We Not I: The Anonymous Auteurs
Modern architecture, like film-making, is built on the idea of the auteur. From Frank Lloyd Wright to Frank Gehry, the thinking and writing about and the selling of architecture has used the idea of the architect as author-hero. And never more so than now. Developers, museums and ambitious city authorities the world over seem desperate for a signed piece of Zaha Hadid, Gehry, Rem Koolhaas, Renzo Piano or Jean Nouvel (Lord Foster can claim the title as the world's busiest architect but he lacks the radical chic of a Hadid or Koolhaas). Never mind that such architects are running huge offices, working on dozens of projects all over the world at the same time and that any project is always a collaboration between many parties - not least the engineers who make sure the thing stands up. But the myth of the single hand persists because it sells. A revolutionary architectural practice, We Not I, is hoping to debunk this myth. The core members of the collective met while working for other practices in the late-1990s and formed We Not I in 2002. The company has no office, just a server in a room somewhere in London. The company's five architects, two in London, two in Osaka and one in Stockholm, remain anonymous. Even We Not I's impressive business cards, created by London graphic designer William Hall, are blank; details are filled in by hand. "The workplace is surplus to our requirements," they say, "and we conduct our relationships with all the freedom that technology permits." The company website offers nothing useful: no bios, list of projects, fancy walk-through videos or even contact details. They are the first to admit that much of this flies against commercial logic; developers demand a signature these days, an above-the-titles star. What We Not I has is a conviction that this star system will soon collapse and that good work begets good work. "The singular-author myth is just that, a myth in which both architects and media are complicit, purely market driven and unsustainable." And they are making things: a family apartment in Milan, a house in Long Island, New York, and a gallery in London are among the current project list. If you build it... and all that. independent.co.uk wenoti.com
Posted by vostokone