{"id":6076,"date":"2026-02-23T09:30:29","date_gmt":"2026-02-23T10:30:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/angesfinanciers.org\/?p=6076"},"modified":"2026-02-27T16:17:32","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T16:17:32","slug":"in-the-rush-to-draw-a-line-under-the-age-of-the-starchitect-were-at-risk-of-losing-more-than-we-think","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/angesfinanciers.org\/index.php\/2026\/02\/23\/in-the-rush-to-draw-a-line-under-the-age-of-the-starchitect-were-at-risk-of-losing-more-than-we-think\/","title":{"rendered":"“In the rush to draw a line under the age of the starchitect, we’re at risk of losing more than we think”"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Guggenheim<\/div>\n

The starchitect era is coming to an end but, like it or not, architecture still needs powerful individuals, writes Owen Hopkins<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The age of the starchitect is over.<\/strong> At least that’s what critics have been saying for over a decade now.<\/p>\n

But 2025 perhaps marked the moment when this prognostication finally came true as architecture lost an unprecedented number of its leading figures, among them Frank Gehry<\/a>, Bob Stern<\/a>, Terry Farrell<\/a>, Nicholas Grimshaw<\/a>, Ricardo Scofidio<\/a>, L\u00e9on Krier<\/a> and David Childs<\/a>. Meanwhile, it’s now a hard-to-believe 10 years since we lost Zaha Hadid<\/a> \u2013 the starriest starchitect of them all.<\/p>\n

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Conventionally, the demise of the age of the starchitect is seen as a good thing<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The “great die-off'”,\u00a0predicted by the critic and architectural soothsayer Charles Jencks<\/a> in typically irreverent fashion, has finally come to pass. It was only a matter of time, as the roster of global stars entered their ninth and even 10th decades.<\/p>\n

Yet, more broadly, this generational shift reflects the fact that the starchitect phenomenon was the product of a particular time and circumstances \u2013 economic, political and cultural.<\/p>\n

Conventionally, the demise of the age of the starchitect \u2013 if not the starchitects themselves, whose passing has been rightly widely lamented \u2013 is seen as a good thing. For many, the media focus on the work of a few white men \u2013 as ever, Hadid was the exception who proved the rule \u2013 has long distorted views of the architectural profession, sucking up attention and the fundamentally collective and collaborative way it operates. How many lectures does Peter Cook<\/a> actually need to give?<\/p>\n