NOTES ON BECOMING A FAMOUS ARCHITECT

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23. Make your own big Break
2007-11-03 04:54:00
Search all you want, there is no magic formula for fame and fortune.The truth is, big breaks don't just happen; people make them happen--through hard work, networking, courage, passion and even pain. And as much as modern culture has glorified the notion of the "big break" ( American Idol, anyone?), lasting success has less to do with singular, transcendent moments than it does with incremental progress and unflagging grit."We romanticize the idea of a big break, but they aren't always this wonderful, positive thing," says David Dotlich, senior partner at Portland, Ore.-based Delta Executive Learning Center. "Sometimes it's [about] a big loss."click on image for lager viewrather than wait for his big break, real estate mogul Larry Silverstein built his empire brick by brick. He began his career in the 1950s by converting a Manhattan industrial shack into an office building. "I didn't have a clue what I was doing in the beginning," he says. Indeed, it took myriad deals over five...
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22. Put out your work for recognition & awards
2007-10-26 11:06:00
It?s always difficult to be a young architect. But Françoise N?Thépé and Aldric Beckmann, founders of Paris-based firm Beckmann-N?Thépé, say the challenges are especially acute in France, due to a strongly established hierarchy and a conservative outlook on experimentation, especially toward those without much experience. ?People don?t want their money to be spent by ?amateurs,? ? says N?Thépé. The situation is even more difficult for her, since she is a woman and a minority (she was born in Cameroon). ?Yes, I sometimes feel myself as an exception,? she says.N?Thépé studied at the Ecole Spéciale d?Architecture in Paris (she originally wanted to be an interior designer, but amazingly she signed up at the wrong school!), where she studied with French architects Odile Decq, Paul Virilio, and Frédéric Borel. She worked for French/German firm LIN. Beckmann, born in Paris, studied at the Ecole d?Architecture Paris la Seine, and worked for architects François Seigneur, Will Alsop, and Jean...
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21. Get it Straight! Famous Architects are NOT Gods
2007-10-19 11:39:00
One of the most dangerous things we are encouraged to do is idolize the famous.Yes, we need to have role models; however, we must never idolize them and even more importantly, we should minimize the number of role models we have that are famous. Why so? Because we can be fooled into thinking that we cannot live up to their reach, cannot be rich and famous, cannot be great like they are or seem to be. Each and every one of us can be great! No exceptions! All we have to do is believe in ourselves and act upon our best intentions.Rosa Parks, now famous for her determined civil rights activism, was once just another concerned citizen and took many "baby steps" before she was able to move into the role of a leader. Each of us owes others and ourselves the commitment and action required to grow and develop into the greatness within us. And, as Nelson Mandela so eloquently noted, that greatness is not just in some of us, it is in all of us!When it comes to famous movie actors, we fi...
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20. Unite and Conquer
2007-10-13 09:02:00
AT the end of February, when Studio Daniel Libeskind was named winner of the design study on the future of the World Trade Center site, it was only the latest sign of the degree to which celebrity has come to dominate high-profile architectural practice. Mr. Libeskind prepared his scheme with the help of a 27-member architectural staff, not to mention engineers, photographers, landscape designers and a ''slurry wall consultant.'' To judge from the way he and the press have treated his design, though, he might as well have created it by himself, working in the sort of cloistered isolation we associate with painters and novelists. But famous architects and their publicists may not want to celebrate yet. It turns out that while the solo-star model won the ground zero battle, it may be losing the war. The list of finalists named in December also included several teams who joined forces for the occasion, including Think, led by the New York architects Rafael Viñoly and Frederic Schw...
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19. Promote your name or loose your fame.
2007-10-06 10:57:00
If you believe, as many people do, that the Sydney Opera House is the most famous piece of architecture to be produced in the 20th century, then it follows that the man who designed it, or most of it, Jørn Utzon is one of the most famous architects of that century, nothing less than a genius.Yet Richard Weston, author of a new book on Utzon, points out that the architect has a relatively low public profile and many architectural historians have neglected his work.This is perhaps because Utzon, unlike most major architects, has no set predictable style, no school of followers. Nor has he aggressively pushed his views into the public realm as other famous architects have. Not for him the celebrated marathon public lectures of Buckminster Fuller, or the short pithy catchphrases of Frank Lloyd Wright. And indeed for much of his life he has resisted being written about.The first book to be produced with Utzon?s full co-operation has been written by Professor Weston from Cardiff Universit...
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18. Make it Different
2007-09-29 22:58:00
There is one thing that the work of celebrated architects has in common. I am not referring to the fact that their buildings are necessarily more beautiful than those of their less-acclaimed colleagues (in any case, that is not always true), nor that serious architects generally imbue their designs with loftier aspirations than everyday builders. What I am thinking of is something more obvious: that most buildings designed by acclaimed architects, whatever else they are, are different. What I mean is not merely that they are different one from another, but that they stand apart -- they embody an air of detachment from the world around them. This isolation can be the result of the form of the building. There is nothing else in New York, or indeed in any other city, like the dumpy spiral of the Guggenheim Museum. Sometimes the difference is the result of structural leger demain, like the odd, reverse-stepping facade of the Whitney Museum; or Edward Larrabee Barnes's I.B.M. Building, ...
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17. Blow your own horn!
2007-09-28 11:34:00
The ONE thing that keeps most people from becoming rich and famous - and how YOU can grab that crucial advantage for yourself!What's the one thing that keeps people from achieving the wealth and fame they probably deserve? It's so simple, yet almost nobody knows how to do it. Without this one thing, you might achieve a little and do okay, but getting rich and famous will be far, far out of your reach. So, what is this one crucial ingredient for the ultimate success? Blow your own horn!That's right--most people don't know how to blow their own horn. They don't know how to QUICKLY IMPRESS you with how much they know, how helpful they can be, how much they have achieved, how fast they can get new information, AND - most importantly - how they can help YOU get what you want.Promoting yourself is absolutely crucial to becoming a well-known, trusted figure in your field. And mark my word, once you become "famous" earning a fat paycheck is not far behind. Doors will open. People with ...
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16. Become your own clients
2007-09-23 09:21:00
ALSO SEE THESE RELATED NOTES FROM PREVIOUS WEEKS:12. You dont need to be Born Rich14. Do Good Work & Keep Your Soul
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15. You have to work at it
2007-09-16 00:13:00
When I was in grad school at Texas, I asked Charles Moore to tell me how he got famous, more specifically how he got great commissions. He said these things happened because he developed the teaching track - teaching, writing and lecturing gave him the money, he said, to keep the office going irrespective of how much work it had coming in. That way, if there wasn't enough fee to do that killer rendering, or to work up presentation materials for publication, say, he could infill with his own money. He got bored with being known for a singular type of work, he said, so as people approached him about starting and being associated with other offices, he did. Being in three places at once was kind of a novelty that helped his profile as well.... [Moore] said being famous was just like any other driven career track - you have to commit to it, you have to think your way through it, you have to make the right connections with clients, the right types of clients, people who control publicat...
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14. Do Good Work & Keep Your Soul
2007-09-09 11:02:00
Adrian ShaughnessyJanuary 25, 2006 SU: In your chapter dedicated to self-promotion, you touch on the celebrity issue that has surfaced. I agree that we depend on our reputations to maintain work and get new clients, but things seem to have gotten out of hand. Why have so many designers been lured by celebrity instead of simply making good work? Adrian Shaughnessy: The world is obsessed with celebrity. Perhaps it always has been: I suppose the difference today is that that because of the all pervasiveness of always-on electronic and print media we find it easy to become obsessed with people we?ve never met, people who are often famous for nothing other than being famous. I don?t think design is even close to that situation yet. ?Celebrity? in design is still predicated on excellence of work. Of course, there are things designers can do to promote themselves as design-world celebs ? produce monographs, go on the lecture circuit, sound off in the magazines ? but t...
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13. Take a lesson from Rem Koolhaas
2007-08-31 00:25:00
Dear Architects, I Am Sick of Your Shit,Once, a long time ago in the days of yore, I had a friend who was studying architecture to become, presumably, an architect.This friend introduced me to other friends, who were also studying architecture. Then these friends had other friends who were architects - real architects doing real architecture like designing luxury condos that look a lot like glass dildos. And these real architects knew other real architects and now the only people I know are architects. And they all design glass dildos that I will never work or live in and serve only to obstruct my view of New Jersey.Do not get me wrong, architects. I like you as a person. I think you are nice, smell good most of the time, and I like your glasses. You have crazy hair, and if you are lucky, most of it is on your head. But I do not care about architecture. It is true. This is what I do care about:* burritos* hedgehogs* coffeeAs you can see, architecture is not on the list. I believe th...
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12. You dont need to be Born Rich
2007-08-27 09:30:00
The architect of his own fortune;HOW MANCHESTER LAD NORMAN FOSTER BECAME A VISIONARY BUILDING DESIGNER.HE IS the man behind the new design for Wembley Stadium - which controversially scraps its famous twin towers.But whatever your opinion of Sir Norman Foster and his futuristic visions, no one can deny that he has become the style guru of modern architecture.Clients around the globe are queuing up for a Foster "signature" building with its trademark sleek, smooth lines.Today Sir Norman, 64, employs almost 500 people, has offices in London, Tokyo and Hong Kong and a business that enjoys a pounds 20 million turnover. He even owns his own fleet of aircraft.That's not bad for a working-class lad from Manchester who left school at 16 and drove an ice-cream van to get himself through university.What makes Sir Norman's story all the more remarkable is that he is the only British architect of note who comes from such a modest background.An only child, he left school for the traditionally ...
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11. Understand The Laws of Epidemics
2007-08-20 13:23:00
At first glance this would seem extremely off subject. For haven?s sake, what does an epidemic have to do with becoming a famous architect? Well, everything actually. Fame, is really a social epidemic. We threw Mancom Gladwell's "The Tipping Point" in here because we thought it was a very practical guide to becoming famous. The following is an excerpt of wikisummaries' synopsis of the book. As you read it think of it in the context of architectural fame.Gladwell asserts that most trends, styles, and phenomena are born and spread according to routes of transmission and conveyance that are strikingly similar. In most of these scenarios, whether the event in question is the spread of syphilis in Baltimore?s mean streets or the sudden spike in the popularity of Hush Puppies sales, there is a crucial juncture, which Gladwell terms the ?tipping point,? that signals a key moment of crystallization that unifies isolated events into a significant trend. What factors decide whether a partic...
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10. Pay attention to your glasses
2007-08-12 21:55:00
February 9, 2003Let Me Guess, You Must Be an ArchitectBy RUTH LA FERLAHe has not had a run on them yet, but Robert Marc, a New York eyewear designer and retailer, would not be surprised to hear customers pleading, "Make me a pair of glasses just like Daniel Libeskind wears."Mr. Libeskind, the Berlin architect, became the focus of attention last week when it was announced that his firm, Studio Daniel Libeskind, was one of two design teams with a project under consideration for the World Trade Center site. The other was the Think team, headed by the architects Frederic Schwartz, Rafael Viñoly and Ken Smith of New York and Shigeru Ban of Tokyo.the architects' eyewear. Mr. Viñoly appeared in photographs wearing two pairs of spectacles on his head ? something of a fashion signature. Mr. Smith wore his trademark darkWith their soaring towers and memorials, both concepts were the talk of the town. A few New Yorkers, however, seemed almost as impressed by spherical frames, and Mr. Libeskin...
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9. Fight! Its a Hobbesian war.
2007-08-12 16:36:00
Cultivating the Gimmicks of the TradeArchitectureBy JAMES GARDNERFebruary 23, 2006An anecdote: When he was a young man, Robert Stern, the current dean of the Yale School of Architecture, was walking down 57th Street and ran into an assistant of Paul Rudolph, who was then Yale's dean of architecture. According to Mr. Stern, the man was carrying 50 pairs of the sort of Corbusian glasses that Rudolph - not to mention Philip Johnson and many others in the profession - liked to wear."I said, 'Jeff, what are all those glasses for?'" Mr. Stern recalls in Perspecta 37, the latest issue of Yale's architecture journal. "He said, 'Well, Big Daddy is afraid that they may not be available in the future so he bought them all.'" Mr. Stern goes on to inform us that Rudolph "didn't even need glasses."What is this obsession that architects have with eyewear? The case could be made that Daniel Libeskind won the commission for ground zero as much for those rebarbative honkers he favors as for an...
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8. Develop a Mystique
2007-08-10 21:28:00
How to Become a Famous ArchitectDeath to Manifestos. Viva How-Tos!Becoming a famous architect shouldn't take too long, but don't expect too much. It's not a passport to riches, nor an introduction to high society. But if it's what you want, here's how to do it.First, pay a visit to any well stocked newsagent. Buy one copy of each design magazine. You will use these to find out what not to do.Now go to your local remaindered book store. Buy a copy of a design book with lots of pictures in. Not only is the remaindered store cheaper, but it's stock is between ten to fifteen years old. These are the least fashionable and so most shocking of all styles. You will use this to copy your new designs from.On the way home, choose a name for your cutting edge design firm. Something punchy, arty, and a little stupid should do. There are not too many rules about this but make sure it doesn't include 'urban' or 'studio'. Your name will present an efficient image, suggest an office in a ...
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7. If you've got "it" use it!
2007-08-10 21:19:00
Being good won't make you famous?the famous architect requires no clients?To be a good architect, you must have a modicum of talent and many happy clients, pleased with your buildings. You won't be able to pay your bills, otherwise.To be an internationally famous architect requires no clients at all, and certainly no buildings. Ms Zaha Hadid, one of the most lauded and famous architects of our time, was lauded and famous before she ever built so much as a brick sh*thouse. She received her first paying commission for a real building after 25 years in the business. Like many others of the greats ? especially the postmodernists ? her reputation was based entirely on images, not real-life.Being a famous architect requires little contact with reality; only an indulgent benefactor who will pay your bills year after year. You can spend many a happy decade entering international competitions, which you never seem to quite win. With the right connections, though, you can have your drawings...

6. Amass Symbolic Capital
2007-08-10 21:09:00
The two types of greatness ?what we mean by greatness? First, let's clarify what we mean by 'greatness'. In the terms of the theory of our guru Pierre Bourdieu it means accumulating either of two sorts of capital. We're not talking about money, here. Well, not just money. 'Capital ' can also mean things like degrees and diplomas; social contacts; knowledge; and prestige. Broadly, capitals can be divided into two groups. The first is 'temporal' capital', which corresponds to earthly things, such as money or the power that comes from running a large architecture firm. The second is 'symbolic capital' or 'intellectual capital'. You can be poor as a church mouse but be rich in symbolic capital. A classic example would be Frank Lloyd Wright in his middle period: not doing too well ...

5.Work for a Famous Architect
2007-08-10 17:35:00
American Architect s and the Mechanics of Fameby Roxanne Kuter WilliamsonSynopsisArgues that the success of architects is not due only to education and self-promotion, but rather is dependent upon knowing the "right person at the right time", and analyzes the success of famous architects to justify this claim.Probably the most solid evidence on how to achieve fame is provided byRoxanne Williamson's book "American Architects and the Mechanics of Fame".She concludes that the most likely mechanism for success is to work forGreat Architect (tm) at certain key periods in the GA's career, which shegoes on to define as 'dynamic shifts'.Garry StevensDept of Architectural and Design ScienceUniversity of SydneyNSW 2006AUSTRALIA
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4. Make it simple to understand and accessable
2007-08-10 12:07:00
Phil Hansen is not only tearing down the ?gallery? walls that keep many people from seeing and enjoying art. He?s also showing us how it?s made -- all on the Internet.-In this piece titled ?48 Women.? Hansen creates a portrait of convicted serial killer Gary Ridgway, aka The Green River Killer. The portrait is made of pixelated photos of a few of his forty-eight victims.In this portrait of Bruce Lee. He uses karate chops to make the portrait. He films the event, see the video hereWith his own blood, Hansen produces an image of North Korean leader Kim Jong II as a protest against nuclear proliferation. See video hereIn this work he uses passages from the bible to create an image of KKK members to make a statement about religionarticle about Phil HansenHis Website
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3. Use popular culture as your subject
2007-08-10 12:03:00
Daniel Edwards is a sculptor. His pieces address celebrity and popular culture in ways that have often stirred controversy.His works include a sculpture of the disembodied head of Ted Williams, a life-sized statue of Britney Spears giving birth while nude on her hands and knees on a bearskin rug, a provocative bust of Senator Hillary Clinton, and a 25 foot bust of Fidel Castro.
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2. Use stratagies of a publicist to get in the news
2007-08-09 21:56:00
How to Get Famous -- In only 90 Days!by Joe Vitale"I am indebted to the press of the United States for almost every dollar which I possess..." -- P.T. Barnum, 1891Charlie Stratton was a little boy who would not grow. He was destined to be less than three feet tall.His parents accepted the fact that he would never become a full sized adult. The neighbors felt sorry for the nice family and their midget. But no one saw an opportunity for greatness. No one saw the potential for fame and fortune. No one, that is, until one man came along in 1842 with an eye for hidden possibilities. That man was P.T. Barnum.Barnum taught the child to sing and dance. He taught him to express himself, to accept how he looked, to feel good about who he was. He also taught the boy how to charm and entertain crowds. And he named the young prodigy a name that still lives today: General Tom Thumb.Years later, after Tom was rich and world famous, his Connecticut neighbors would shake their heads and smile. "We a...
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1. Throw a brick at someone famous
2007-08-09 19:21:00
How to Get Famous FastThe Proven Method for Skyrocketing to Fame in the News Mediaby Rusty CawleyWalter Winchell was the most influential newspaper columnist of the 1930s and 1940s, a time when newspapers were the most powerful media in the world. He rose from obscurity as a third-rate vaudeville performer to become feared, hated and widely imitated.His formula for success?"The fastest way to become famous," he said, "is to throw a brick at someone famous."Winchell fought publicly with entertainment's biggest names, from Al Jolson to Josephine Baker to Lucille Ball. Later in his career, he swung toward political reporting. Winchell championed an unprecedented third term for President Franklin Roosevelt as well as the Red Scare for Joe McCarthy.He threw bricks in every direction. And this made him among the most famous men in the nation.Winchell's tactics have been adopted and adapted by scores of ambitious individuals and organizations.How did Ralph Nader become famous? By attacki...
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