cover of The Global Architect: Firms, Fame and Urban Form

The Global Architect

Firms, Fame and Urban Form

By Donald McNeill

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About the Book

The Global Architect explores the increasing significance of globalization processes on urban change, architectural practice and the built environment. In what is primarily a critical sociological overview of the current global architectural industry, Donald McNeill covers the "star system" of international architects who combine celebrity and hypermobility, the top firms, whose offices are currently undergoing a major global expansion, and the role of advanced information technology in expanding the geographical scope of the industry.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter one: The globalization of architectural practice

1.1 Architectural practice and the race for new markets

1.2 Working with clients

1.3 The business of architecture

1.4 Joint ventures and alliances

1.5 The megapractice: Skidmore Owings & Merrill

1.6 Aedas: the architectural firm as global brand

1.7 The rise of Foster and Partners

1.8 Conclusions: the significance of the firm

Chapter two: Designing at distance

2.1 Architects and business travel

2.2 The travelling sketch: Renzo Piano and Sydney’s Aurora Place

2.3 Client meetings and performing competitions

2.4 The design studio

2.5 Space-shrinking technologies

2.6 Meeting the clients: property trade fairs

2.7 Conclusions

Chapter three: Architectural celebrity and the cult of the individual

3.1 Daniel Libeskind as ‘starchitect’

3.2 The cult of the individual architect

3.3 The signature architect

3.4 Travelling celebrity

3.5 Signature architects and value added

3.6 Conclusions

Chapter four: The ‘Bilbao effect’

4.1 Cultural imperialism?

4.2 Indigenisation and ‘bourgeois regionalism’: the Basque state as client

4.3 Mapping the ‘Bilbao effect’

4.4 Conclusions

Chapter five: Rem Koolhaas and the heteronomy of global capitalism

5.1 Koolhaas and the Office of Metropolitan Architecture

5.2 Content and the architect’s book

5.3 Rebranding architecture

5.4 Architect as anthropologist

5.5 Conclusions

Chapter six: The geography of the skyscraper

6.1 Relational geographies of the skyscraper

6.2 The world’s tallest building

6.3 Dubai and global imagineering

6.4 Essentialism, and the International Style

6.5 Conclusions

Chapter seven: The ethics of architectural practice

7.1 Going East: the geopolitics of architecture

7.2 Environmental ethics

7.3 The architect and the city

7.4 Conclusions

Conclusions

References

About the Author(s)

Donald McNeill (Ph.D., University of Wales) is Associate Professor at the Urban Research Centre, University of Western Sydney, Australia. He is known for his research in urban geography, and in particular the relationship between architecture and urban space.