Icons and anti-icons

Architectural photographer and writer Dan Hewitt has just blogged about architectural icons. It's an interesting and provocative piece and well worth reading.

The word 'iconic' gets bandied about to mean 'oh that big building that everyone notices', and particularly 'that big building that defines city X'. But of course this simply makes an iconic building 'one which stands out'; in other words, perhaps, one that ignores its context. It ignores the fact that an icon should perhaps have some sort of meaning: either as an archetype for a class of building, or possibly imbued with some other social, economic or political meaning.

It is in this respect that I find the current crop of starchitects' buildings lacking. Not that I don't like 'em - well some of them, anyway - but let's take Rem's CCTV, or Zaha's...er...anything, or Gehry's Bilbao, or even the Pompidou Centre, and ask how they are iconic: How does the form express the meaning? Well, we can imagine that the Pompidou's form could have particular meaning, given that the idea of putting the services on the outside should, in theory, make for a more flexible set of spaces for viewing art on the inside. And perhaps the idea of the continuous loop in CCTV could have some sort of redefining functional aspect. But aside from their 'wow, look at me' factors, how is MAXXI an icon - or of what could it be an icon?

We should perhaps be introducing another term. For if buildings can be iconic, and if they can be anti-iconic - let's assume so, at any rate - then there must be a middle ground: the non-icon. Caruso St John's efforts in Nottingham strike me as neither iconic nor anti-iconic, but as simply one that fits into the city around it, fits its purpose unobtrusively, and confers a sense of beauty and delight to those who choose to notice it. Surely this should be the point in a post-crash era, however fleeting it may be?

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