Jacques Herzog Five Years Before Famous

DYWSC? has already mentioned next month’s Perspecta 37 – Famous. Invariably, after a post is done, that’s when one stumbles on all the good stuff. This is the case with the reactionto this Archinect thread about the editors’ research poll, with this link that illustrates just how little data is necessary to publish the issue (16 lines down), and with this partially transcribed ending to Jacques Herzog’s acceptance speech for the 2001 Pritzker Prize…

[35:45] …The rise of the global star system in recent years is indicative of a colossal battle of displacement in the world of architecture. A narrow elite of author-architects stands opposite an over-powering ninety-percent majority assimilation architecture, an architecture essentially without an "Appellation Controlee" as it is called in the world of wine. There is hardly anything left in between – only the few young people desperately seeking salvation in the few remaining niches and the largely hopeless prospects of design competitions. Rampantly spreading simulation architecture is no longer projected on the world by an author, but instead simulates, reproduces, manipulates, and consumes existing imagery.

Instead of passively letting ourselves be sucked into the maelstrom of this simulation architecture, which not only absorbs all the imagery, but also any and all innovation in order to survive, we can actively deploy simulation as a possible strategy in our own architecture, in a kind of subversive reversal as in biotechnology. And that may well be the most exciting prospect in architecture today. And indeed in human society. This incredible latitude, that leaves room for the most extraordinary achievement, and the ghastly ones as well. Thank you.

The online description of Perspecta 37 focuses on the promoting of the “mystique of the designer genius.” Hopefully, there is room in the issue to address Mr. Herzog’s concerns about the starchitecture absorbing “any and all innovation in order to survive.” Of course, a blog can always offer one more post; 37's editors only get one print date.