Fresh Perspective | Architects say goodbye to the iconic as they enter a new era of functionality Luuk Kramer

Simple is the new fancy as the field’s starchitecture era wanes, making room for a fresh, less flashy style

Is The New Architectural century still stuck in the end of the last one? Yes, but not for long. Asked to take stock of their discipline, architects largely agree that one era is winding down and another is beginning.

Starchitecture—which has given the world more than 15 years of autographed, iconic and would-be iconic buildings—is ending, says Matthias Sauerbruch. The German architect started his career at Rem Koolhaas’s Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), and went on to found Sauerbruch Hutton in 1989 with his wife, British architect Louisa Hutton.

“The time of the grand sculptural building is over,” says Mr. Sauerbruch, looking back on what he calls architecture’s “Mannerist period,” symbolized by figures such as Frank Gehry and Zaha Hadid. It’s appropriate that its most recent addition is Mr. Gehry’s billowing Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris, as it was another Gehry building—the sinuous Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao—that helped usher in the era in the mid-1990s......Continue Reading

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