The Bilbao Effect
Buildings are frequently regarded as profit opportunities, so creating "scarcity" or a certain degree of uniqueness gives further value to the investment. The balance between functionality and avant-gardism has influenced many property developers. For instance, architect-developer John Portman found that building skyscraper hotels with vast atriums—which he did in various U.S. cities during the 1980s—was more profitable than maximizing floor area. [2]
However, it was the rise of postmodern architecture during the late 1970s and early 1980s that gave rise to the idea that star status in the architectural profession was about an avant-gardism linked to popular culture—which, it was argued by postmodern critics such as Charles Jencks, had been derided by the guardians of a modernist architecture. In response, Jencks argued for "double coding"; [3] i.e., that postmodernism could be understood and enjoyed by the general public and yet command "critical approval". The star architects from that period often built little or their best-known works were "paper architecture"—unbuilt or even unbuildable schemes, yet known through frequent reproduction in architectural magazines, such as the work of Léon Krier, Michael Graves, Aldo Rossi, Robert A. M. Stern, Hans Hollein, and James Stirling. As postmodernism went into decline, its avant-gardist credentials suffered due to its associations with vernacular and traditionalism, and celebrity shifted back towards modernist avant-gardism. [4]
But a high-tech strand of modernism persisted in parallel with a formally retrogressive post-modernism; one that often championed "progress" by celebrating, if not exposing, structure and systems engineering. Such technological virtuosity can be discovered during this time in the work of Norman Foster, Renzo Piano, and Richard Rogers, the latter two having designed the controversial Pompidou Centre (1977) in Paris, which opened to international acclaim. What this so‑called high-tech architecture showed was that an industrial aesthetic—an architecture characterized as much by urban grittiness as engineering efficiency—had popular appeal. This was also somewhat evident in so‑called Deconstructionist architecture, such as the employment of chainlink fencing, raw plywood and other industrial materials in designs for residential and commercial architecture. Arguably the most notable practitioner along these lines, at least in the 1970s, is the now internationally renowned architect Frank Gehry, whose house in Santa Monica, California, bears these characteristics.
With urban generation from the turn of the twentieth century picking up, economists forecast that globalization and the powers of multinational corporations would shift the balance of power away from nation states towards individual cities, which would then compete with neighboring cities and cities elsewhere for the most lucrative modern industries, and which increasingly in major Western Europe and U.S. cities did not include manufacturing. Thus cities set about "reinventing themselves", giving precedence to the value given by culture. Municipalities and non-profit organizations hope the use of a starchitect will drive traffic and tourist income to their new facilities. With the popular and critical success of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, by Frank Gehry, in which a rundown area of a city in economic decline brought in huge financial growth and prestige, the media started to talk about the so-called "Bilbao Effect"; [5] a star architect designing a blue-chip, prestige building was thought to make all the difference in producing a landmark for the city. Similar examples are the Imperial War Museum North (2002), Greater Manchester, UK, by Daniel Libeskind, the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, Finland, by Steven Holl, and the Seattle Central Library (2004), Washington state, United States, by OMA.
The origin of the phrase "wow factor architecture" is uncertain, but has been used extensively in business management in both the UK and United States to promote avant-gardist buildings within urban regeneration since the late 1990s. [6] It has even taken on a more scientific aspect, with money made available in the UK to study the significance of the factor. In research carried out in Sussex University, UK, in 2000, interested parties were asked to consider the "effect on the mind and the senses" of new developments. [7] In an attempt to produce a "delight rating" for a given building, architects, clients and the intended users of the building were encouraged to ask: "What do passers‑by think of the building?", "Does it provide a focal point for the community?" The Design Quality Indicator has been produced by the UK Construction Industry Council, so that bodies commissioning new buildings will be encouraged to consider whether the planned building has "the wow factor" in addition to more traditional concerns of function and cost.
The "wow factor" has also been taken up by Spanish architecture critics such as New York Times architecture critics Herbert Mushamp and Nicolai Ouroussof, in their arguments that the city needs to be "radically" reshaped by new towers. Discussing Spanish starchitect Santiago Calatrava's new skyscraper at 80 South Street near the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge, Ouroussof mentions how Calatrava's apartments are conceived as self-contained urban refuges, $30,000,000 prestige objects for the global elites: "If they differ in spirit from the Vanderbilt mansions of the past, it is only in that they promise to be more conspicuous. They are paradises for aesthetes." [8]
