Michael Kimmelman, architecture critic for the New York Times, joins me for our first One-to-One interview of 2016. I wanted to talk with Kimmelman specifically about a piece he had published just at the end of last year, called “Dear Architects: Sound Matters”. The piece considers how an architectural space’s unique audio atmosphere helps create its overall personality, invariably affecting us as we experience it. Alongside Kimmelman’s writing in the piece are looped videos of different spaces – an office at the New York Times, a restaurant, the High Line, Penn Station, a penthouse – meant to be viewed while wearing headphones, to get to know that space’s sonic portrait, of sorts.
Too often, says Kimmelman, architects don’t think of sound as a material like they would concrete, glass or wood, when it can have a profound effect on the design’s overall impact. In our interview, Kimmelman shares how the piece came to be, and how it fits into the Times’ overall push into more multimedia journalism. We also discuss how Kimmelman’s role as former chief art critic for the Times has influenced his architecture criticism, and how multimedia and VR may affect the discipline.
Listen to One-to-One #7 with Michael Kimmelman:
4 Comments
If he wasn't trying to focus on "the exceptional" examples, but the everyday, why the thesis of "architects don't think about sound"? Yes, the idea came from Zumthor.. An architect, but ok. Would have been great if the ARCH CRITIC OF THE NYTIMES found better examples. I mean, the potato chip eating is cute, but what kind of reporting is this?
Kimmelman says the right things, how arch is involved in our lives, but how often does he even write about it? He seems clueless about the field. A big part of the job is actually knowing about the practice... if you look at his columns and Twitter, very little is about architecture. Most are about horses in Central Park or promoting the least plausible proposal for Penn Station. I get all of the politics and posturing, and about "arch not being sculptures" but maybe the nytimes should actually reach out and find an expert and not another east coast dilettane. Someone who could speak to both the aesthetic and social....
it's also scary when VR and multimedia becomes a replacement for arch criticism... Two very different things here--like a book vs. movie
Interesting to compare NYTimes arch coverage to that of say, book critic Michiko Kakutani, who has an extensive background and expertise in literature. Imagine multimedia in the hands of an expert.... Not one who scores easy points and aimes for the bottom by playing to public ignorance.
One more thing regarding arch coverage in the NYTimes:
http://designobserver.com/feature/an-open-letter-to-nicolai-ouroussoff/10537
You could almost repeat this same letter today and change the name. The only difference is whereas before coverage was too uncritically promoting of 'starchitect' buildings, now it's uncritically promoting of 'government/social' projects. Neither would ever let analysis get in the way of a narrative or a gimmick multimedia piece.
Literally the dark ages for architecture... We are in the dark.
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