Can SHoP Architects’ rapid rise continue?

From the June issue: In 2009, Forest City Ratner stunned the city and fired starchitect Frank Gehry, whose vision for the Barclays Center in Brooklyn had ballooned to $1 billion.

The developer, looking to cut costs at its controversial Atlantic Yards project, tapped Ellerbe Becket, an architecture firm known more for its cookie-cutter venues than its creative vision. But the move blew up in the developer’s face when the new design was widely panned as drab and generic.

With all eyes on the site — which has since been rebranded as Pacific Park — Bruce Ratner made one last change-up: He brought on a then-virtually unknown firm, SHoP Architects, to clean up the mess and come up with a compromise design that was both acceptable and inspirational for the borough’s most high-profile project.

In doing so, Ratner — who was reportedly acting on the advice of another starchitect, David Childs — launched SHoP onto a trajectory that’s continued at full speed.

But at the time, SHoP had only a few relatively small projects to its name, including a 10-story condo in the Meatpacking District, a Hoboken condo conversion and a carousel project. All that changed after it landed the Barclays Center commission.