Abstract
This article analyses three recent shifts in what called the geography of ‘Big Things’, meaning the contemporary functions and adaptability of modern city centre architecture. We periodise the three styles conventionally into the fashionable ‘Starchitecture’ of the 1990s, the repurposed ‘Agritecture’ of the 2000s and the parodising ‘Parkitecture’ of the 2010s. Starchitecture was the form of new architecture coinciding with the rise of neo-liberalism in its brief era of global urban competitiveness prevalent in the 1990s. After the Great Financial Crash of 2007–2008, the market for high-rise emblems of iconic, thrusting, skyscrapers and giant downtown and suburban shopping malls waned and online shopping and working from home destroyed the main rental values of the CBD. In some illustrious cases, ‘Agritecture’ caused re-purposed office blocks and other CBD accompaniments to be re-purposed as settings for high-rise urban farming, especially aquaponics and hydroponic horticulture. Now, COVID-19 has further undermined traditional CBD property markets, causing some administrations to decide to bulldoze their ‘deadmalls’ and replace them with urban prairie landscapes, inviting the designation ‘Parkitecture’ for the bucolic results. This paper presents an account of these transitions with reference to questions raised by urban cultural scholars such as Jane M. Jacobs and Jean Gottmann to figure out answers in time and space to questions their work poses.
Highlights
We shall briefly introduce and contextualise the discussion around the origins and nature of these architectural lineaments and styles
In terms of cultural phallocentrism, or more technically, economies of scale offered by the exploitation of land rent opportunities, nowadays both responses are facing obsolescence because many skyscrapers have become ‘ghostscrapers.’ Many began showing signs of emptying before the COVID-19 contagion infected global cities, but after the pandemic struck, many have become redundant as office blocks
Among the diverse answers are ‘dwellings’, sometimes adorned with highrise gardens and even micro-forests. This leads conveniently into a speculation about the future of other ‘Big Things’ than mere skyscrapers, for which the property market has deemed there to be little future use, such as downtown shopping malls because of the acceleration in online retail. These omni-combinant shifts coalescing with the crisis of downtown hotels, restaurants, cafes and bars and related urban hospitality functions caused by ‘working from home’ (WFH) has sounded the apparent death-knell of many central business districts (CBD)
Summary
We shall briefly introduce and contextualise the discussion around the origins and nature of these architectural lineaments and styles. Among the diverse answers are ‘dwellings’, sometimes adorned with highrise gardens and even micro-forests This leads conveniently into a speculation about the future of other ‘Big Things’ than mere skyscrapers, for which the property market has deemed there to be little future use, such as downtown shopping malls because of the acceleration in online retail. These omni-combinant shifts coalescing with the crisis of downtown hotels, restaurants, cafes and bars and related urban hospitality functions caused by ‘working from home’ (WFH) has sounded the apparent death-knell of many central business districts (CBD). In the Guggenheim case, primary interview research with relevant policy actors was conducted by the author
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