ABSTRACT
How naïve Wren’s eighteenth-century words sound in today’s world obsessed with fashion. First the modern, then the post-modern project, succeeded in revealing that Wren’s “eternal” classical principles are fictions, just another set of human inventions available for challenge and replacement with whatever is the current intellectual or aesthetic fashion. The more recent emergence of the starchitect is further evidence of the power of the media to create and promote fashion. The Bilbao effect has shown that a single, ground-breaking, well-published work of architecture can sway client taste, and subsequently cause their architects to follow the current fashion. The commoditization of almost all aspect of twentyfirst-century life makes architecture just another commodity. It poses a dilemma, as popular fashion changes faster than it takes to complete an architectural project. This is not to say that architecture as practiced by the bulk of the profession is as susceptible to fashion, as that produced by the few individuals who go out of their way to promote their brand.
