It is time to stop the use of the word iconic as if it were a desirable attribute, because it isn’t. This infuriatingly ubiquitous adjective gained traction in the design and architecture world in the early aughts to describe a consumer object, building, or person as a symbol of a particular ideology or way of life—one that happened to be defined and perpetuated by the rise of a global postindustrial elite.

This was particularly true in the case of architecture. The “iconic” city building types of late capitalism—the Shards, the Gherkins, the Burjs, the CCTV Headquarters, and pretty much anything by Frank Gehry—were the successors of what used to be called “monuments.” They are not innovative emblems of the avant-garde. They are bombastic indicators of dominance, excess, indiscriminate growth, and disconnection dressed in shimmering parametric and deconstructivist skins engaged in what critic Edwin Heathcote, writing in the Financial Times in 2017, called an “arms race of the spectacular.” “Iconic” is an indicator of a time that has had its time. It is the go-faster stripes of the 21st century with a dodgy ideology to match.

This author fully admits to her own complicity in the careless use of iconic in her writing over the past 20-odd years, and is not proud of it. Having a view of architecture that contains such a word unironically in its vocabulary is not only unsustainable, but destructive. I would like to explain why that is so, and also, highlight other ways of building that are far more worthy of attention.

Me

Twenty-first century “iconic” buildings are 100 percent formal in the sense that, on the surface, they’re all about looks. Massive, shiny, eye-catching structures in urban centers are considered icons—but icons of what? Superficially, they are symbolic of a celebrity-fixated culture of Western individualism, of ego-led “me” culture, where the celebrities represent a lifestyle and an attitude.

One of “iconic” architecture’s most obvious deceptions is that of single authorship. Renzo Piano didn’t design all of The Shard, for instance; the dozens of architects at RPBW did. The names of the so-called starchitects hired to design “iconic” buildings represent brands hired in the service of branding. Architectural theorist Simone Brott has called this kind of architecture a “visual stunt,” noting that these “megaprojects are only made possible by colossal debt arrangements that have the capacity to generate savage distortions of capital and social abuses.”

The singular status of the “iconic” building also extends to the structure’s position within the city. “Iconic” buildings are by nature stand-alone, fabricated narratives of success. They tend to disrupt, rather than integrate into, the urban environment, bring little or no social value to the communities around them, and are often shoddy public spaces, too. Worse, in their role as showstoppers, each screaming “I won!” louder than the rest, “iconic” buildings are physically and stylistically dead ends, incapable of adaptation or evolution.

We

Thankfully, there is a branch of architecture that does not subscribe to the myth of the spectacular. Beyond the headlines of real estate reporters, a post-“iconic” form of collective authorship has been a thing for some time. It comes from a growing shift away from seeing architecture as an act of commoditization and toward, instead, an act of moderation and responsibility. Within the same avaricious economic constructs that gave birth to the “arms race of the spectacular” lay the seeds of a more relational kind of architecture, one in which the architect is collaborative. Its role is to create and enrich environments in which people live without detriment to others, and where social value is prized above capital.

Raumlabor in Berlin, Germany, a collective of 20-some architects founded in 1999, exemplifies this form of ego-less urban practice. The collective, whose name translates as “space laboratory,” tends to work in spaces between buildings rather than within them, and often creates playful temporary structures that enliven public spaces and influence local government planning policies.

One of its most inspiring projects has been initiating the award-winning Floating University in Berlin, an informal learning space in a concrete rainwater retention basin from the 1930s. Since 2018, this cluster of temporary structures has transitioned to a long-term engagement with the site by a growing network of participants. Spaces of gathering, cooking, exchange, and learning host a free, accessible program that ranges from architecture lectures to the biannual Climate Care festival, curated by Rosario Talevi and Ginny Karjevsky, and show how urban infrastructure can evolve while remaining in service to its community and local ecology.

Exyzt, based in Paris and active from 2003 to 2015, was another urban interventionist collective. Founded by five architects who acquired and temporarily occupied vacant buildings, its work used inexpensive materials to transform these structures into spaces for living, workshops, and events—including the 2006 Venice Biennale, where for three months, Exyzt turned the French pavilion into what it called a Metavilla, featuring a print workshop, kitchen, sleeping spaces, sauna, and showers for a rotating series of guests to use. The project set an international, much-imitated benchmark and massively raised industry awareness and acceptance of contextual, collaborative architectural interventions. (Exyzt’s Alexander Römer went on to co-found the transdisciplinary design-build network Constructlab; its 2023 book Convivial Ground: Stories from Collaborative Spatial Practices is an excellent primer in the field.)

These and other like-minded practices acknowledge that architecture is not the ultimate art form, but rather the product of a particular skill set that is highly dependent on collaboration with others for its realization. If architects have any kind of superpower, it is the training to creatively conceptualize within a framework of complex systems with multiple (sometimes dynamic) parameters, but it only activates in a team context.

Them

Post-“iconic” collaborative architecture must engage multiple stakeholders, producers, and users alike. For this to work, transparency is key to the design process, as are equity, equality, and a contextual understanding of culture, history, and environment.

The 20th-century Finnish architect Alvar Aalto famously said that “true architecture exists only where man stands in the center.” By “man” he (hopefully) meant the user. Aalto represented the humanist face of Modernism. He did not treat buildings as investment objects or status symbols, but as places of refuge, comfort, welfare, and shelter.

The main focus of one of his practice’s most renowned buildings, Finland’s Paimio Sanatorium, completed in 1933, was the comfort of the tuberculosis patients it was built to house in isolation. Aalto and his wife, Aino, felt that part of this user comfort involved designing furniture for the building, which they did, using natural materials and soft organic forms that followed Modernist principles. With their Paimio furniture designs, the Aaltos quite literally bent wood to their will to create prototypes for a plywood furniture series, some of which continues to be manufactured to this day.

While Aalto’s vision of human-centric design was admirable, Modernism belongs to a paradigm that views nature as an exploitable resource and a chaos upon which order must be imposed. His “man” standing at the center of architecture comes from a perception of “man” standing at the center of all things, where the natural world is nothing more than a supplier of materials and decorative inspiration.

On this branch, “man” is the icon on which the “iconic” building is based. But which man are we talking about? The Modulor Man, introduced in 1948 by another Modernist, Le Corbusier, is famously non-inclusive, as are the “norm” figures of Ernst Neufert’s Architect’s Data, from 1936—a book that, astoundingly, remains a pedagogical standard to this day.

Only when all humans are considered equal by architects, and by society, can a human-centric architecture become a viable proposition. But even that may not be enough to lay the foundation for a long-term regenerative and inclusive model for architecture. As long as the othering of nature—of the nonhuman—continues, it will continue to be viewed as a resource and perpetuate insidious “them” (nature) versus “us” (humans) dichotomies.

Us

In an interview earlier this year, The Guardian’s architecture critic, Oliver Wainwright, remarked that “the age of iconic projects, authored by a global elite of celebrity ‘starchitects,’ seems to be coming to an end, in favor of a more pragmatic approach, with a renewed emphasis on the importance of context, climate, local materials, and low-carbon construction.” I would add that this new approach stems from a deep reprogramming of the parameters of architecture.

Some firms are now broadening their interdisciplinary scope to include geographers, geologists, biologists, social scientists, policy and environmental experts, and, tentatively, AI. Architecture as a tool for growth, and building cities and economies, is being succeeded by architecture as a means for mediation, repair, and even research, with fields of practice focused on urban and rural ecologies, both human and not human. This requires leaving the simplistic comfort zone of thinking about architecture as a sum of physical forms or commodities.

Tatjana Schneider, a professor for history and theory of architecture and the city at Germany’s Technische Universität Braunschweig, for example, sees architecture as a form of agency rather than objects. Her work focuses on, as she puts it, “unraveling, disentangling, and explicating the interdependencies between architecture and other forces by developing ways and means that make such forces”—including politics—“visible and negotiable.” In 2021, she ran for mayor of Braunschweig in order to help do so on a citywide level.

Or consider the European studio Forty Five Degrees, whose work focuses on intangible human and nonhuman resources. Its ongoing project Radical Rituals—a traveling topography-led survey along the 45ºN parallel, between 45°N 1°W and 45°N 35°E—studies “the inventiveness of everyday life, new spatial practices, and vernacular rituals that stimulate and nurture commons across Europe.” It seeks out the best possible solutions, rooted in a local context, around climate justice, biodiversity, gender, and other issues.

Not only are more interdisciplinary collectives emerging, but new forms of collective approach are, too. Post-“iconic” collaborative architecture is as much about teaching and learning as it is about buildings, if not more so. At last November’s RIBA + VitrA Talks, Jayden Ali of the London collective practice JA Projects said, “We must produce gateways with which people can engage with the future of a site in which they are already heavily invested.” The route to making architecture that’s better for communities, people, and the planet seems to lie in zooming out, where designers change their thinking from the individual to the collective when designing, and where the individual has agency in the process.

Collaboration is not only cooperation and coordination, added Torange Khonsari of the London nonprofit design practice Public Works at the same event: “It’s about relationship building, disagreeing, learning and unlearning, building trust, and engaging in shifting power relations […], a place where relearning, agreeing to be wrong, and negotiating and renegotiating the self and the collective comes to play.”

And, Not Or

By now, the message should be clear: the word iconic is representative of a toxic, destructive paradigm. It belongs to a mindset of dominance over people and nature, in which humankind is perceived to be discrete from nature, not part of it, and in which some people are more equal than others.

So where are the new words to replace it? When disciplines or societies are in a state of upheaval, language changes with them. Words that belong to and continuously reinforce the old paradigm are replaced by words that better represent the new one. What is the collective noun for human and nonhuman? For organic, mineral, and atmospheric matter? For a new, post-growth cultural landscape in which stakeholders (we need a new word for them, too) are symbiotes, not parasites? An inclusive and positive language of “and,” not “or,” signifies the reality of truly working together, where “value” is measured in levels of care.

The world is an entangled place. When a woodland, grassland, lake, or reef ecosystem is thriving, we can see that it is through its lush diversity, the vibrance of its colors, and how it thrums with life. It is beautiful because it is a balanced system with built-in longevity, because it works. Let that be a goal for our cities: no icons, no idols, no false gods—just beautiful, regenerative, long-term, functioning entanglement. I look forward to discovering what the new words for this will be.