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Starchitect
Starchitect is a portmanteau used to describe architects whose celebrity and critical acclaim have transformed them into stars of the architecture world and may even have given them some degree of fame among the general public. Celebrity status is generally associated with avant-gardist novelty. Developers around the world have proven eager to sign up "top talent" (i.e., starchitects) in hopes of convincing reluctant municipalities to approve large developments, of obtaining financing or of increasing the value of their buildings. A key characteristic is that the starchitecture is almost always "iconic" and highly visible within the site or context. As the status is dependent on current visibility in the media, fading media status implies that architects lose "starchitect" status—hence a list can be drawn up of former "starchitects". The Bilbao effect Buildings are frequently regarded as profit opportunities, so creating "scarcity" or a certain degree of uniqueness gives ...
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Frank Gehry
Frank Owen Gehry ( ; ; born February 28, 1929) is a Canadian-American architect and designer. A number of his buildings, including his private residence in Santa Monica, California, have become attractions. Gehry rose to prominence in the 1970s with his distinctive style that blended everyday materials with complex, dynamic structures. Gehry's approach to architecture has been described as deconstructivist, though he himself resists categorization. His works are considered among the most important of contemporary architecture in the 2010 World Architecture Survey, leading '' Vanity Fair'' to call him "the most important architect of our age". Gehry is known for his postmodern designs and use of bold, unconventional forms and materials. His most famous works include the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain, the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris, and the National Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial in Washington D.C. These buildin ...
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Michael Graves
Michael Graves (July 9, 1934 – March 12, 2015) was an American architect, designer, and educator, and principal of Michael Graves and Associates and Michael Graves Design Group. He was a member of The New York Five and the Memphis Group and a professor of architecture at Princeton University for nearly forty years. Following his own partial paralysis in 2003, Graves became an internationally recognized advocate of health care design. Graves' global portfolio of architectural work ranged from the Ministry of Culture in The Hague, a post office for Celebration, Florida, a prominent expansion of the Denver Public Library to numerous commissions for The Walt Disney Company, Disney and the scaffolding design for the 2000 Washington Monument restoration. He was recognized for his influence on architectural movements, including New Urbanism, New Classical Architecture, New Classicism, and Postmodern architecture, postmodernism. His postmodern buildings include the Portland Building ...
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Plywood
Plywood is a composite material manufactured from thin layers, or "plies", of wood veneer that have been stacked and glued together. It is an engineered wood from the family of manufactured boards, which include plywood, medium-density fibreboard (MDF), oriented strand board (OSB), and particle board (or chipboard). All plywoods bind resin and wood fibre sheets (cellulose cells are long, strong and thin) to form a composite material. The sheets of wood are stacked such that each layer has its grain set typically (see below) perpendicular to its adjacent layers. This alternation of the grain is called ''cross-graining'' and has several important benefits: it reduces the tendency of wood to split when nailed at the edges; it reduces thickness swelling and shrinkage, providing improved dimensional stability; and it makes the strength of the panel consistent across all directions. There is usually an odd number of plies, so that the sheet is balanced, that is, the surface layers ha ...
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Chain Link Fencing
A chain-link fence (also referred to as wire netting, wire-mesh fence, chain-wire fence, cyclone fence, hurricane fence, or diamond-mesh fence) is a type of woven fence usually made from galvanized or linear low-density polyethylene-coated steel wire. The wires run vertically and are bent into a zigzag pattern so that each "zig" hooks with the wire immediately on one side and each "zag" with the wire immediately on the other. This forms the characteristic diamond pattern seen in this type of fence. Development of chain-link fencing In the United Kingdom, the firm of Barnard, Bishop & Barnards was established in Norwich to produce chain-link fencing by machine. The process was developed by Charles Barnard in 1844 based on cloth weaving machines (up until that time, Norwich had a long history of cloth manufacture). In the mid-1890s, the American Chain Link Fence Company in Medford, Massachusetts, was the first company in the United States to patent an "exclusive manufacturi ...
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Deconstructivism
Deconstructivism is a postmodern architecture, postmodern architectural movement which appeared in the 1980s. It gives the impression of the fragmentation of the constructed building, commonly characterised by an absence of obvious harmony, continuity, or symmetry. Its name is a portmanteau of Constructivist architecture, Constructivism and "Deconstruction", a form of semiotic analysis developed by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida. Architects whose work is often described as deconstructivist (though in many cases the architects themselves reject the label) include Zaha Hadid, Peter Eisenman, Frank Gehry, Rem Koolhaas, Daniel Libeskind, Bernard Tschumi, and Coop Himmelb(l)au. The term does not inherently refer to the style's ''deconstructed'' visuals as the English adjective suggests, but instead derives from the movement's foundations in contrast to the Russian Constructivist architecture, Constructivist movement during the World War I, First World War that "broke the ...
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High-tech Architecture
High-tech architecture, also known as structural expressionism, is a type of late modernist architecture that emerged in the 1970s, incorporating elements of high tech industry and technology into building design. High-tech architecture grew from the modernist style, utilizing new advances in technology and building materials. It emphasizes transparency in design and construction, seeking to communicate the underlying structure and function of a building throughout its interior and exterior. High-tech architecture makes extensive use of aluminium, steel, glass, and to a lesser extent concrete (the technology for which had developed earlier), as these materials were becoming more advanced and available in a wider variety of forms at the time the style was developing – generally, advancements in a trend towards lightness of weight. High-tech architecture focuses on creating adaptable buildings through choice of materials, internal structural elements, and programmatic design. I ...
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Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, fourth-most populous city in the European Union and the List of cities proper by population density, 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2022. Since the 17th century, Paris has been one of the world's major centres of finance, diplomacy, commerce, culture, Fashion capital, fashion, and gastronomy. Because of its leading role in the French art, arts and Science and technology in France, sciences and its early adoption of extensive street lighting, Paris became known as the City of Light in the 19th century. The City of Paris is the centre of the Île-de-France region, or Paris Region, with an official estimated population of 12,271,794 inhabitants in January 2023, or ...
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Pompidou Centre
The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the (), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English and colloquially as Beaubourg, is a building complex in Paris, France. It was designed in the style of high-tech architecture by the architectural team of Richard Rogers, Su Rogers and Renzo Piano, along with Gianfranco Franchini. It is named after Georges Pompidou, the President of France from 1969 to 1974 who commissioned the building, and was officially opened on 31 January 1977 by President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing. Centre Pompidou is located in the Beaubourg area of the 4th arrondissement of Paris. It houses the (BPI; Public Information Library), a vast public library; the , the largest museum for modern art in Europe; and IRCAM, a centre for music and acoustic research. The Place Georges Pompidou is an open plaza in front of the museum. The Centre Pompidou will be closed for renovation from 2 March 2025 until 2030. The BPI will be temporarily relocated to its Lumière buildi ...
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Richard Rogers
Richard George Rogers, Baron Rogers of Riverside (23 July 1933 – 18 December 2021) was a British-Italian architect noted for his modernist and constructivist designs in high-tech architecture. He was the founder at Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, previously known as the Richard Rogers Partnership, until June 2020. After Rogers' retirement and death, the firm rebranded to simply RSHP on 30 June 2022. Rogers was perhaps best known for his work on the Pompidou Centre in Paris, the Lloyd's building and Millennium Dome, both in London, the Senedd building, in Cardiff, and the European Court of Human Rights building, in Strasbourg. He was awarded the RIBA Gold Medal, the Thomas Jefferson Medal, the RIBA Stirling Prize, the Minerva Medal, and the 2007 Pritzker Prize. Early life and career Richard Rogers was born in Florence, Tuscany, in 1933 into an Anglo-Italian family. His father, William Nino Rogers (1906–1993), was Jewish, and was the cousin of Italian Jewish archi ...
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Renzo Piano
Renzo Piano (; born 14 September 1937) is an Italian architect. His notable works include the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris (with Richard Rogers, 1977), The Shard in London (2012), Kansai International Airport in Osaka (1994), the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City (2015), Istanbul Museum of Modern Art in Istanbul (2022) and Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center in Athens (2016). He was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1998. Piano has served as a senator for life in the Italian Senate since 2013. Early life and first buildings Piano was born and raised in Genoa, Italy, into a family of builders. His grandfather had created a masonry enterprise, which had been expanded by his father, Carlo Piano, and his father's three brothers, into the firm Fratelli Piano. The firm prospered after World War II, constructing houses and factories and selling construction materials. When his father retired, the enterprise was led by Renzo's older brother, E ...
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Norman Foster, Baron Foster Of Thames Bank
Norman Robert Foster, Baron Foster of Thames Bank (born 1 June 1935) is an English architect. Closely associated with the development of high-tech architecture, Lord Foster is recognised as a key figure in British modernist architecture. His firm Foster + Partners, first founded in 1967 as Foster Associates is the largest in the United Kingdom, and operates internationally. He also serves as president of the Norman Foster Foundation, established to 'promote interdisciplinary thinking and research to help new generations of architects, designers and urbanists to anticipate the future'. The foundation, which opened in June 2017, is based in Madrid and operates globally. Foster received the Pritzker Prize in 1999. Early life and education Norman Robert Foster was born in 1935 in Reddish, north of Stockport, formerly a part of Lancashire but by then incorporated into the County Borough of Stockport. He was the only child of Robert and Lilian Foster (born Smith). The family ...
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James Stirling (architect)
Sir James Frazer Stirling (22 April 1926 – 25 June 1992) was a British architect. Stirling worked in partnership with James Gowan from 1956 to 1963, then with Michael Wilford from 1971 until 1992. Early life and education Stirling was born in Glasgow. His year of birth is widely quoted as 1926Wilford and Muirhead, p. 306 but his longstanding friend Sir Colin St John Wilson, Sir Sandy Wilson later stated it was 1924. The family moved to Liverpool when James was an infant, where he attended Quarry Bank High School. After leaving school, he studied at the Liverpool College of Art, School of Art in Liverpool between 1940-41, while working in an architect's office. During World War II, he joined the Black Watch before transferring to the Parachute Regiment (United Kingdom), Parachute Regiment. He was parachuted behind German enemy lines before D-Day and was wounded twice, before returning to Britain. Stirling studied architecture from 1945 until 1950 at the University of Liverp ...
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