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Attention-seeking skyscraper projects are likely to be early victims of the financial crisis, architect David Chipperfield predicts in a Bloomberg interview. "Wow-factor" buildings like London's "Shard of Glass" have proliferated during years when there's been plenty of money around, but a shift in mood is likely to see new projects taking a turn for the sensible, the architect argues.

The competition to create iconic buildings has been "liberating for the profession," but it also "produces a lot of rubbish," said Chipperfield, whose own work, including the recent transformation of Berlin's bombed-out Neues Museum, is often more low-key. At the Neues he's attracted some controversy by keeping some WWII damage visible rather than re-creating the original.
(Read more architecture stories.)