Iconic Ordure: Review of Sklair's The Icon Project

Author: Ruth Lang
Year: 2024 (The Architectural Review, "Book of the Month")
Source type: article (review)
Raw file: raw/articles/lang-2024-iconic-ordure.md

Summary

A pointed review of Leslie Sklair's The Icon Project, which examines the architectural icon as a product of market forces and "as a globalised product 'defending ideas rather than territory.'" Lang argues that although Sklair's investigation of iconicity as emblematic of immaterial forces (capital, political power, post-colonial globalism) is timely, it "directly disregards the agency of architects" and overestimates both that agency and the "centrality of image in the production of iconicity." The Grenfell Tower is cited as London's "most heartbreaking icon" of the sociopolitical climate.

Key Claims

• Iconicity as context-relative: "context is essential to a project's iconicity. It is not possible to set out to design an icon in isolation"; the "snowglobe test" (identifiability) is a red herring without a difference ("their Difference – as Derrida would term it") from surroundings. Venturi/Scott Brown: a cacophony of symbols diminishes each.
• Critique of Sklair's method: Sklair treats the icon's production (as image) and reproduction (as building) as "trading their conventional positions," prioritizing representation; he determines iconic status from digital sources (Wikipedia, ArchDaily) and BD World Architecture rankings — risking outdatedness and journalistic/press-release iconicity ("iconic status is broadcast even if not achieved").
• The "centrality of image" as an industry problem: "this phrasing of the process determining iconic status – as something that can be pre-packaged with the building" reflects clients' commissioning intentions — "as if iconicity is something that can be specified as an entity unto itself, apply two coats of icon™." But "architectural icons require a physical, visible presence to achieve such status."
• Agency disregarded: Sklair "overestimates the agency of architects in their current economic context – the Transnational Capitalist Class ... as well as their capacity to disengage from it"; labelling architects "ideologues" contradicts "the prevailing ideology of the icon" (the signature of an individual genius), since these firms operate "in the realm of bureaucracy, or factory production."
• Grenfell and the immaterial: the ruined Grenfell Tower is "symbolic of so many otherwise immaterial aspects of our society which appear to have led to its destruction"; "London's newest and most heartbreaking icon stands as testament to the need for systemic change." The review warns against considering "architecture and sociology independently of each other."

Connections

Concepts: Iconic Architecture · Star Architecture · Ideology
Authors: Ruth Lang · Leslie Sklair
Debates: Spectacle vs. Function
Related source notes: Junkspace (Koolhaas) · The Iconic Building Is Here to Stay (Jencks)

Direct Quotes

"[I]t is not possible to set out to design an icon in isolation – to achieve such status, it is necessary for a building to establish a certain difference."

"[Sklair] ... disregards the problematic question of the architect's agency."

"[I]t is as if iconicity is something that can be specified as an entity unto itself, apply two coats of icon™."

"London's newest and most heartbreaking icon stands as testament to the need for systemic change." (on Grenfell)

Open Questions

• Does the critique that Sklair "disregards the agency of architects" undermine his icon-as-capital-frame, or does it merely restate the hero-genius ideology that flat-ontology and the everyday-production critiques (Grubbauer, Boucsein) dismantle?