Introduction

Political agencies’ recent embrace of what has come to be known as ‘iconic’ architecture can be understood as a continuation of longstanding attempts to mobilize major building projects, first, to materialize wider discourses of major social change, and second, to generate surplus value from urban space. The desire to commission sufficiently persuasive and socially resonant architectural forms with which to attract various forms of mobile capital – especially from the private sector and tourism – while at the same time symbolizing an upward trajectory for a place, has seen iconic architecture incorporated enthusiastically into UK cultural policy strategies. The ‘visually consumable’ (Urry 2002) nature of such attention- grabbing buildings, allied to a hope that iconic forms will help create instantly recognizable ‘brand images’ for places, has led Charles Jencks to claim a renewed function for statement architecture. He has observed that in ‘the last ten years a new type of architecture has emerged. Driven by social forces, the demand for instant fame and economic growth, the expressive landmark has challenged the previous tradition of the architectural monument’ (2004: 7). This chapter suggests that the attempts to embed particular urban regeneration projects within socially meaningful components in the form of iconic architecture mean that a major challenge for academic research lies in connecting the aesthetic forms and social and political discourses that characterize icons to broader strategies of capitalist accumulation (Jones 2009). The suggestion is that such buildings are a reflection of a particular moment in regeneration discourse and practice which resonated with the emergence and consolidation of a subfield of ‘starchitects’, whose celebrity transcends the parameters of the architectural field and whose reputation adds weight to place marketing initiatives that their buildings are designed to symbolize.

That iconic architectural projects are a fertile ground for sociological analysis is illustrated with reference to an ultimately unrealized development project with an iconic building at its centre: the ‘Fourth Grace’ project on Liverpool's waterfront was intended as a symbol of – and catalyst for – the city's renaissance, but a number of tensions eventually led to its collapse.