If Bjarke Ingels can still be considered up and coming, I'd like to add the likes of Heatherwick and Adjaye (both US), EM2N (switserland), alleswirdgut (austria), Klein Ditham (Japan), Tham&Videgard (sweden), A-lab (Norway) Ja-Ja (Denmark), NL Architects (Netherlands) and Pezo Von Ellrichshausen (Chile) to your list.

A question from 1998:

Who will be the next Elvis ('55), Beatles ('64), Ramones ('78), Nirvana ('90), that changes the face of rock? It happens every 10 years or so, and it's bound to happen again any minute now...

Yet it never happened that way again. It's a different world now.

While I think you are researching an interesting topic, I see a rise of a minor rock star in the future. Issues of sustainability, energy, environmental issues, urbanism, will call for a much softer world. You will see a rise of practical solutions that get copied and improved upon by others. You will see social responsibility take the lead.

20th century ideas of grandeur are slowly dying out. The dinosaur projects are relegated to China and Middle East now. There will always be standout projects, and awards, and 'best-of' lists; but I see the gap between great and horrible designers closing up very quickly. Design priorities are finally shifting towards something tangible...

never say never, steelstuds !!

it WILL happen again in a different world but it's still all the same and there will always be a HUGE gap between 'great and horrible designers ..' ya just gotta have faith, a-faith, a-faith AH !!

Steelstuds, I like the point you're trying to make, but that list of music is incredibly subjective. While no doubt those are all very influential bands for one reason or another (my personal favorite, Nirvana & grunge!) and I DO think it is fairly well-accepted that The Beatles are the most important/influential of all time. But seriously, there are so many artists who deserve to be mentioned in that same sentence (wheres The Clash? Miles Davis? Bob Marley? Sex Pistols? Pink Floyd? Radiohead? etc. etc. etc.). So to counter your point, I think it does (and has) happen(ed), your list is just a little short.

And I do think this relates to Architecture as there rarely will be the one do-all, end-all for a generation. As bleak as the economy seems right now, many great projects ARE happening and its highly doubtful that one specific (st)architect will define the generation. Your idea is good, I think you've just over-tailored it to your needs ;)

Heck, Dave Grohl is still kicking it!

I appreciate the analogy that you are trying to make, but it doesn't answer the question or help remotely to answering the question of , who's next in line.

If the world is a going to be softer and different, then who are the ones paving that way right now?

How about La Dallman out of Millwuakee?

In general I like La Dallman's work quite a bit, very well thought out, at least from what I've seen. I still think they need that one "wow" project to really get their name and design philosophy out there. Though I certainly wouldn't describe their work as "softer", depends on your definition though.

I may be a bit biased though since I had Grace La as a professor for a couple classes. One one hand she's pretty easy to get along with, but on the other hand she did go to Harvard...

What's that supposed to mean Milwaukee08? On one hand she's easy to get along with but b/c of Harvard what?

@azcue: I didn't mean to derail the discussion right off the bat, but my non-contribution has opened up the thread a bit. That's how 'famous' architects operate as well!

You can find all kinds of up-and-coming designer lists all over the place. To try to guess who'll strike it big next (fame wise) is akin to betting big money on American Idol contestants. Talent is a prerequisite, while taste is subjective at best.

Your research paper (once done) could be a fun historical reference point. Imagine a "Greatest new Architects of 20th century" book published in 1910. I imagine it as all kinds of wrongs about everything! As long as you don't take yourself too SRSLY, you'll have fun with this. It will be a fluff piece regardless of objective intentions. Who will win the Superbowl in 2012??, etc....

The architects you listed are already established in their own right. As far as winning a Pritzker goes, next 5 years are mostly predetermined. Kind of like baseball Hall of Fame. The final hurray before the painful, pointless finish line crossing (unless you freeze to death, which I hear is much more fun).*

(*this is the worst analogy I've ever made...)

My guess for next truly up and coming architect? Any one of the young, media savvy practices that haven't built a thing, yet manage to promote their design schemes into all kinds of publications. They are one major project (and a whole lot of sink-or-swim refinement) away from being in your list. There's thousands of them. La Dallman from Milwaukee for instance!! Although they do have a bus shelter already built. In the meantime, rest of the profession will move on to more important things.

@BenC: Using music analogies in architecture is akin to using car analogies in politics: Incredibly dumb, yet fun! Four recording 'artists' I used in my example are participants in movements that kick started something else while killing whatever came before: Ramones being just a placeholder for the punk movement that killed prog rock and paved way for a modern sound that eventually choked on too many synthesizers (or cockrock) that was finally killed off by grunge... rinse. Repeat. Although the last decade has proven to be quite a departure for all things artistically inclined.

In music, just like in architecture, there have been amazing accomplishments that don't get the recognition they once did. This is all for the best me thinks...

@jakethesnake I was referring to some of the readings I had for one of her classes, lets just say it wasn't light reading. Phenomenology, memory of space, anthropomorphism of apertures, fear of glass, etc. Things that one would expect the uber educated to think/know about, thus my Harvard comment.

Anyway, I simply meant that many highly educated, successful people can come off as arrogant, or talk at you and not with you, but I didn't get that impression from her.

I AM THE PRETTIEST UNICORN.

@Milwaukee08: That's cool. I hate it when people change their behavior just because they graduated from the GSD, or the GSAAP, or any other program like that.

Michel Rojkind presents himself like a poser hipster architect.
and his work is not that great.

I certainly hope it's a different world now. The whole notion of international "starchitects" and the associated hubris has been pretty disasterous for the profession and for architecture/urbanism, IMO.

I think it would be more interesting to consider how star-architects of the past became stars and the circumstances that made it possible. I'm not convinced that it was a function purely based on their talent alone. In that case, what I believe will influence it has everything to do with how the emerging elite/star architects are able to work within the constraints of the present and have enough discernment to position themselves in the future. I wonder if some of it is luck? I am not suggesting that talent is not important AT ALL, but it's more than talent. it just really is.

ichweiB: Read "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell. Raises very interesting notions/statistics in that 'success', as we define it, usually happens under very similar circumstances.

Can anyone name anymore? Preferably in the United States?

What about WORK architecture? Has anyone heard from them recently? They are based in NYC,and were the winners of the PS1 back in 2007 or 2008, can't really remember.

Seems like students can't produce any work without idols. You fucking deserve the fucking mess we are in and I hope ya'll end up licking star ass when you graduate. That is all I have to tell you sheep!

work and big, while not superstars maybe, are already stars and way past archrecord's vanguard list. you're going to have to be pretty specific about your terms for a research paper...

this is by no means a small office.

totally agree with morality d. zero,
Why did you all go to architecture school? just so you can stick your noses up a starchitects a ss? When are you going to start your own thing? Never mind that this profession in being methodically taken apart by other professions trying to steal our responsibilities in a project. You people are a bunch of Sheep.

aspiration sometimes starts with admiration, displaced.

@DisplacedArchitect: is that also the comment you've got from your teacher in school when you told him you wanted to read a book about the works of FLW? Or when you said that Le Corbusier might have an interesting theme in his work?

I'm not going to compare any architects, but why wouldn't it be interesting to speculate who might be the next big thing? What could be the harm in that? Especially since the original question was (in my eyes) aimed at finding those architects who are doing something new and inspiring. And there's nothing wrong with seeing a fresh approach that actually makes sense and can inspire, right? right?

Bravo @usernametaken.

Children, can't we all get along? All this unjust aggression over a simple question in a random forum?

I think usernametaken points out the obvious that the topic was just to call out these people, or who we, the posters, THINK these people will be.

Does the assignment sound stupid? Maybe, but hey, why not indulge.

why is it that every time i post i get all the crazies coming out of the woodwork.

if scroll up a little further you would see other people totally cussing you people out, and I say a little something mind you without cussing, and all you crazies go bonkers. What is it about my comment that infuriates you crazies so much?

@DisplacedArchitect:

Maybe because a vast majority of your posts are very trollish? Most of the time you are just trying to invoke a response from people without necessarily adding anything of value to the topic...

Not that many posters (myself included) added anything useful to this thread. Apologies to original poster. You tried to organize a book reading and ended up with a street brawl.

My friends and I did something similar to the original poster one night by trying to predict the next pritzker prize winners in 10 years based on current trends in the profession. These were a couple of mine:
-SHoP (excellent business model)
-Tham and Videgard (beautiful work)
-Qingyun Ma (China is booming.... )
-Michael Meredith (he's got potential if just a little crazy)
-Masahiro Harada/Mao Harada (Mt. Fuji Architects)
-Michael Corner (yea yeah... landscape architect i know.... )
-Jean Gang

Please consider this very hastily slapdash rendering as my application to the position "Starchitect." You will see how the project clearly qualifies me as an ego-drive attention-seeking famewhore ready to fulfill the duties.

Respectfully yours in hell,
The Unicorn

@Displaced: maybe just qualifying people who reply quite normally to you slightly trollish posts as being "crazy" is not helping, just a suggestion.

lmao@ Unicorn Ghost

I or DisplacedArchitect should have no restrictions on condemning the recent search for new idols.
Architecture needs to burn its idols, abolish slavery and hero worshiping!

On a side note, Milwaukee08... what were the books your professor recommended to you? Specifically the ones on memory of space? Do you have any other book recommendations on something of a similar topic? Memory of space, architecture and memory, etc.?

here here morality degree zero, we need to start a revolution and take back our profession from the hands of the bureaucratic machine, we need to open our own offices, at the neighborhood level. the thing that makes me sick is that these recent grads and other not so recent ones delve in hero worship, and what good is that actually doing the profession? what does it mean absolutely nothing, and they do all that thinking and admiring, and guess what Nothing gets built, zip.

Not all architecture is equal, because not all architects are equal.

The 'search for idols' as you put it is the profession's own desire to find a building and/or designer who can pull off the atypical, and maybe even shift the broader perception of what architecture can be.

By all means open your offices at the neighbourhood level, and be prepared for the onslaught of people wanting new kitchen's and pergolas.

Or, put your work where your rhetoric is and prove to us that you have chanced upon a new paradigm.

I'd like to answer the question posed at the beginning of this thread with some random musings:

I remember Gehry before Bilbao and Mayne before Pritzker. In the early '80s IAUS published a book featuring the work of Southern California Architects. LA had never crossed my mind as a place where Architecture was happening until I saw this work. We were deep in the middle of PoMo Neoclassism, and were hungry for some suggestion that Modernism wasn’t dead or unacceptable. That early work of Mayne and Gehry and Moss et al was a bolt of lightning; the audacity of using humble materials in formally rigorous tectonic compositions seemed just the thing to break us out of the pastel nightmare we found ourselves in.

For us at the time, the Neo Classical Literalism was an easy way to sell “Architecture” to a culture that didn't get Modernism. Falling back on ornament was too simple to us.

Gehry and Mayne seemed to be showing a way out; that by using durable, cheap, familiar materials in inventive ways might be a way to reconnect to the larger culture. It was still difficult; it wasn’t white picket fences and hunter green shutters, but everyone is familiar with corrugated metal and chain link. Modern, imaginative, inventive didn’t have to consist of exotic expensive materials but might be had at the local lumber yard.

Gehry, and Mayne especially, were clearly versed in the Post Modern sensibility of the times, but were imaginatively tweaking and splintering their compositions in provocative ways. A “Pregnant Condition” is what the IAUS pamphlet suggested. The sale was never closed but it seemed to be an honest effort at communicating through and about Architecture in a new way.

Looking back, I wonder if we can reconcile the “Starchitect” fetish with an idea that Architecture could be and should be enriching for the larger culture and not simply entertainment for an elite group.

Without understanding the pedigree, how different is Disney Hall from a 60 story Chippendale Cabinet in grabbing the attention of the public at large? I would assert that most folks who know who Frank Gehry is know him from the Simpsons or the guy who “does those shiny curvy buildings”. Does it matter why buildings are noticed? Does notoriety in and of itself promote the larger interest of the Profession and more importantly the Art?

It would be good, in my opinion, if the Profession as a whole would work to assert innovation and imagination, and not simply count on a few stars to do the heavy lifting.

Put me in the “Starchitects have damaged the Profession” category.

(BTW: bravo Unicorn!)

I think BIG's main contribution is how to sexily market projects in our web-based culture. I am waiting to see if their work starts to move beyond iconic diagrams and slick youtube videos into something more substantive and lasting.

their built work, while sometimes compelling, seems really flimsy and cheap - like ikea furniture.

The next starchitects will come from China.

I dunno about anyone else, but I think that the only people who really care about 'starchitects' are only other architects - agree? disagree?

@architectonik: starchitects are like hipsters. The only people who passionately hate hipsters are other hipsters. Rest of the world responds with a giant yawn.

lol

"By all means open your offices at the neighbourhood level, and be prepared for the onslaught of people wanting new kitchen's and pergolas.

Or, put your work where your rhetoric is and prove to us that you have chanced upon a new paradigm." -diabase quote

Whats wrong with people walking in and asking for a remodel of their spaces? or an addition to their residence as small as a pergola? you got to start somewhere and working for an incorporated office on level 20 of a glass box is not the place to get at the disenfranchised people.

By the way, im working on it, but i never claimed to have created a new paradigm, but I'll take the credit, right now big offices are dominating architecture and the image of the architect, its time for a change baby!

I dont know, just to inject a bit of rationality, the hero worship is weird, but sometimes it does make sense for people to study someones career as a case study. I think it helps students and offices to look at someone whos doing really compelling work and spend enough time on it to look at what their process and train of thought looks like. Zaha is interesting! Koolhaas and Zumthor are interesting! I think what Adjaye and Tham and Videgard are doing is completely fucking gorgeous, Ingles is interesting too. If anything, I think its worth while to dig a bit deeper and really understand what theyre up to, rather than just stare glossy-eyed at some endless forgettable fashion show runway of glitzy, substanceless, anonymous projects.

DA,

I just love all this fiery, revolutionary, year-zero rhetoric being channelled through a design of a new bathroom and a kitchen remodel for Tom & Susan.

Diabase,
dont you have something better to do like send rem or zaha a love letter or something?