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FOR YEARS, WHENEVER there was an important development project to be done in Manhattan, it was a safe bet that a hometown architect would be chosen to design it.
The preference is plain to see in Times Square, where three New York firms-Fox & Fowle, Kohn Pedersen Fox and Skidmore Owings & Merrill-designed the four new office towers at the heart of the neighborhood's revitalization. Or on Columbus Circle, where SOM also won the AOL Time Warner Center job. For an addition to the Chrysler Building East, owner Jerry Speyer hired nonagenarian New York architect Philip Johnson.
But change is in the air. Driven by the need to solve difficult design problems and the desire to achieve instant cachet, New Yorkers are opening their radar to the world scene, and discovering, architects who are already famous everywhere but here.
Hard at work
Hearst Corp. has got British superstar Sir Norman Foster building a new tower at its headquarters. The New York Times Co. is deploying a world-famous architect of its own, Italian Renzo Piano, for its new headquarters. If negotiations pan out, Silvercup Studios will be hiring another British superstar, Sir Richard Rogers, for an expansion project on the Long Island
City, Queens, waterfront.
This new popularity of high-profile foreign architects is causing shock waves among the city's developers, who may be forced to raise their design standards and spend more for architectural services.
"It will bring new ideas," says Stuart Match Suna, Silvercup Studios' president....