How Not to Be a Starchitect

 

Liza Fior – Katherine Clarke – muf

SOME TIPS FROM MUF ON
HOW NOT TO BE A STARCHITECT

 

muf_visual.jpg

Produce projects which are deliberately ambiguous as to where they stop and start

Expand definitions of the client, site and brief by adding unsolicited research into every project

Produce feasibility studies where the recommendation is, you don't need a building

Give equal status to processes and objects

Design for a ground plane at least 4 metres thick

Design in a simultaneously pragmatic and endlessly ambitious way in the same project

Foreground the most fragile in any situation on the basis that taking care of that will address other requirements, e.g. asking a museum to imagine treating people with the same care and precision as objects

Design projects deliberately rich in visual association – open to others’ interpretation as to “where it’s coming from”

Implicate yourselves in order to wedge open the door for agendas beyond the brief

Be aware of what “working with a community” means: they are not a material, they are people, if they work, pay them

Despite contractual impediments, always try to have a productive and creative relationship with the person who is actually building the project

Pay at least a bit of attention to where things come from and don’t mindlessly support unjust supply chains

Offer very flexible working to staff.

 

 

With thanks to muf.

 

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