Last Night on Family Feud: 'Name the Starchitect'

Last night's edition of the Family Feud gave starchitects a pop culture moment.

1 minute read

April 1, 2015, 11:00 AM PDT

By James Brasuell @CasualBrasuell


Family Feud

Planetizen / Planetizen

Family Feud host Steve Harvey posed the question in the second round of last night's edition of Family Feud: "Who are the world's most famous architects, also sometimes called 'Starchitects'"?

The show, sometimes known for broaching risqué topics to potentially embarrass the show's participants as well as its live studio audience, might have missed its target this time.

The dueling families appearing last night's edition didn't struggle to find the correct answers on the boardas generated by a survey of 100 random people on the street—but they also didn't follow the architecture establishment's script. The answers that populated the Family Feud survey:

1) King Solomon
2) Thomas Jefferson
3) Whoever Built the Great Wall of China
4) Babe Ruth
5) Tom Selleck in Three Men and a Baby

Presumably some of the participants assumed that Babe Ruth was actually the architect of Yankee Stadium, rather than just a symbol for a century of competitive success for the New York Yankees while playing in the now demolished stadium.

Names like Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, and Santiago Calatrava didn't make the list, indicating that the general public is generally unaware of the existence of starchitects, despite the best efforts of those sometimes included in their number.

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