starchitect

Blend of star +‎ architect.

starchitect (plural starchitects)

1. (informal) A celebrity architect.
   • 2009 May 8, Karen Rosenberg, “A Low-Cost Show Reinflates a Big Bag”, in New York Times‎:

     Others are timelessly provocative; the stacked tubes of “Museum Design Based on a Cigarette Package” might have been dreamed up by a starchitect.

   • 2012, Chrystia Freeland, Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else, New York: The Penguin Press, page 104:

     Gehry is more than an architect—he is a starchitect, a neologism coined to describe the small band of elite international architects whose personal brands transcend their buildings.

• starchitecture

• Davide Ponzini and Michele Nastasi, STARCHITECTURE: Scenes, Actors and Spectacles in Contemporary Cities. Turin, Allemandi, 2011.

• catstitcher