For decades, a handful of architects shaped cities, skylines, and the public imagination. They were ambitious, controversial, sometimes flawed, and often brilliant. We called them starchitects.

Today, almost all of them are gone, or well into their seventies, eighties, and nineties. And strangely, no new generation has replaced them.

In this episode, we look at the data behind the rise and disappearance of the starchitect, ask why no young global architectural figures are emerging, and explore how regulation, mega firms, public backlash, and fear of ambition have quietly reshaped the profession.

This is not a nostalgic defense of flashy buildings or big egos. It is an argument about vision, authorship, and why architecture, and society as a whole, might be worse off without people willing to push boundaries, take risks, and occasionally fail in public.

A critical, opinionated episode about ambition, innovation, and what we lose when architecture becomes safe, polite, and predictable.

Explore the story behind the Unité d’Habitation in Marseille, Le Corbusier’s groundbreaking experiment in collective living.

This episode looks at post war France, the housing crisis that shaped the commission, and the ideas that drove Le Corbusier to rethink how communities could live together.

From the Modulor and the design of the duplex apartments to the challenges of construction, the first residents, and the building’s lasting influence, discover how this concrete giant became a milestone in modern architecture and a model for high density housing around the world.

In this episode, we explore how the Burj Al Arab transformed Dubai from a coastal trading hub into a global destination.

From Tom Wright’s first sketches to the construction of its artificial island. From its soaring atrium to the famous stunts on its helipad. This is the story of how architecture became branding, and how one hotel reshaped the identity of a city.

A sail rising from the sea, a symbol of ambition, and the moment Dubai stepped onto the world stage.

At the turn of the 20th century, New York was still a low-rise city. The Empire State and Chrysler Buildings were decades away, and the idea of a skyscraper north of Madison Square seemed absurd.

Then came the Flatiron, a 22-story steel-frame experiment that turned an awkward triangular lot into one of the most recognizable silhouettes in the world.

In this episode, we explore how the Flatiron Building was born: the ambitions of the Fuller Company, Daniel Burnham’s bold design, the skepticism it faced, and how it became a symbol of modern New York.

From its first tenants to its cultural impact and ongoing transformation, this is the story of how an odd-shaped corner became the face of a city.

It wasn’t a palace, a museum, or a tower. It wasn't even a "place". It was just a wall.
Yet for almost three decades, it held an entire city, and the world, hostage to fear, ideology, and division.

In this episode, we explore the story of the Berlin Wall: how a city became trapped inside itself, how a simple structure evolved into one of the most sophisticated borders ever built, and how, in the end, it fell not to force, but to the will of ordinary people.

A reflection on the power of architecture and the responsibility of those who shape it.

After the 1989 earthquake left the California Academy of Sciences in ruins, San Francisco faced a choice: rebuild what was lost, or imagine something entirely new.

What emerged was one of the most sustainable museums ever created — a living, breathing building by Renzo Piano, where science and architecture merge beneath a rolling green roof.

In this episode, we explore how an earthquake, a vision, and a radical architect turned disaster into rebirth, and created a museum that became part of the natural world itself.

Nearly two thousand years old, yet still standing in perfect balance. The Pantheon remains one of the greatest achievements in architectural history.

In this episode, we travel back to ancient Rome to uncover how Emperor Hadrian and his engineers created the world’s largest unreinforced concrete dome, and how their vision of harmony between heaven and earth shaped architecture for centuries to come.

Follow Architecture Topics for more stories of the buildings that changed our world, and the minds that imagined them.

In this episode of Architecture Topics, we travel to Chicago, the birthplace of the modern skyscraper, to explore Marina City, Bertrand Goldberg’s bold experiment in urban living.

Designed in the late 1950s and completed in 1967, Marina City was a "city within a city," two cylindrical towers combining apartments, shops, parking, offices, and even a marina. At a time when Americans were fleeing downtowns for the suburbs, Goldberg set out to prove that high-density living could once again be desirable, not a compromise but an ideal.

We’ll look at how this visionary project was built, how it changed Chicago’s skyline, and how it became a cultural icon featured in films, album covers, and the House of Blues.

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Rising 192 meters above the Mississippi River, the Gateway Arch is one of the most striking monuments in the United States. A stainless-steel curve that turned pure geometry into national poetry.

In this episode, we'll discover the story behind Eero Saarinen’s masterpiece: from the ambitious vision of St. Louis in the 1930s, to the dramatic father-and-son design competition, to the decades of delays, protests, and technical challenges that nearly stopped it from being built.

You’ll hear about the hidden engineers who made it possible, the civil rights activists who turned it into a stage for protest, and the quiet genius who invented its one-of-a-kind tram system.

A story of ambition, time, and beauty.

In the early 1980s, Hong Kong’s HSBC Main Building became the most expensive building ever constructed. Designed by Norman Foster, it turned the skyscraper inside out and upside down.

It was more than just an engineering marvel, it was also shaped by feng shui, public space, and the political uncertainty of Hong Kong’s looming 1997 handover.

For Foster, winning the 1979 competition to design HSBC was the turning point that launched him onto the global stage.

Join us as we explore the radical design and cultural context that came together to create one of the most influential skyscrapers of the late 20th century.