About a month after LEHMAN BROTHERS wowed us by filing for bankruptcy, ZAHA HADID’s traveling CHANEL PAVILION, an elaborate fiberglass structure emulating Chanel’s classic 2.55 purse, landed on Central Park’s Rumsey Playfield.
New York Times writer NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF followed up the haute couture attack with a scathing review that began: “The wild, delirious ride that architecture has been on for the last decade looks as if it’s finally coming to an end. And after a visit to the Chanel Pavilion…you may think it hasn’t come soon enough.”
British architect, DAVID CHIPPERFIELD, agrees. In an interview with Bloomberg.com, he defined “Wow architecture” as “an architecture of excess, a consequence of there being too much money around.” He gambles that “we will see a mood shift — a certain sensibility coming back.”
While he may be right about projects in his native UK or even here in the United States, there are other countries who are finding the energy, space, and most importantly, the glorious dough to build big. “Form follows finance,” said ARCHITECTURAL RECORD’s DAVID SOKOL as he pointed to Dubai’s “blowout of mega-palaces for the new fossil-fuel plutocrats.”
