The All Nighter

http://strachan.tumblr.com/post/24148960917

Oh...so that's what it stands for

Moneo's work as a architect, in my opinion, is second to his ability to frame his own ideas in the context of contemporary architecture.  His book, Theoretical Anxiety and Design Strategies, offers a very comprehensive look at the development of architecture since the end of modernism.  The book is essentially his lectures for his Contemporary Theory course at Harvard, so they are written very organically and its quite easy to read.  Anyways, he breaks down the work of eight contemporary architects (sometimes incorrectly, however, in my opinion), but overall its a very interesting take where he frames an argument that actually building your ideas takes preference over the quality of your ideas.  You can agree or disagree with that, but he projects that view onto the architects he breaks down.  I don't like his buildings, most of them anyways, but I respect the ability to separate oneself from the field enough to be able to define the era which you are working within.  Many architects fail to realize the context of the field and think they are doing something ultra-revolutionary, when really they are just re-hashing old and outdated ideas.  I am sure we can ALL think of a few firms that do this.

“Architestars” aka “Starchitects” come in many different shapes, sizes and forms. Like any other person from any walk of life, an architect can handle fame very modestly or be a giant egotistical douche. Depending on our bias towards a principal architect you may see them in two different perspectives. Either the idol of all of his/her disciples or the arrogant bastard who comes in once a week, critiques a dozen of his/her minions (employees) and passes off 100% of the finish product as their own. In most cases I personally see it as a little bit from both columns

As designers we all to a certain extent have this full of themselves, creative, god complex where we have to control societies cows (the general population) to see what we want them to see, to experience what we want them to experience or direct them through a convoluted maze that we belched out of our psyche.