Lawrence Speck, one of May’s Buildings & Grounds guest bloggers, is professor of architecture at the University of Texas at Austin, where he was dean of architecture from 1992 to 2001. He is also a principal in the architecture firm Page Southerland Page.

Should university buildings be showpieces for the individual style of a particular star architect? Can a fine campus be built of a series of iconic, idiosyncratic buildings that focus attention on themselves, becoming landmarks or even logos? In a world often driven by hype and attention grabbing, should universities join the fray and seek to create buildings that will become controversial and grab media attention?

Top universities are frequently drawn these days to star architects—“starchitects,” they’re sometimes called—because their names can bring visibility to emerging projects. Like some museums or theatres, a university may seek to gain prominence and a sense of high aspirations in early stages of planning a new facility by linking itself to an architect with an impressive client list and a track record of attracting big donors. In these early stages it is often hard to get people excited about something that is not visible or tangible. Once the name of a well-known architect is attached, an image can be conjured in one’s head—especially if the architect has a clear signature to his or her buildings that might be reliably replicated: Have you seen the Gehry at Minnesota, or MIT, or Case Western Reserve, or Cincinnati?

I should make a distinction between the contemporary star or signature architect and someone who is just a very fine architect with a reputation for doing excellent buildings. The former must be a brand. One must know what to expect, and the product in each case must be a clear reflection of its author. That is what a signature is all about. This group includes architects like Michael Graves, Daniel Libeskind, and Zaha Hadid, as well as others who have a strong personal style from which they seldom stray.

Someone who is just a very fine architect may produce a wide range of buildings with no singular style, no overwhelming personal signature. His or her work might respond more to site, climate, program, and economic situation to produce buildings that vary widely from instance to instance. This group includes architects like Peter Zumthor and Herzog & de Meuron, as well as countless architects who are less well known—in part because their buildings do not make a very marketable package in terms of consistent image.

What is the impact of a building that is a clear expression of its architect’s personal signature on a campus? In the case of Frank Gehry’s Stata Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the impact may not be so bad. That part of the MIT campus was drab and characterless. It was filled with pretty banal buildings, save one by Lawrence Anderson from the 1930s. The Gehry building sucks up all the attention and shuns its context in a fairly effective way.

But in most good campus settings, these prima-donna buildings can strike a crushing blow. A campus with a whole series of strutting divas could become just a petting zoo for famous architects’ personal statements. Is that really what institutions of higher education should be communicating about themselves?

You can read Mr. Speck’s earlier posts here and here.