Who is eloquent & articulate & who is full of guff??

[ze lemon]

hi folks,
Im wondering which architects do you regard as being eloquent & articulate & which do regard as full of guff.
I myself regard Libeskind & Tschumi as being full of guff while I think Eric Parry comes across as a good speaker, as he avoids buzzwords, acronyms & other arcane language.

[space_invader]

i love listening to libeskind - tho i'm not obsessed with truth, hard facts and accuracy. i prefer flamboyance, magical data and story. i also prefer bad guys in movies, cept star wars, where obi wan narrowly pips vader in the charisma stakes.

anyway, who the fuck is eric parry?

[GregF]

Sir Norman Foster is sincere with his words and art

[space_invader]

yeah, but it was funny to see him win the riba stirling prize for a building everyone knows he didn't design.

still, he deserved it.

facilitators are as important as artists efter aw.

[modular man]

I once saw Glen Murcutt give a lecture in Dublin. I found him to be the most interesting and lucid architect I have ever heard. Whilst he spoke passionately about his work and the australian landscape he could never have been accused of taking himself too seriously......true blue as they would say in Oz.

and he avoided flashy images.

[sw101]

he (murcutt) gave me a crit on a project while he was around. very straight-forward, well-spoken but not flowery. an excellent designer. when he says he does it all with his own hand, you know there's no bullshit in it. he deserves every accolade he gets.

[Hugh]

Eloquent and articulate - Rafael Moneo. Full of guff - Rem Koolhaas.

Being full of guff doesn't necessarily make you a bad architect, however. Look at Frank Lloyd Wright.

[space_invader]

i think that's a bit unfair on RK, HP!

I'm not going to build a case for his architecture here (altho I do like much of it) but i'd say the guy can talk, rant, write and polemicise far better than most architects and he certainly knows how to publish architectural material in book form and make it appear interesting.

I'd say Junkspace is the most vital and exciting piece of architectural writing I've read in ages - and altho that's now old news, it's still sharper and capable of opening up ideas in a way few other architectural writings are.

Okay, so he borrows from hi and low and sometines garbles in-between but thank god for that - i like his writing because he attempts to engage with NOW, unlike most of his contemporaries who seem obsessed with 'honesty', 'nature' and utopian (read lobotomised) futures based on old ideas from THEN.

neil spiller is another architect whose writing is more FUN than most.

[alan d]

Miralles, bless im, borderlined on "full of guff'

The big hairdryer, question marks, bloke skating on thin ice bits at the parliament are representative of drawn back curtains, by the way. The kind your granny has in her living room for peering out from, at her neighbours.

Of course they are, what the hell else could they be?

So know you know

[space_invader]

re: parly slabs: yeah - curtains made from granite - like irn bru made from girders. he understood that we scots like to be thought of as 'hard'.

winny mass tho, great designer, love mrvdrdrvdvmrdv's stuff - love it. and it's all very sustainable - powered by hot air provided by a winny maas lecture wherein he attempts to justify the extrangances in the design (and delivered in that cray-shee but reasonable dutch accent of his)

this is one guy who should just shut it and let his buildings do the talking.

[modular man]

I think there should be a pole with ten architects and you choose who you think is eloquent and articulate or who is full of guff.
Judgement by the public is the only intelligent way to answer this question as it always works on pop idolesque television programs.

I might suggest that Allsop be included in this pole as I haven't made my mind up about him yet

[L1]

Went to Peter Cook lecture at RIBA recently. You can tell he is a teacher. He speaks clearly, just projected his apple desktop, even managed humour. It was a great talk, & he's kinda full of guff too.
By contrast went to Perrault lecture before, he mumbled like he was at a dinner party.

[gweilo]

Yeah Miralles. Somnambulist par excellence. Came out with some corkers though and you were never sure if they were lost in translation. Went on a tour conducted by him of Scharoun's Berlin Philarmonie once. God, he looked and sounded bored. Which is interesting when you think of the debt the Scottish Parliament's MP's foyer and stair owe to Scharoun.

[heliana]

Even tho I only saw him on a couple of documentaries on tv,etc, I think Frank Ghery is full of guff .
Some good architecture (my personal opinion), but so so arrogant and talking noneses....