I worry if the criteria of the Pritzker Prize ... architecture's... most prestigious prize ... are now also being diverted in the direction of political correctness .... — Patrik Schumacher
Conrad Newel responds to Patrik Schumacher's "backhanded compliment" criticizing the Pritzker Prize awarding political correctness...
Patrik Schumacher :
"it is Ban's humanitarian work that the Pritzker jury emphasized in announcing the prize"
I congratulate Shigeru Ban ... love his work, especially the Metz project ... however, I worry if the criteria of the Pritzker Prize ... architecture's... most prestigious prize ... are now also being diverted in the direction of political correctness .... I would wish that architectural innovations that upgrade the discipline's capacity to cope with and facilitate the great urban develpment and restructuring tasks we are facing would dominate choice here ... I am afraid that if criteria shift towards political correctness great iconoclast-innovators like Wolf Prix or Peter Eisenman wont ever stand a chance to be recognized here ...
does this mean that those who aspire to win the Pritzker - or the nobel prize in physics - have to add humanitarian charity work into the mix?
Conrad Newel:
The purpose of the Pritzker prize is as follows:
To honor a living architect/s whose built work demonstrates a combination of those qualities of talent, vision, and commitment, which has produced consistent and significant contributions to humanity and the built environment through the art of architecture.
Notice that it clearly states CONSISTENT AND SIGNIFICANT CONTRIBUTIONS TO HUMANITY.
This has always been a part of the Pritzker mandate.
The Pritzker committee has normally overlooked this aspect when awarding the prize as evidenced by its selection of laurites.
Giving the prize to Sheru on these grounds is perhaps a baby step in honoring that clause.
7 Comments
Why is his quotation so heavily edited ... Can't...hear... What he actually said
That douce needs to be punched in the face. I mean Patrick Schumacher.
Veuxx,
Thats actually the way he writes.
https://www.facebook.com/patrik.schumacher.10
Seriously it's like architecture is starting to serve people and stuff. That's not cool at all. How will we make bendy things that look sexy if we have to worry about helping the peasants with shelter, disaster relief, and other dumb things. Sarcasm btw.
Bans genius is his ability to do good and make beautiful things. It's his ability to synthesis form, function, and ideology that makes his work spectacular. His ideology may not be shared by others, but he is able to do what he believes and make it look and function in an innovative refreshing way. I absolutely love Bans work and more so his ability to actually make it happen and be real to his values. Schumacher is threatened by this.
If only Patrik Schumacher had a fraction of the design and humanitarian sensibilities of Shigeru Ban...You can't solve all problems by algorithm.
On the other hand, Patrik's probably just frustrated that Zaha won the Pritzker and not Zaha+Patrik and that they make female anatomy architecture instead of the usual dicks (which he proves himself to be one, going at it like this)
ugh, that was a low life vulgar life thing to say. in one sleight of(back)hand, Schumacher suggestively dismisses both Shigeru Ban and humanitarian design by suggesting the latter as a creative dead end and by rendering the former's work as a humanitarian (ie not creative) dead end. That is to say, a humanitarian bend can't be creative and creativity cannot be associated with-and enable- humanitarianism.
Or, if you will, from another angle, Schumacher is insiduously suggesting that the prize was not given to Ban for his creativity but for his humanitarianism...which further suggests that Ban's work is not being recognized for the creativity that, in fact, is universally -precluding Schumacher's corner- self evident.
Schumacher, therefore, is either sinking to new ethical lows or to new intellectual lows...you choose.
Lets put it this way; there are some people who like Patrick Schumacher's work...some. There are many who can't stand all his fetishized parametricism which has is, as it stands, monological and boring, witless, that takes on process as its literal and analogical all and does away with wit, imagination, symbolism, cultural associations (if you exclude purportedly unintended ones in the form of genitalia). In short, Schumacher's work is representative of the death of culture, of art, of a huge expanse of imagination, the suffocation of multiarious rich culture within an exclusionary monological culture.
On the other hand, I have possibly never heard anyone criticize Shigeru Ban's work and can only recall others liking, enjoying AND respecting it.
But Schumacher, one of the hawks of neoliberal architectural prostitution, would not recognize that, being a merchant of parametric vaginas pedaled to the sex crazed despotic Qatari monarchy, a merchant selling his wares that will end up as lethal weapons against the site labourers.
Tammuz, right on. I frankly cannot wait for the reign of Zaha to end.
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