Some of you might remember when Kanye West released his latest album Yeezus was inspired by Le Corbusier: "I would go see actual Corbusier homes in real life and just talk about, you know, why did they design it? They did like, the biggest glass panes that had ever been done. Like I say, I’m a minimalist in a rapper’s body." Or so West told the New York Times.
This was huge news among architects. The biggest thing since Brad Pitt started hanging out with Frank Gehry. Architects are profoundly insecure - especially when it comes to other artists. Today, I read West wants designer Peter Saville to create a logo for him. You can read about that here. I have two favourite quotes from this article. The first is when Saville says about West;
"He said today he likes great people and wants to put them together and get them to do some great things and get some great people to check the things by these great people and really end up with some great things."
It's possible Saville is mocking West. That's not the way the interview reads as a whole but that sentence is so fucking bizarre it seems like he must be taking the piss. Either that or Kanye really does want great people to do great things (which will be vetted by other great people). And the final product of this procedure will be some great things. It might also be an artifact of translation (Saville is from Manchester).
The second line that grabbed my attention was Saville's explanation for why he agreed to meet West in the first place, "Someone said to me that he [West] would like to meet you so I thought it would be rude to say I'm not available."
Saville isn't an architect. He's a graphic designer. The feeling it would be bad form to be anything other than available at a complete stranger's convenience is an artifact of celebrity and not attributable to anything characteristically architectural.
As a mental experiment I swapped Kanye West's name with Kazuyo Sejima (one half of SANAA and one of the best architects in the world). I don't think a graphic designer in Manchester would think it was rude to be unavailable for her. I don't think anyone would every trust her with another project if she said the inspiration for her previous project was a Kanye West album.
It would be even stranger trying to imagine her gathering a group of really great people (musicians, fashion designers, graphic designers, etc) to do some really great things. She and Ryue Nishisawa already did that. It has architects, graphic designers, digital modelers, photographers and other besides. It's called SANAA.
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