Wikipedia provides an extensive list of plagiarism controversies, with examples ranging from Ciceros speeches against Mark Antony (1st century BCE) to Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code (see also: “Some Reflexions on Originality, Plagiarism, Intertextuality, and Remix“). What is still missing is a list of self-plagiarism controversies. In academia, the most recent self-plagiarism incident that received substantial attention was the case of the economist Bruno Frey (University of Zurich). The case has been meticulously documented by Olaf Storbeck, International Economics Correspondent with the German business daily Handelsblatt.
Today, I stumbled upon an article in the Austrian weekly profil, dealing with another field of alleged ‘self-plagiarism’: architecture. They juxtapose several buildings by famous architects such as Frank Gehry, Daniel Libeskind or Zaha Hadid. Due to copyright issues I cannot simply provide all the examples below, but with the help of Wikimedia commons I managed to reproduce two examples of alleged ‘self-plagiarism’ and one of mere ‘plagiarism’ presented in the Article:
Frank Gehry
Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles
Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
Daniel Libeskind
Military Museum Dresden
Art Museum Denver
Norman Foster vs. Jean Nouvel
Swiss Re Tower, London
Torre Agbar, Barcelona
Of course, all these cases differ from that of Bruno Frey or any traditional case of plagiarism. First of all, architecture always happens out in the open. The problem in Frey’s case was not so much that he published nearly identical articles in different outlets but his failure to openly point to the previous versions. Second, similar to the fashion industry (see Raustiala and Sprigman 2006, PDF), architecture is a field with low intellectual property protection. Third, to a certain degree, and in the words of Alfred Hitchcock, “self-plagiarism is style“. When a city invites an architect such as Frank Gehry to build a museum, his building is probably expected to be recognizable as “a Gehry”.
On the other hand, the tendency to reproduce one’s own previous works can also be a danger creators try to prevent. In an interview, Zaha Hadid was asked how she avoids “the besetting architectural tic of self-plagiarism”. Her response:
“Don’t draw on computer. Don’t draw and then put it onto computer…I have five screens…Different projects…You work on developing, oh, a table while at the same time you’re developing masterplans. It’s like you have different information coming from different directions. Like photography. Out of focus… then you zoom in. I’ll have a sketch–it’ll take a few times before it takes. Sometimes a few years. You see, not every idea can be used right then. But nothing is lost. Nothing.”
This made me think whether I should try out some strategies to avoid my own self-plagiarizing tendencies. Suggestions, anyone?
(leonhard)
governancexborders.com 
7 comments
Comments feed for this article
December 1, 2011 at 12:39
Peter Troxler
Nice observation … you could also include the Rotterdam Kunsthal (see e.g. here http://en.rotterdam.info/press/facts-figures/museums/306/kunsthal-rotterdam/, it’s the fourth picture), the Prada Flagship Store in NY (see e.g. here: http://mimoa.eu/projects/United%20States/New%20York/Prada%20flagship%20store), both by Rem Koolhaas, and the newly opened Unitednude (by Rem D Koolhaas nephew of the above) Flagship Store in Amsterdam (see e.g. here: http://lydiatherose.blogspot.com/2009/11/united-nude-flagship-store-amsterdam.html)
December 1, 2011 at 12:50
leonidobusch
Thank you for providing further examples – maybe we will soon have a “list of self-plagiarism incidents” in Wikipedia.. ;-)
December 1, 2011 at 14:49
FS
re your own strategy: Always have different papers on different screens and write only one paragraph at a time ;-)
December 1, 2011 at 15:53
Chris Sprigman
Hello Prof. Dobusch.
I just saw your blog post re: self-plagiarism, in which you cite my 2006
article with Kal Raustiala. You raise some interesting issues in the
post. For what it’s worth, I think the term “self-plagiarism” is, in
many cases, quite misleading. I’m thinking, for example, of the Frank
Gehry buildings you display in your post. It’s not that Gehry is
“plagiarizing” himself when he designs similar buildings in Los Angeles
and Bilbao. It’s that he has an idea about form that he’s working out,
and he’s producing different iterations of that idea — different in
setting, different in purpose. To identify this as any form of
plagiarism suggests that there’s something wrong with it. There’s not
— it’s the way great artists often work. Picasso went through many
different periods where he made lots of art that worked out a particular
idea or technique. Was the first “blue period” painting original and
everything that followed self-plagiarism? Surely not, and the
architectural examples don’t represent plagiarism either.
I raise this because I see a tendency in modern thinking about IP,
plagiarism, and copying, reflexively to disparage imitation. I find
that tendency disturbing for a number of reasons, which I won’t go into
here, but suffice to say that the word “plagiarism” has such negative
connotations that I think it produces more confusion than enlightenment
when you apply it to the examples in your post.
All best. CJS
December 1, 2011 at 16:07
leonidobusch
Thank you for your most interesting remarks.
The reason for choosing the term self-plagiarism was simply that it was used in the sources I was referring to. Mostly, I used it under quotation marks to emphasize that I also don’t think that the term is really adequate and the whole second paragraph is devoted to making a distinction between the case of Frey (which is problematic) and the architecture cases (which are not (so) problematic). But you are right, I probably should have made this more explicit. (I thought my quote of Alfred Hitchcock “self-plagiarism is style” would make that clear ;-)
Actually, I deeply share your concern about the deficiencies in modern thinking about IP and many posts on this blog are devoted to addressing this issue..
December 2, 2011 at 00:47
James B.
Daniel Libeskind’s career is one extended act of self-plagiarism. Even worse, this bumbling oaf makes directly opposing claims for the “symbolysm” he invents for his work. The mutilated forms and harsh diagonals applied to the Jewish Museum in Berlin supposedly symbolized the trauma of the holocaust. A few years later, in Dresden no less, Libeskind was dragging out the same angles and wedges except that now they were used to celebrate the triumphs of the German war machine. Hypocrite? Bullshit artist?
January 1, 2013 at 19:40
Blogging about Governance Across Borders: Statistics for 2012 «
[…] (Self-)Plagiarism in Academia and Architecture […]