When we think about the architecture of the global city, often we have in our mind’s eye a certain kind of rather spectacular imagery, which may entail crystalline skyscrapers, luxurious residential complexes, rich cultural buildings or works of breathtaking avant-garde design. The discourses surrounding these kinds of architecture can be equally spectacular, studded with vocabulary like ‘starchitects’, ‘the Bilbao effect’ and the ‘icon’. But these images and concepts constitute a highly selective and vastly incomplete vision of the architecture of the global city, and can be misleading for those who commission and produce this architecture as much as for the researchers who study it.
This is the abstract of an academic book chapter originally published as Datu, K. (2013) ‘The architectural dimension’, Acuto, M. & Steele, W. (eds.) Global City Challenges: debating a concept, improving the practice, Palgrave Macmillan.
The book is available on Springer Link here: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137367433
The book chapter is available as a standalone purchase here: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137286871_10 and is hosted on LSE Research Online here: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/56051/