Despite these criticisms and a mixed public reaction - the building placing fourth in a 2008 poll on what UK buildings people would most like to see demolished - the building was welcomed by architectural academics and critics.
But while the school's sleek design won architectural awards, its academic and social aspirations quickly fell short.
Architectural practices and academic programs should rethink their wholesale replacement of teaching hand drawing and model making with computer skills alone.
Even before he won the Ground zero commission, however, he was making plans to move the office to New York — the logical step in its transformation from an academic architectural atelier to a big-time operation.
In St. Basil the western academic architectural concepts, based on rational, manifest harmony, were ignored; the structure, with no easily readable design and a profusion of disparate colourful exterior decoration, is uniquely medieval Russian in content and form, in technique, decoration, and feeling.
The appearance and design of a research building is often a distinguishing factor in the attractiveness of an institution to an investigator or donor, and research buildings have become architectural features of academic and institutional campuses, and a part of the overall image of the institution.
To encourage commercial like behavior, we propose an architectural extension to existing academic infrastructure clouds.
It should be something that could not have been built by any earlier generation than this, and can only be at home in London... (the building) means a chance to enrich London – to give London at its heart not just more streets and shops... but a great architectural feature... an academic island in swirling tides of traffic, a world of learning in a world of affairs".
In addition to running his own architectural firm, Hollein held several academic posts in architecture and design.
Although Ehrich is a Stanford University academic, and the architectural firm EFFEKT is Danish, ReGen Villages is based in the Netherlands thanks to a rapturous Dutch welcome and a reputation for innovative housing projects.
