‘It’s a terrible syndrome’: What’s with our love of international ‘starchitects’? | Nick Bryant
When the Danish architect Bjarke Ingels arrived at the Melbourne School of Design in 2018 during a rare visit to Australia, students greeted him as if Lady Gaga had walked through the door. Many of his admirers wanted to digitally document this moment with a selfie. Some wore black T-shirts and black horn-rimmed glasses in homage to a 40-something who still revels in the moniker of the “bad boy” of international architecture.
The Bjarke Ingels Group – or BIG, as it is more commonly known – was one of six international practices shortlisted for the Southbank project by property Associate professor Peter Raisbeck: “Australian architects are as good as any architects in the world, if not better. We would be better off without the star system.”
“We always think of people from ‘not here’ as doing a better job,” says Adam Haddow, of the Sydney practice SJB. “We genuflect. We think that they’re somehow more special. Culturally, we were taught to respect people with an accent different to ours.” Candalepas has also been chosen to design a new building overlooking Hyde Park in the centre of Sydney, which draws inspiration from the art deco of the ANZAC Memorial, and to redevelop a tower in Hyde Park South. On the first project, he is collaborating with Glenn Murcutt, Australia’s sole recipient of the profession’s highest honour, the Pritzker Prize – a green-and-gold dream team.
“The work is not great,” he says, without naming marquee names. “It becomes a trademark. It’s a product. It’s architecture as merchandise. It’s about the way things can be marketed. We are often totally disregarded in competitions, and I don’t think that’s fair.” Likewise, when the federal government built its new bush capital in Canberra, it outsourced the design. The international competition was won by the American husband-and-wife team of Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin, acolytes of the American maestro Frank Lloyd Wright. The die was evidently cast. Nation-defining projects required foreign expertise.
“Australian architects are starting to learn from the Australian architects that have come before them. We’re not teenage any more.” No longer is this purely a cultural issue, claims Craig Allchin, an architect and urban designer. The preference for outsiders is more a question of commercial necessity. Big, city-shaping projects involve such vast sums of money that developers need the pulling power of global practices to attract tenants and investors.And when it comes to the bottom line, big names have a proven track record.
“To have a Foster and Partners-designed building here is something that we should applaud, not denigrate,” pleaded then state Labor senator Philip Dalidakis. “It is something we should embrace, not eschew. It is something that we should get up and sing from the rooftops about.”
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