# The most overrated Celebrity Architect!?



## arch2arch (Dec 3, 2007)

Well...!?
" Come along: Seriously...who do you consider 'it (or they )' to unquestionably be???

Regards


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## storms991 (Mar 28, 2006)

By far Renzo Piano, Norman Foster and Frank Gehry. They all have beautiful creations, but some of their other work is quite ugly and far below what I expect of architects of their quality.


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## NiteKetin (Aug 23, 2007)

Even though it is a bit cliche, but I think Gehry is a bit overrated. I mean, Experience Music Project is an aesthetic disaster in Seattle, and his Las Vegas project is rather unappealing. Also, his structures poorly relate to their respective built environments.

In second place, Moshie Safdie is a tad bit overrated as well.


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## rover3 (Feb 4, 2008)

Absolutely, Frank Gehry! Except for Disney Hall, the rest of his work is JUNK!!


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## taboe (Jan 30, 2007)

Rem Koolhaas


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## KoolKeatz (Jan 30, 2007)

Foster and Gehry.


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## Sbz2ifc (Apr 16, 2006)

A lot of architects are overrated. Some names that come to mind: Libeskind, Gehry, Koolhaas.

I think Zaha Hadid has been really overrated, but lately she's been showing that maybe she deserves it.


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## SonOfSparta (Jan 15, 2008)

Daniel Libeskind, majority of his buildings are the same, he has a cookie cutter approach! The new extension at the Royal Ontario Museum costs too much, does not add any significant space and is a copy of his previous work. Boring!


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## TalB (Jun 8, 2005)

I think that any deconstructive architect is overrated, b/c their designs looks like anyone could have designed that at the half the price.


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## Terculum (May 3, 2008)

Most of the contemporary "starchitects" are mostly okay, but not as brilliant as people make them out to be. I personally don't like Gehry's work, but I can see why people consider him to be historically significant; he had some genuinely original ideas. I used to not like Libeskind until I experienced his Jewish Museum in Berlin in person. I still have some disagreements with many of his decisions, but being in that building was an unusual experience. Going back a few decades, I think that Phillip Johnson was overrated; he was an architect of moderate talent who happened to get lucky.


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## storms991 (Mar 28, 2006)

TalB said:


> I think that any deconstructive architect is overrated, b/c their designs looks like anyone could have designed that at the half the price.


Right on.


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## TalB (Jun 8, 2005)

I wonder if the latest version for the modified Miss Brooklyn, now called B1, was modeled after this.


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## eyrie (Dec 21, 2006)

Gehry and Koolhaas is there anything they,ve done that doesn't look crushed, distorted or ungainly?


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## FM 2258 (Jan 24, 2004)

Calatrava and Norman Foster. All their designs look the same. Calatrava is white and looks like skeletons while Foster is all about criss-cross silver colored buildings. 


Cesar Pelli is the best in my opinion. His variety and subtlety are unmatched in the field. He should get all the best ratings possible.


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## Pincio (May 30, 2007)

Calatrava and Koolhaas


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## Príncipe (Nov 11, 2006)

Niemeyer for sure - Brasilia is Ok but he is stuck on his 60's projects and is making Brazilian cities uglier by the day with some hideous designs that don't fit anymore in the 21st century !

He's 100 for Christ sake, he needs to retire soon !


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## storms991 (Mar 28, 2006)

Calatrava's Transit Hub is ugly, nobody wants to travel through a dead fish every morning.


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## rover3 (Feb 4, 2008)

Some of Calatrava's work is magnificent, but after 3 or 4 skeletal-type things, it's time to put that aside and move on to something different. 

Pei and Pelli are very classic.


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## HD (Sep 17, 2003)

foster. from top in the 90s to flop in recent years.

gehry. same old, same old. 

libeskind. another de ja vu ...

most european architects (I'm not speaking about the big names) - plain design, cheap, too much under pressure of cost effectivity ...


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## TalB (Jun 8, 2005)

storms991 said:


> Calatrava's Transit Hub is ugly, nobody wants to travel through a dead fish every morning.


Don't look at me, I wanted the Twins rebuilt, not the official plan.



HD said:


> foster. from top in the 90s to flop in recent years.
> 
> gehry. same old, same old.
> 
> ...


You can make most of their models just by crumbling up some paper or napkins, which I have placed most of them where they belong, the garbage. :rofl:


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## Virginia Lover (Aug 5, 2008)

Pei... can't anyone design a pyramid? I mean, the Egyptians did it.


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## mapece (May 10, 2013)

I'd subscribe a lot of the architects mentioned in this thread: Le Corbusier, Gehry, Libeskind, Calatrava, Khoolas, Pelli, Philip Johnson. I would add also Adolf Loos and Mies Van Der Rohe (altouh Mies did the unlivable but gorgeous Farnsworth and the Pavillion), Richard Meier. 
I have to say that I like Zaha Hadid, maybe it's my love for the curve line.
But above all I strongly disagree on Niemeyer. 
I think that the bad planning of Brazilia was made by Lucio Costa, but the buildings of Niemeyer are often incredibly beautiful. His building for Mondadori in Segrate is stunning, one of my favorite of the century.


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## ThatOneGuy (Jan 13, 2012)

Every famous architect. Many people can design much nicer buildings but cannot build them because they don't have the reputation that these 'starchitects' have, although I think that Mies deserved the fame he had because of how he changed the world af architecture. Glassy, simple black buildings with vertical I-beam emphasis never always lose their elegant touch.

Many of Cesar Pelli's recent designs are far too similar, just a rectangular prism with rounded edges and a tapered top. His best work, by far, in my opinion, is the Wells Fargo Plaza in Minneapolis.


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## isaidso (Mar 21, 2007)

ThatOneGuy said:


> Every famous architect. Many people can design much nicer buildings but cannot build them because they don't have the reputation that these 'starchitects' have.


Agree. For every celebrated architect, there are tens of thousands of people capable of designing something as nice or better. Some of them aren't even architects. The idea that these people are especially gifted is absurd.

They're simply people who were in the right place at the right time and devoted their life to this field. I bet there are 100s of people on SSC alone who could design as well as Gehry, Mies, Hadid, Calatrava, etc.


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## mapece (May 10, 2013)

isaidso said:


> Agree. For every celebrated architect, there are tens of thousands of people capable of designing something as nice or better. Some of them aren't even architects. The idea that these people are especially gifted is absurd.


What about Frank Lloyd Wright? To me he was a genius and he deserves his reputation (even if there are buildings that I don't particularly like, the guggenheim for instance). He was not only original, but there's a deepness of feeling in a lot of his works that is not only superficial spectacularity or gratuitous weirdness.


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## Kopacz (Mar 16, 2011)

I think it would be Hadid for me. I have yet to see one single project of her (studio) that even remotely fits the style and "feel" of its surroundings.

[edit]
Oh what the hell, how old is this thread !?


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## nonothing2004 (May 30, 2013)

delete


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