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Iconic architecture as a hegemonic

project of the transnational capitalist
class
Leslie Sklair & Laura Gherardi
Published online: 23 Apr 2012.

To cite this article: Leslie Sklair & Laura Gherardi (2012) Iconic architecture as a hegemonic
project of the transnational capitalist class, City: analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy,
action, 16:1-2, 57-73, DOI: 10.1080/13604813.2012.662366
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CITY, VOL. 16, NOS. 1 2, FEBRUARY APRIL 2012

Iconic architecture as a
hegemonic project of the
transnational capitalist class

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Leslie Sklair and Laura Gherardi

Identifying the drivers of actually existing capitalist globalization as the transnational
capitalist class, this paper suggests that theory and research on its agents and institutions
could help us to explain how the dominant forms of contemporary iconic architecture
arise and how they serve the interests of globalizing capitalists. We define iconic architecture
in terms of buildings and/or spaces that are famous, and that have distinctive symbolic and
aesthetic significance. The historical context of the research is the thesis that the production
and representation of architectural icons in the pre-global era (roughly before the 1960s)
were mainly driven by those who controlled state and/or religious institutions, whereas
the dominant forms of architectural iconicity in the global era are increasingly driven by
those who own and control the corporate sector. The argument is illustrated with reference
to debates around the politics of monumentality in architecture; the relationship between
iconic architecture and capitalist globalization; and an explanation of why these debates
are being overtaken by critical and uncritical conceptions of architectural iconicity
derived from an analysis of the use of iconicity and similar terms in the discourses of
major architecture and architect developer firms and mass media presentations of their
work.

Key words: iconic architecture, transnational capitalist class, starchitects

t has long been recognized by scholars

and interested publics alike that architecture has been used to transmit and
reinforce the power of the strong over the
weak and up until the middle of the 20th
century such ideas were discussed largely in
terms of the role of monumentality in architecture. However, since the end of the
Second World War and the defeat of the
fascist dictatorships in Europe the discussion
has moved on to new ground. Bombastic
monumentality, while not entirely abandoned, has become more and more

discredited as an architectural strategy for

those in power. The breakup of the Soviet
empire in the 1990s and the creation of new
regimes in post-Soviet Eastern Europe
added some further, often contradictory,
elements to the debate. Gradually, with
increasing pace in recent decades, architectural iconicity has begun to replace monumentality as the central motif in these
discussions. Interest in architectural icons
has blossomed in recent years. Theory
and research from geographers, historians
and sociologists as well as urban and

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CITY VOL. 16, NOS. 1 2

architectural theorists has started to raise

questions around the origins, structure,
dynamics and significance of iconicity in
architecture. At around the same time,
architect and critic Charles Jencks, geographers Maria Kaika and Donald McNeill,
urbanists Carola Hein and K.C. Ho, historians Philip Ethington and Vanessa Schwartz,
and sociologists Leslie Sklair and Steven
Miles all wrote explicitly on architectural
icons. Jencks book, The Iconic Building
(2005), put forward the idea of the architectural icon as an enigmatic signifier from the
point of view of the architectural insider.1
Maria Kaika (with the architect Korinna
Thielen) co-edited a special issue of this
journal in 2006, with further contributions
from Jencks, Sklair, McNeill, Hein and Ho
(see Kaika and Thielen, 2006). Kaika followed
this up with research on iconic architecture
and the City of London (2010) and McNeills
book, The Global Architect, appeared in 2009.
Miles (2005) explored the role of iconic architecture in urban regeneration in England.
On the other side of the Atlantic, Ethington
and Schwartz (2006) edited a special issue of
Urban History, with contributions on
urban icons in Rome, Jerusalem, Venice,
Berlin and Shanghai. These are mostly historical studies but there is some discussion
of the fruitfulness of semiotic interpretations
of the iconic.2
In a series of articles (Sklair, 2005, 2006b,
2010) an attempt has been made to develop a
sociological framework for the analysis of
iconic architecture in the era of capitalist globalization. This paper sets out to show how
members of the transnational capitalist
classthe drivers of capitalist globalizationpromote iconic architecture over monumentality as a marker of their hegemony. This
opens up new lines of inquiry on the perennial
problem of explaining how the built environment can be manipulated in the interests of a
dominant class. Here we raise a series of questions about the relationship between iconic
building and iconic practice, the emergence
of starchitects in contrast with the corporate
practices of the biggest architecture firms,

and their different understanding of iconicity

(see Ponzini and Nastasi 2011).

Monumentality and hegemony

In what is certainly one of the most authoritative and influential histories of architecture
in the 20th century we find the following
declaration: Throughout history, monumental architecture has been employed to
embody the values of dominant ideologies
and groups, and as an instrument of state propaganda (Curtis, 1996, p. 351). In the chapter
of which this is the opening sentence, Totalitarian Critiques of the Modern Movement,
Curtis shows that there are some exceptions
to the conventional accounts of architecture
in Nazi Germany, Communist Russia and
Fascist Italy as chauvinist, debased and
worthless (he, and many others, cite the
Italian Terragni as the main exception,
notably his modernist Casa del Fascio in
Como of 1936). Nevertheless, Curtis argues,
totalitarian critiques of the modern movement had a point. In his contribution to a
special issue of the Harvard Architecture
Review, the celebrated art historian and
leading proponent of the Modern Movement
Siegfried Giedion (1984) gave expression to
the view that a new form of democratic monumentality was necessary for the post-war
world.3 Curtis, significantly, chooses to illustrate this argument with reference to the
work of Louis Kahn, whose National Assembly Building in Dacca (1962 75) was the
crowning achievement of this phase of democratic monumental architectural (Curtis,
1996, chap. 28). Curtis is led to the conclusion
that: Monumentality is a quality in architecture which does not necessarily have to do
with size, but with intensity of expression
(p. 514).4
Smith, in his comparison of the architectures of Barcelona in the periods of the 1888
Universal Exhibition and the Olympics of
1992, argues that while the former was
mainly about Catalan nationalism, the latter
was much more about Barcelona as a global

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SKLAIR
city. He makes the explicit connection
between monumentality and iconicity as
follows: the contemporary obsession with
iconic buildings can be interpreted as the
latest attempt by cities to use monumentality
as a way of affirming and displaying capital
status . . . [today] tourism objectives are
often the prime justification for these new
monumental strategies (Smith, 2007, p. 82).
While he makes the perfectly valid point
that contemporary icons operate as symbols
of communication, he fails, in our view, to
see that it is not only in the terms of form
that monuments of the pre-global era differ
from architectural icons of the global era,
but crucially in terms of the class that drives
their production and representation and it is
to this topic that we now turn.5

The transition from monumentality to

iconicity in architecture
Our line of argument derives in part from the
vast literature on globalization and the many
competing approaches jostling for primacy.6
Any attempt to present a definitive account
of globalization and architecture (or anything else) is doomed to failure. Here we
argue for a specific conception of globalization (see Sklair, 2002) and how this works
for what can be labelled architectural icons.
The general approach identifies the drivers
of actually existing capitalist globalization as
the transnational capitalist class (TCC)
some of whose members are certainly
inspired by neoliberalismand suggests
how theory and research on the agents and
institutions of the TCC could help us to
explain how the dominant forms of contemporary iconic architecture arise and how
they serve the interests of globalizing capitalists, thus iconic architecture as a hegemonic
project of the TCC. The historical context
of the research is the thesis that the production and representation of architectural
icons in the pre-global era (roughly before
the 1960s) were mainly driven by those who
controlled state and/or religious institutions,

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59

whereas the dominant forms of architectural

iconicity for the global era are increasingly
driven by those who own and control the
corporate sector and the central institutions
of capitalist globalization. Iconicity in architecture, therefore, can best be conceptualized
as a resource in struggles for meaning and, by
implication, for power.
The drivers of capitalist globalization can
be characterized as the TCC, conceptualized
in four fractions. As in many other industries,
there is often an important overlap between
the four fractions of the TCC in architecture.
(1) Those who own and/or control the
major transnational corporations and
their local affiliates (corporate fraction).
In architecture, these are the people
who own and/or control the major architectural, architecture engineering and
architecture developer real
estate
firms and their clients. They are of two,
minimally overlapping, types: first, the
biggest of these firms (of whom only a
few are truly transnational), and second,
the most celebrated and famous architectural firms. While some of the most celebrated iconic architects do not actually
own their practices they usually control
them and provide the cultural capital
that gives them their value in the marketplace.
No corporation in the architecture
industry in 2010 had a turnover exceeding US$300 million and employed many
more than 1000 architects. In comparison
with the major global corporations they
are small (to gain entry to the Fortune
Global 500 currently requires revenues
approaching US$20 billion with the top
echelon bringing in hundreds of billions
and employing hundreds of thousands).
As we shall see below, few of the top
100 architectural firms by revenues are
led by iconic architects or build iconic
buildings. The cultural importance of
celebrated architects, especially in cities,
far outweighs their relative lack of financial and corporate muscle. Table 1 lists

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Table 1

Top 10 firms from BD Top 100 (2005 2009)

Firm

Fee-earning
architects; fee
income (2008)
in US$

Years in
top 10

1. Gensler
2. HOK
3. Nikken Sekkei
4. Aedas
5. Foster
6. SOM
7. BDP
8. RMJM
9. HKS
10. Atkins

1216; $250m +
1205; $250m +
1174; $250m +
1020; $200m +
913; $180m +
838; $230m +
717; $130m +
709; $110m +
651; $190m +
622; $140m +

All
All
All
All but 2005
All but 2006
All
All
20082009
All but 2005
Only 2008

Sources: Building Design, World Architecture Online Top

100 (2008), for 2008 data; Building Design (20 November
2009, pp. 24 25) for 2005 2009 data.

the top 10 firms for 2008 and the number

of years between 2005 and 2009 in which
each firm has been in the top 10. As will
be clear from the table, eight of the top
10 in 2008 had been in the list for at
least four of the five sample years,
suggesting that the dominant firms
make up a very stable group.7
(2) Globalizing politicians and bureaucrats
(state fraction). These are the politicians
and bureaucrats at all levels of administrative power and responsibility, in communities, cities, states and international
and global institutions who serve the
interests of capitalist globalization as
well as or in opposition to those who
elect or appoint them. They decide
what gets built where, and how changes
to the built environment are regulated.
They are particularly important for
issues of preservation and urban planning, and in competitions for major projects, some of which result in the creation
of what are known as architectural icons.
(3) Globalizing professionals (technical
fraction). The members of this fraction
range from those leading technicians
centrally involved in the structural features of new building to those responsible for the education of students and

the public in architecture who are

allied, through choice or circumstance,
with globalizing corporations and the
agenda of capitalist globalization.
(4) Merchants, media and advertising (consumerist fraction). These are the people
who are responsible for the marketing
of architecture in all its manifestations
and whose main task is to connect the
architecture industry with the culture
ideology of consumerism by promoting
images of iconic buildings, spaces and
architects in mass and specialized
media using all the available dynamic
discourses of celebrity cultures.
The point of this discussion of the TCC is to
suggest that, as well as the aesthetics of buildings and spaces, the specific connections
between the four fractions of the TCC and
the production and representation of iconic
architecture are also important in understanding and explaining architectural iconicity in the global era (elaborated in more
detail in Sklair, 2005). Therefore, while most
of the publicity and public relations activity
for iconic buildings focuses on the starchitects credited with the design, and to a
lesser extent the client with the ambition to
fund the project, we argue that much more
scholarly attention should be paid to all
four fractions of the TCC, without whom
such buildings would rarely be built.

The manufacture of iconicity

We define iconic architecture in terms of
buildings and/or spaces that are famous, and
that have distinctive symbolic and aesthetic
significance. Architecture can be iconic for
architects and those in and around architecture, and/or for the general public (iconic for
whom?), at the local/urban, national and/or
the global level (iconic for where?) and, in
our formulation, for the pre-global and/or
for the global era, roughly from the middle
of the 20th century (iconic for when?). Iconicity in architecture (or indeed in any other

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SKLAIR
field of endeavour) does not simply happen, it
is the end resultpermanent or temporary
of many deliberate practices. In a series of
interviews carried out in the USA, Europe
and elsewhere over the last decade8 it was
established that those in and around architecture often remember the local icons of their
childhood, as well as national and global
icons, brought to their attention not only by
their teachers, but also by the professional
media of architecture and the general coverage
of cultural news in the mass media. In recent
decades, hugely facilitated by the Internet,
architect and architect developer firms have
increasingly taken a leading role in endowing
their own buildings and spaces (and, in some
cases, themselves) with the quality of iconicity. They attempt to manufacture their own
iconicity, sometimes with a high degree of
success.
Jencks argues that the construction of
iconic meaning is tied to a postmodern
absence of strong belief in any metanarrative,
ideology or religion: Given the desire of
society and architects to have great icons
and yet not to agree on any iconography,
they will inevitably produce enigmatic signifiers of varying quality (2005, p. 196). Iconic
buildings, in this perspective, emerge, on the
one side, from the crisis of the monument
that, in an agnostic and global age, can be
divisiveand from the erosion of public
symbolism. On the other side, icons considered as cathedrals of consumerism and/or
temples of tourism, satisfy market demand
for enigmatic signifiers with naturalistic analogies fulfilling the desire for a democratic
open interpretation. Metaphors connecting
buildings and natural elements become
more and more common. For example,
Gehrys Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao has
been identified by different critics as a metaphor of a swan, a duck, an artichoke, a ship, a
woman sleeping and so on. The manufacture
of meaning can be fruitfully traced back to
Edward Bernays, the father of the Public
Relations industry and the nephew of
Sigmund Freud (see Ewen, 1996). Bernays
idea of the engineering of consent perfectly

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61

sums up the way in which the manufacture

of iconicity in architecture works for the
built environment as a special case of the
celebrity culture under the conditions of
capitalist globalization.
The attribution of iconicity by the major
transnational architect and architectdeveloper
firms can be measured by a survey of their
websites. An analysis of the presence of the
terms icon and iconic in the websites of the
top 10 architectural firms reveals that these
terms appear in all their websites and, in
addition, some websites also discuss iconic
architecture directly. This permits us to deduce
both the attitudes towards iconicity of the
major firms in the industry and the modes of
their communication of iconicity. The terms
icon and iconic are mostly used without being
defined (as is the case in much of the academic
and architectural literature). In the case of the
firms this does not appear to be accidental, as
the terms are used in a self-evident fashion
for example, the worlds first mixed-use highrise, the John Hancock Centre [in Chicago,
built by SOM] is an architectural icon mirroring
the collaboration between architect Bruce
Graham and structural partner Fazlur Khan
(www.som.com) (Figure 1).9 The context in
which the terms are used strongly suggests in
most cases that the meaning is positive; iconicity
is a quality that most if not all top firms are
claiming for their own buildings.

Corporate usage of and attitudes to

iconicity
Iconicity can refer to several different buildings of the same architectural firm, from
stadia to office towers, from mixed developments to museums, as will be evident from
the examples that follow, which are only a
sample of the multitude of the attributions
of iconicity in the websites analysed. Iconicity can also refer to an architectural
element of a building. Prominent examples
include: The roof [of Wembley stadium by
HOK and Foster] is supported structurally
by a spectacular 135-metre-high arch that

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62

Figure 1 The John Hancock building in Boston, self-proclaimed icon by the architects SOM
(Source: Leslie Sklair)

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SKLAIR
soars over the stadium, providing an iconic
replacement for the old buildings landmark
twin towers (www.fosterandpartners.com);
and for the Victoria Square scheme in
Belfast by Bdp (Figure 2), The showpiece
of the project is the iconic 37m diameter
glass dome which sits on a 24m high circular
red sandstone colonnade (www.bdp.com).
The reference can also be to several architectural elements of the same building: The
facade [of Tabira-cho Town Hall by Nikken
Sekkei] is the building icon made from
exposed steel reinforced concrete and vertical
curtain wall. There is an iconic penthouse
including meeting room and outdoor equipment storage site on the top of the government
building (www.nikken.co.jp); as well as to a
cluster of buildings, We designed three
iconic buildings: the countrys first IMAX
theatre; the Science Mall with hands-on

Figure 2 Belfast, Victoria Square

(Source: Nigel R. Clarke)

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63

exhibition space, a planetarium, two theatres,

lab, cafe, shop, offices and workshops; and
Scotlands tallest free-standing structure
[Glasgow Science Centre by Bdp] (www.
bdp.com). Furthermore, iconic can also refer
to the character of a building, for example:
This portion [the top of R&F Centre
Guangzhou by Aedas] is also where more
articulation takes place and reflects the
iconic character of the building both in the
day and night time (www.aedas.com); to the
silhouette of a building: In design building
and landscape [of the Gas Science Museum,
Toyosu by Nikken Sekkei] are united in
such a manner as they look like a natural
land mound creating an iconic silhouette
when viewed from the other bank, which
leaves a deep impression to people (www.
nikken.co.jp) and to the shape of a building:
Al Sharq Tower [in Dubai, by SOM] is a
unique mix of an iconic form, ingenious structure, and spatial qualities of sky-high living
(www.som.com). Multiple claims are made
for Iris Crystal Tower in Dubai by Aedas:
Its iconic form embodies a strong ecological
concept fitting for these demanding times
while providing its tenants with state of the
art, luxurious, first class commercial facilities
and Iconic, visionary design is at the heart of
Iris Crystals identity (www.aedas.com).
Even the architectural firm itself is self-proclaimed as iconic: Atkins has been involved
in Kuwait since 1977 and over the last three
decades has developed a reputation for its
iconic design (www.atkinsdesign.com).10
Significant for the high importance of the
iconic in urban design are references to the
image of a building in the skyline of a city, for
example, on the Victoria Square scheme in
Belfast: It is an intentional set-piece and has
already become an iconic image on Belfasts
skyline (www.bdp.com) and, in a wider
sense, to the architectural image of a city: the
project [West Kowloon Cultural District
Hong Kong by Foster & Partners] will consolidate Hong Kongs reputation as a cultural
destination while providing an iconic architectural image for the city (www.fosterand
partners.com).11 It is common for several

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CITY VOL. 16, NOS. 1 2

buildings defined as iconic to coexist in the

same city: As the most prominent icon on
the citys skyline, [Genslers] Shanghai
Towers transparent spiral form will showcase
cutting-edge sustainable strategies and public
spaces that set a new standard for green community (www.gensler.com); so that there
appear to be different degrees of iconicity
(always without offering a definition of iconicity). Even more iconic, in terms of media coverage, is the Jin Mao Tower (Figure 3): At the
time of its completion, the 88-story, 1381-foothigh SOM-designed Jin Mao Tower was
Chinas tallest building and remains its most
iconic. Recalling historic Chinese pagoda
forms, Jin Mao has become a model for tower
designs throughout China (www.som.com).
See also Campanella (2008, chap. 2).12
If the individual icon expresses uniqueness,
the condition is not unique and, as we have

Figure 3 Jin Mao Tower, Shanghai, by SOM

(Source: Richard Mallinson)

seen, there can be several architectural icons

in a city and they can be from different eras
and for different audiences (local, national,
global). Contemporary globalizing cities
compete to accumulate manufactured icons
(among which some are successful, some are
not), sometimes one next to another, one
inside another, always according to the discourse of the websites analysed.
Numerous websites state explicitly that
market demand is the driver of this production
of iconicity: The design [of Bothwell Plaza in
Glasgow by Aedas] aims to fulfil the European Development Companys aspirations
for an architectural icon. In recent years
such production following the logic of the
newer iconic buildings overshadowing older
iconic buildings, has accelerated. This is
clearly expressed by Andrew Barraclough,
HOK International Director: Nowadays,
architectural commissions generally need to
make statements; our clients are looking for
iconic, Landmark buildings (www.hok.
com). The main clients in the architectural
market of iconicity are corporations and the
cities themselves. Following a logic of territorial marketing, the icon is an investment
repaid by the flow of people and profit that
the icon is expected to attract. Common critiques of iconic architecture concern the alienation of the icon from the site/context where it
is built and that iconic buildings aim to attract
flows of investments and people, sometimes
with no connections to the site of construction
other than the economic activities induced
locally. The architectural icon can be
designed, and it actually is in a majority of
cases, for consumption that is not exclusively
local (possibly the whole world), thus for an
elsewhere where it is promoted by circulating its images over the media and by the narratives that surround its design and
construction. Mass media make the decisive
contribution to global iconicity, promoting
it on a global scale often during the design
phase.13 The more ubiquitous the exposure
an icon receives the better, the architectural
icon has to be visible not only from as many
points of the city as possible14 and in its

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skyline,15 but also on TV news, backgrounds

in TV programmes, newspaper and magazine
articles and films (see Figure 4).
Responding to the criticism of alienation of
the icon from its context, architecture firms

Figure 4 The ubiquitous Swiss Re building by Foster

(Source: John V. Keogh, www.JV21.com)

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65

have drawn up what we may call a rhetoric

of the context: many buildings presented on
their websites are explicitly claimed to be
created for the city that hosts them. They
are said to be fitting to the time, place and

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CITY VOL. 16, NOS. 1 2

culture in which they are located, as in the

example of Liverpool FC Stadium by HKS
(see below). Further, almost all of the
visions of the firms in the top 10 state their
aim to improve peoples quality of life over
all the different contexts in which they
operate (globally).
However, the icon is an investment also for
the architectural firms that can increase their
fees by selling not only the structure of the
building, but also the identity of the city
created by the icon. For example: This
iconic structure [San Francisco International
AirportInternational Terminal by SOM]
creates a powerful identity for both the
airport and the City of San Francisco
(www.som.com). The expression production
of iconicity, of which the first step is the linguistic manufacture of the icon, is justified by
the fact that iconicity is a strategic answer to a
market demand and by the deliberate intention to build iconic buildings, most of the
time described as such even before the building is complete, sometimes when it exists
only on paper and a computer screen. The
Kowloon, Hong Kong example cited above
bears repetition here: The project will consolidate Hong Kongs reputation as a cultural
destination while providing an iconic architectural image for the city (www.som.com)
(Figure 5).
This is one among many examplesalso
from SOM: The twisting, sculptural form
of Jinling Tower was designed to establish
an iconic presence in the heart of Nanjing
(ibid.); The design [Monterrey Tower by
HOK] was conceived as an abstract sculpture
and is intended to serve as an icon for the city
(www.hok.com); and It has been our ambition from the outset to produce an iconic
architecture [HKS Plans for Liverpool FC
Stadium] absolutely unique to the club
(www.hksinc.com). In this sense, when
iconic identity can be delivered in the form
of a piece of architecture, iconicity may be
considered a product in itself. This appears
to be the implication of the following: In
addition to delivering iconic identity, efficient passenger organization and facilities

planning, Aedas has led the dramatic shift

in aviation planning (www.aedas.com).
Table 2 presents a snapshot of the presentation of the manufacturing of iconicity in
the websites of the top 10 firms in the industry as listed annually by the weekly publication Building Design (BD Top 10).
A first paradox emerges here, namely, that
an icon is often described as timeless,16 but
at the same time responding to current
market demand. This paradox has been
noted by David Chipperfield, a prizewinning English architect who heads a relatively small firm (number 76 in the BD 2008
ranking), in his interview on the term
iconic for the magazine Iconeye: icon magazine on-line:
The sort of new icon architecture . . . has a
certain danger that everything has to look
spectacular, everything has to look like its
changing the world, even if its really not
doing that much. Im not purposely avoiding
making an icon. An icon just happens. If you
think about three-dimensional objects in
product design or furniture, there were
objects in the 20th century that became icons
that you wouldnt classify as icons using the
current meaning. Clients now say that they
are looking for an icon, and I know that
means it has got to look blobby, actually.
Now, I think you could say that Mies
Barcelona chair is an icon, but in some ways it
is quite self-effacing. Design objects of the
20th century, whether its Mario Bellinis
typewriters [for Olivetti] or Michele De
Lucchis lamp or whatever, became icons
because of how beautiful they were or how
successful they were. Now we have to have an
instant icon. It has to say its an icon at the
very point of delivery. (www.iconeye.com)

Despite Chipperfield, the firms that make this

criticism of iconic architecture are very often
those which at the same time actively
support iconic architecture, more often redefining it but without adding clarity, and thus
intensifying their own ambiguous attitude
towards the trend to the iconic. Emblematic
is the famous case of Rem Koolhaas, whose
firm OMA was number 40 in the BD Top

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Figure 5 Promotional material for the West Kowloon Cultural District

(Source: Roberto Correa)

100 in 2008. Koolhaas criticizes starchitects

and architectural icons, proposing instead
anti-iconic icons (www.oma.nl). This suggests
a further application of the term iconic in
architecture, which deserves further study:
namely, when the architect is said to be iconic.
Architect as icon: the birth of the
starchitect
As with architectural iconicity itself, the architect as icon (starchitect) works at three spatial
levels, the local (usually city), the national and
the global as well as chronologically.17 In a parallel study the starchitect is defined in terms of
fame (prestigious prizes; dissemination of
information about their iconic works through
their own publications and publications by
others, exhibitions of their work, brandstretching within the cultureideology of consumerism, and legacy); recognition of and
debate about the significance of their work, in
terms of cultural meanings, and aesthetic

qualities; and geographical reach, that is, the

impact of their buildings. While there are
many local and national starchitects, there are
relatively few global starchitects in these
senses.18 An important way of measuring the
extent to which an architect can be considered
a global starchitect is the coverage of his/her
work in the mass media globally (as well as
the other elements of fame noted above, most
of which can be monitored through mass
media coverage). As was previously demonstrated (Sklair, 2005), the most famous and
most honoured architects are rarely those
who have the biggest firms.
Table 3 presents the sum of articles, from
the first publication mentioning the architect
to the last article before 30 May 2009, on the
online version of The Guardian, The Times,
Le Monde, El Pais, Il Corriere della Sera
and New York Times (in the original
languages of these newspapers). Foster,
Gehry, Koolhaas and Hadid are the only
architects mentioned in all of the following

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CITY VOL. 16, NOS. 1 2

Table 2 Use of and attitude towards iconic architecture by BD Top 10 firms (2008)
Position in BD Top
100
1. Gensler
2. HOK
3. Nikken Sekkei
4. Aedas
5. Foster

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6. SOM
7. BDP
8. RMJM
9. HKS
10. Atkins

Attitude toward
iconic architecture

Usage of icon/iconic on firms website

Building, architectural element, an age
Building, style, type of architecture, structures, feature, project,
architect, landmark, architectural statement
Architectural element, silhouette
Building and its character, mixed development, form, design,
public sculptures, citys identity
Project, architectural element, beacon, architectural image for a city,
brand, replacement, development; icon/iconic appears mostly
in reported news
Design, building, form, structure, firms historic buildings and design
Element/s of a building, building, cluster of buildings, element and
at the same time building containing it, campus
Gate
Architecture, element, lifestyle
Building, design and Atkins design reputation in Kuwait

Supportive
Supportive
and critical
Supportive
Supportive
Supportive

Supportive
Supportive
Neutral
Supportive
Supportive

Table 3 Coverage in quality newspapers of BD Top 10 firms (2008) and of global starchitects
BD Top 10 and global
starchitects

Selected buildings called iconic on firms

website

Number of articles in newspaper

sample

1. Gensler
2. HOK
3. Nikken Sekkei
4. Aedas
5. Fostera
6. SOM
7. BDP
8. RMJM
9. HKS
10. Atkins

Shanghai Tower (Shanghai)

Arch, Wembley Stadium (London)
Tabira-cho Town Hall (Nagasaki)
Iris Crystal Tower (Dubai)
Swiss Re (London)
Jin Mao Tower (Shanghai)
Glasgow Science Centre (Glasgow)
Gate to the East (Suzhou)
W Hollywood Hotel (Hollywood)
Al-Rajhi Tower (Riyadh)

80
99
1
6
1704
101
22
65
4
n/a

Most cited starchitects

Frank Gehry
Rem Koolhaas
Zaha Hadid

Selected iconic building

None (see text)
CCTV Beijing (Beijing)
EuskoTren Headquarter (Durango)

1264
1193
1183

Foster is the only architect to appear on BD Top 10 and most cited starchitects lists.
Sources: See text.

online journals: Arabic News, The Moscow

Times, Chinadaily and Indianexpress
(English version).19
As Table 3 shows, apart from Foster, the
firms that make up the BD Top 10 have relatively low coverage in mass media internationally, both in absolute terms and
compared to other companies in the lower
half of the BD Top 100. For example,

Herzog & de Meuron (51st place) totals 665

articles and Chipperfield (76th place) totals
243 articles. This leads us to ask why firms
comprising hundreds of fee-earning architects and turnover that in all cases exceeded
US$100 million in 2007 2008 barely reach
100 articles in the press, limited even in
some cases to just a few dozenin the case
of Nikken Sekkei, Aedas, BDP and HKS

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SKLAIR
in the online versions of all the newspapers
sampled.
The same very small overlap between the
size of the firm and media coverage, can also
be seen when we consider other recognition
indicators. For example, the number of buildings designed by each firm in the BD Top 10
that appear in the Phaidon Atlas of Contemporary World Architecture (Phaidon, 2005,
hereafter PACWA) shows the same pattern.
Foster & Partners tops the list with 13 buildings, while more than half of the companies
in the BD Top 10 (Gensler, HOK, Aedas,
RMJM, HKS, Atkins), do not appear in
PACWA at all. The other BD Top 10 firms
(SOM, BDP and Nikken Sekkei) have only
one building selected each. The inverse can
also be said: among the architecture firms
with most buildings in PACWA, many are
not in the BD Top 100 and the rest have very
low positions. It is not a coincidence that the
introductory article to the BD Top 100 is
entitled: Not Everyones a Starchitect. Here
the myth of the architect as artistic genius, in
contemporary imagery is interpreted as a
romantic notion reinvented today by the
media:
Despite the fact that practices have expanded
to meet the demands of a global market, there
remains a romantic notion, particularly in some
elements of the media, of the individual genius
architect constantly dreaming up radical ideas
for new cultural buildings, while hopping from
International airport to International airport,
ignoring the cloying jet-lag to sketch. In short,
we like to be able to put apreferably
charismaticface to ahopefully iconic, most
probably civicbuilding. (Gibson, 2008, p. 6)

In fact, as described, the figure of the iconic

architect appears as a modern version of the
figure of the artist found in romantic literature and shares the same features of grandeur
based on outstanding talent, mobility, distinctive creativity and inspiration.20
Again, with the exception of Foster,21 in
their own vision the companies in the top 10
contrast the prestige of the name of the
iconic architect with the prestige of numbers,

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69

therefore their size, their projects and their

offices around the world. For example,
RMJM is one of the worlds leading
architectural practices. Our designers and
creative thinkers come from every corner of
the globe . . . We employ more than 1200
people in our offices in Cambridge, Dubai,
Edinburgh, Glasgow, Hong Kong, London,
Moscow, New York, Philadelphia, Princeton,
St Petersburg, Shanghai, Singapore and
Washington DC. (www.rmjm.com)

They place value on their own efficiency as

engineering giants as well as architects. Sometimes, as in the case of Nikken Sekkei, SOM,
BDP and Atkins, they are in fact mixed companies, focusing on process innovation as the
result of the collaboration of a team of
experts22 linked to an international network
of service providers. This can be said of all
the top 10, from number 1 in the 2008 list,
Gensler:
As architects, designers, planners and
consultants, we partner with our clients on
some 3,600 projects every year. These projects
can be aS small as a wine label or as large as a
new urban district. With more than 2,500
professionals networked across 31 offices, we
serve our clients as trusted advisors,
combining localized expertise with global
perspective wherever new opportunities arise
. . . to serve our clients effectively on a global,
24/7 basis. Behind each client is a worldwide
network of architects, designers, planners and
consultants led by 178 Principals in 31 local
offices, a firm with an international reputation
for innovative design, superb delivery, and
efficient management of its teams and
projects. (www.gensler.com)

to number 10, Atkins (Figure 6):

With our community of 650 architects,
Atkins is one of the worlds largest
architecture firms. But architecture is just one
part of our story. With design studios around
the worldin locations such as London,
Dubai, Shanghai and Bangalorewe form
part of a leading multidisciplinary
consultancy employing 18,000 professionals.

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CITY VOL. 16, NOS. 1 2

Figure 6 Atkins worldwide offices

(Source: www.atkinsdesign.com)

Our architects and urban designers work

seamlessly alongside structural and civil
engineers, environmentalists, acousticians,
hydrologists and many more built
environment experts . . . Atkins is the largest
engineering consultancy in the UK, the
largest multidisciplinary consultancy in
Europe and the worlds eighth largest design
firm. Our size brings significant value to our
clients, allowing us to harness an unrivalled
pool of creative, professional people to
produce outstanding solutions to challenging
problems. (www.atkinsdesign.com)

How can we explain the disparity between

size and economic results of the largest transnational architecture businesses on the one
hand, and the relative lack of iconicity of
their architects and the buildings they create
on the other? Frank Gehrys small firm
seems to be so famous that on its website
there are no images of any buildings when
accessed in 2009 (despite the fact that his Guggenheim Bilbao is one of the most famous
buildings in the world today), merely Preliminary sketches for the Panama Puente de
Vida Museo (www.foga.com) (Figure 7).
When interviewed by Charles Jencks, noted
architectural critic and entrepreneur, on the

elements that make an icon and the origin of

the difference between a bad icon and a good
icon, Gehry answered: It ultimately comes
down to the talent of the person who creates
it (in Jencks, 2005, p. 172).
The implication of this judgement is that
such talent is recognized in an architectural
market that is also a reputational market, in
which iconicity is a quality of the buildings,
sites and architects that are traded. The recognized iconic status of a project or a building
often seems to pass through the recognition
of the iconic status of the architect or the
firm responsible for the design: it is as if the
iconicity of a building has difficulty in
being established without the intermediation
of the iconic architect. The architectural
icon must be accompanied by a famous
author, whose own story is interwoven with
that of the building. If the buildings of an
architect considered iconic become more
easily recognized as iconic than others by
cross-fertilization from the authors status
to that of his worksfollowing a process
that is not very different from that of the
sculptor or painter or musicianthe question
becomes how an architect achieves such
status, and therefore what makes an architect

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Figure 7 Preliminary sketch for the Panama Puente de Vida Museo by Frank Gehry
(Source: www.foga.com)

iconic, what makes an architect a global

starchitect? Our answer to this question, as
will be clear from the evidence presented
above, identifies the most globally iconic
starchitects as participants in the hegemonic
project of the TCC in an increasingly celebrity-based culture ideology of consumerism.
And in this respect, iconic architecture is
similar to most of the other culture industries
but, given its presence in the actual and/or
virtual lives of billions of people, it is arguably the most important if largely unrecognized culture industry.
Notes
1 For a review of Jencks (2005) and two other
contributions to the debate, see Sklair (2006a).
2 The entertaining website of this project, still running
in December 2010, can be found at www.journals.
cambridge.org/urbanicons
3 This special issue of HAR also includes, among
others, a short manifesto-like text from the 1940s by
Giedion, the artist Leger and the architect Sert, and
a paper by Curtis.
4 Vale (2008) is an authoritative study of
parliamentary buildings in capital cities all over the
world throughout the 20th century, with many
excellent examples of the changing nature of such
architecture.
5 While limitations of space preclude further

9
10

11

discussion of monumentality here, see also, from a

formidable literature, the excellent case studies of
the Vietnam Memorial Wall (Griswold, 1986) and
Tiananmen Square (Wu, 1991).
For paths into this literature, see the multivolume Encyclopedia of Globalization (Ritzer,
2012).
The global economic crisis that began in 2007 hit
architect and architect developer firms hard, with
many reports of iconic projects being delayed or
abandoned, prompting a debate on Does the
recession mean the end of the icon? at the Hay
(England) Festival in May 2009. By 2010 the
industry appeared to be recovering slowly and the
current worlds tallest buildingthe Burj Khalifa
tower in Dubaidespite a malfunctioning elevator
to the observation deck, was instantly dubbed
iconic.
See Sklair (2005, 2006b). The findings from these
interviews will be fully analysed in a forthcoming
book, to be entitled The Architecture of
Globalization.
All websites cited were searched between 1
February and 30 June 2009.
As noted in Table 2, there is a similar claim in
SOMs website: SOMs Seventy Years of Iconic
Designs. It is no easy matter to sum up seventy years
of architectural practice. In Skidmore, Owings &
Merrill: SOM since 1936, architectural historian
Nicholas Adams of Vassar College undertook to
give an overview of the firm and its history (www.
som.com).
For an account of the first phase of this project by
one of the design partners that explicitly confirms
the importance of iconicity, see Carmona (2006).

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CITY VOL. 16, NOS. 1 2

12 The Pudong district of Shanghai has several selfproclaimed iconic buildings, for example, Designed
by HOK, the 41-story, 800,000 square-foot office
tower awaits final approval from the City Council
before taking shape as the citys tallest and most iconic
structure (www.hok.com); The 12-story United Gulf
Bank building [by SOM] is one of the regions most
iconic corporate edifices (www.som.com).
13 This occurs even without the building necessarily
being the symbol of an event that in some way
involves the territory in which it is promoted, as
would be the case of, for example, a stadium built
for the Olympic Games or the World Cup.
14 In this regard, it is significant to note the anecdote of
foreigners visiting London, who, referring to the
Swiss Re building (Fosters Gherkin), ask how many
there are in the city.
15 For a lively account of the ongoing competition
surrounding the Tallest Building in the World, see
King (2004, chap. 1).
16 For example: Aedas created an iconic building
[R&F Centre Guangzhou] that is commercially
efficient, elegant and timeless (www.aedas.com).
17 Iconicity can refer to architects of the past, not just of
the present, for example, HOK International has
revealed new images of its London Docklands-based
Churchill Place development, inspired by iconic
Finnish Modernist Alvar Aalto (www.hok.com).
18 Sklair (forthcoming) identifies the four most
important contemporary global starchitects as
Norman Foster, Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid and Rem
Koolhaas. See also, McNeill (2009).
19 Online searches have been carried out for every
newspaper website in the sample. The option chosen
was articles/full text/all categories and the search
terms were: name of the firm + architecture.
20 In rhetoric, however, the architect serves the
common good, and is therefore socially committed
(compare the discussions of McNeill, 2009 and
Saint, 1983). This is in contrast to the figure of the
artistic genius, portrayed in romantic literature,
attributed nowadays to internationally famous
painters and sculptors, see Gherardi (2010).
21 The Foster website also contrasts this idea through its
iconicity communication strategy. In its website
icon/iconic appear also in quotations from other
firms that are reported (for example, in the News
section), while in the companys own descriptions it
more frequently uses the term landmark to describe
its buildings. With the exception of Aedas, which
makes a distinction between icon and landmark
on its website, the other companies in the BD Top 10
appear to use the two terms as synonyms.
22 We dont positively encourage the star architect
approach. Instead, we like a number of leaders in
their field to be collaborating in the design process
(Chris Johnson, managing principal of Gensler,
quoted in Gibson, 2008, p. 6).

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Leslie Sklair is Professor Emeritus of Sociology

at LSE. Email: L.Sklair@lse.ac.uk
Laura Gherardi is Associate Researcher in Sociology at UC Milan. Email: laura.gherardi@
unicatt.it