, Norman Foster and Richard Rogers lay off staff – half of them, in Gehry's case – the mantra ringing through their minds is very probably "form follows finance". Just look at the extraordinary worldwide construction boom of the past decade. Entire cities – London, Leeds, downtown Los Angeles, Berlin, Beijing and Shanghai – have grown, changed shape and shot up into the sky in a gung-ho manner that makes some of them almost unrecognisable from the way they were such a short while ago...
As the good times rolled with the madcap antics of international banking and promiscuous credit, the very shape of so much architecture and so many buildings began to change. Out went austere or ascetic minimalism, and in came a kaledeiscopic, cinematic new architecture featuring the fecund talents of the likes of Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Daniel Libeskind and Rem Koolhaas, together with a host of younger architects for whom form appeared to follow fancy – although, in reality, it was following in the wake of a colossal economic boom..." to find out more...
As the good times rolled with the madcap antics of international banking and promiscuous credit, the very shape of so much architecture and so many buildings began to change. Out went austere or ascetic minimalism, and in came a kaledeiscopic, cinematic new architecture featuring the fecund talents of the likes of Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Daniel Libeskind and Rem Koolhaas, together with a host of younger architects for whom form appeared to follow fancy – although, in reality, it was following in the wake of a colossal economic boom..." to find out more...
Passage by Jonathan Glancey
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