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'Whats the point of all this?' Patrik Schumacher's blistering critique of the Venice Architecture Biennale stirs debate

2023-05-23T17:51:00-04:00

A new Facebook post from Patrik Schumacher critical of the newly-opened 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale is gaining traction after the Zaha Hadid Architects Principal expressed his concerns over the apparent lack of architectural content in the Lesley Lokko-curated exhibition, whose theme touches on Afrofuturism, the environmental crisis, and identity.

In a fourteen-paragraph invective titled “Venice Biennale Blues,” Schumacher decried the Biennale as being “mislabeled,” claiming that “What we are witnessing here is the discursive self-annihilation of the discipline.”

Schumacher, who is himself a co-curator of this year's Venice Virtual Pavilion, claimed to visit twelve total pavilions without seeing anything related to architecture before lamenting the pavilions and themed exhibitions as being awash in “documentary-style intellectual-artistic allusions to moral issues, garnished with pretentious critical-speak.”

Perhaps controversially, Schumacher lambasted the American pavilion a...

What if we never demolished another building?

2020-02-21T16:39:00-05:00

“We have to think of buildings as material depots,” says Thomas Rau, a Dutch architect who has been working to develop a public database of materials in existing buildings and their potential for reuse. [...] “Waste is simply material without an identity,” he says. “If we track the provenance and performance of every element of a building, giving it an identity, we can eliminate waste.”

In an opinion piece, Oliver Wainwright writes on how more architecture firms across Europe are exploring methods on preserving, adapting, and reusing existing buildings instead of demolishing them, which hugely create CO2 emissions. But it'll take more than a few progressive architects and eco-conscious clients to make this practice more common in cities, Wainwright says. “It requires a fundamental shift in our attitude to materials.”

“I can only look at the decision to leave the EU with disbelief”: Rem Koolhaas wants to show the EU's positive impact on Britain

2019-05-24T16:26:00-04:00

I am determined not to talk about Europe in terms of crisis or anxiety. I hope that the forces that allow Europe to continue developing constructively can coalesce and collaborate. But it would be foolish to make any predictions about what will happen next. For the first time in my life I don’t understand what is going on in Britain.

With all the uncertainty surrounding Britain's future, Rem Koolhaas recently shared his thoughts with The Guardian on how he watched the country improve when it first became part of the European Union. In light of the EU elections to encourage people to vote, Koolhaas took part in the Eurolab initiative to show how EU and Europe has made a positive impact on Britain. “As someone who experienced this transformation on a day-to-day basis I can only look at the decision to leave the EU with disbelief,” Koolhaas says.

Esther Sperber argues that to end abuse in architecture, stop believing in the creative genius myth

2018-08-07T18:23:00-04:00

But gender bias is not the most dangerous consequence of the lone-wolf image: It is the unspoken permission to abuse that should worry us. For the privilege of working alongside this aggressive and uncompromising genius, we are asked to tolerate his erratic, harsh, and selfish behavior. [...] To fight sexual abuse and abusers, we must first let go of this simplistic and fictitious image of the lone wolf.

In this short opinion piece, Studio ST Architects founder Esther Sperber argues that, in light of the ongoing #MeToo movement, rejecting the prevalent “lone wolf”/creative genius myth and emphasizing a collaborative culture instead are important steps to stopping abuse in architecture.

Architecture critic Mark Lamster on the manipulative design of CVS Pharmacy stores

2018-07-12T15:21:00-04:00

[T]hough in practice CVS is context agnostic: A CVS looks like a CVS no matter where it is. It is a structure without character or distinction, and to walk along such a building is an unpleasant experience that degrades pedestrian life, the civic space and all the other properties around it.

Architecture critic Mark Lamster of The Dallas Morning News gives his two cents on why CVS Pharmacy, America's largest pharmacy chain, should rethink the “manipulative designs” of their retail stores, describing it as a case of “urban malpractice by chain retailers”.

“As a CVS customer, I would like to see the company do a better job of embracing the city on which it depends [...],” Lamster writes in the piece. “In areas where there is a growing pedestrianism, where the city is discovering a new walkability, it needs to rethink its designs.”

Swiping right (or left!) on the architectural future of the city of Santa Monica

2017-01-24T19:54:00-05:00

Combining the swiftness of contemporary dating with the decades-long process of urban planning, the city of Santa Monica has introduced "CitySwipe," an app that allows you to comment on everything from transportation to building design to the availability of fine dining in Santa Monica's downtown.

You don't even have to live in Santa Monica to weigh-in (there's a swipe for that). As civic data gathering goes, it is definitely more fun than the census, and more pictorially honest than most hook-up apps.

On decentralizing the Olympics

2016-07-21T14:23:00-04:00

More broadly, this reconfiguration would make the games, for the first time, a truly global event. Dozens of countries that could never afford to host the Olympics in their current form – Kenya, Thailand, Chile, to name a few – might easily host a single Olympic sport. Rather than being an occasion for nationalistic displays by a single, powerful host country, the Olympics would become a celebration of human diversity.

With overwhelming evidence that hosting the Olympics is a huge burden for several cities, Paul Christesen, a Professor of Classics at Dartmouth, makes a case for the possible advantages of having Olympic sports competitions take place in different cities throughout the globe. He also makes suggestions on how decentralizing the Games can be carried out to other aspects of the event.

Would self-driving cars be useful to people living outside urban cores?

2016-06-07T18:47:00-04:00

So a lot of us own or lease cars...But when the talk turns to autonomous cars – and it always does – I sigh. Our overcrowded highways really could use a break from human stupidity, and that human factor is behind nearly all of the fatalities and injuries and property damage we see strewn across our roads every day. Get rid of the human behaviour to save the human body! This is where autonomous cars make sense; but not all the world is a crowded, urban highway.

"We need less Gehrys, less Hadids, less bloated egotecture. We need more shit, more beautiful shit for the rest of us."

2016-06-07T13:26:00-04:00

By and large, elite architects have disengaged from efforts to make the most fundamental unit of architecture available to all. [...] Contra Hadid and others, a truly revolutionary architecture would concern itself with how to provide permanent, quality housing for the nearly one billion people currently living in slums, how to create accessible housing for the millions more adversely affected by a global affordability crisis in urban areas.

Related on Archinect:

Bjarke Ingels shouldn't be proud to have the Washington Redskins as a client, according to critic Philip Kennicott

2016-01-22T20:04:00-05:00

To understand how strange this pairing of client and architect is, you have to contemplate two things: the deeply embedded social progressivism that has become the standard worldview of international architectural firms such as BIG; and organizations such as the NFL, a private club for 1 percenters that bullies municipalities and treats its own players’ health with indifference. Can this marriage last? Is BIG motivated by naivete or cynicism?

WaPo's art and architecture critic Philip Kennicott discusses the oddities of BIG's recent commission to design a new stadium for the Washington Redskins — and the team's problematic name is just the tip of the iceberg.

Top architects defend some of the most hated buildings in the world

2015-06-05T14:23:00-04:00

Can the field’s top minds change the way we think about a doomed housing project in Naples or the most abhorred skyscraper in Paris? Allow them to try.

Zaha Hadid, Norman Foster, Annabelle Selldorf, and (everyone's favorite) Daniel Libeskind are among the architects who sum up their thoughts on some of the most controversial buildings around the world. What's your take on these projects?

Zaha Hadid, Piers Gough, other leading cultural figures criticize Heatherwick's London Garden Bridge

Frick Collection drops controversial expansion plan

Frank Lloyd Wright house causes controversy in wealthy Phoenix neighborhood

Developer wants to re-use and trademark the 5Pointz name for their new residential towers

The Golden Ratio: Relevant or not?

2015-06-01T13:05:00-04:00

It's bullshit. The golden ratio's aesthetic bona fides are an urban legend, a myth, a design unicorn. Many designers don't use it, and if they do, they vastly discount its importance. There's also no science to really back it up. Those who believe the golden ratio is the hidden math behind beauty are falling for a 150-year-old scam.

Do designers ever follow the Golden Ratio? Is it even relevant in architecture? FastCo.Design writer John Brownlee voices his perspective on the old myth.

Are zoning laws responsible for America's housing problems?

2014-12-08T15:40:00-05:00

The tax breaks, rent-control laws and building restrictions that make up zoning codes in many major cities require lawyers to decipher. Whether by design or effect, a housing regime that is intelligible only to highly trained professionals is one that spells endless power for owners and endless misery for tenants. Zoning codes must be simplified — quickly, radically and without mercy.

The uphill climb to gender equity continues...

2014-08-26T17:39:00-04:00

Women are architecture's original rebels. Over 120 years ago, they insisted that architecture schools and professional organisations open their doors to women, arguing that the field would thrive (or wither) according to the diversity of its students and practitioners...And yet despite this long history of challenging architecture to be inclusive, women have been given little credit for their contributions.

Despina Stratigakos, historian and University at Buffalo architecture professor highlights in her Opinion article how women in architecture have challenged and continue to challenge the deep-rooted patriarchy in the field of architecture throughout the past century. Although there is a growing number of women who are studying architecture, holding leadership roles in schools and firms, and forming organizations, the same problems of gender inequality still exist to this day. From that, another question remains: Is anyone even paying attention?

In Architecture, a Glass Ceiling

Phyllis Lambert named as 2014 Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement recipient

Mecanoo’s Francine Houben named AJ Woman Architect of the Year 2014

Arab Women in Architecture Film

The ‘Starchitect’ Image

2014-08-11T13:17:00-04:00

Readers respond to a letter by Peggy Deamer, an architect, calling for less arrogance and more collaboration in architecture. [...] It is not only the public that is fed up with this idea of The Architect, but also the profession itself. Having watched ourselves increasingly backed into the corner of aesthetic elitism, we are now more interested in models of practice that do away with the egos and the glamorous buildings they are associated with.

Previously:

Invitation to a Dialogue: Less Ego in Architects

2014-08-04T11:34:00-04:00

Frank Gehry once said that if we didn’t have starchitects, architects (and architecture) wouldn’t be in the media at all. But this kind of coverage, even when positive, we don’t need. It perpetuates a Howard Roarkian image that makes most of us architects cringe — not the least because of the uber-capitalist, Ayn Rand alignment — and also deflates a more productive optimism within the profession that sees these arrogant acts as old school.

John Hill opines on the highly debatable recent article "What Starbucks Gets that Architects Don’t"

2013-10-24T17:21:00-04:00

Is it necessary to poll hundreds of coffee drinkers to determine that round tables "protect self-esteem for those...flying solo"? Or could an architect have come to the same determination by believing their impression that round tables work better in some environments than square tables, be it by observing patrons at a local cafe or in a public park, or by choosing a round table over a square one themselves?

To read the commentary on this article here on Archinect, go here.

"Architects are the last people that should shape our cities"

2012-09-18T17:24:00-04:00

Architecture, the most public of endeavours, is practised by people who inhabit a smugly hermetic milieu which is cultish. If this sounds far-fetched just consider the way initiates of this cult describe outsiders as the lay public, lay writers and so on: it's the language of the priesthood. And like all cults its primary interest is its own interests, that is to say its survival, and the triumph of its values – which means building.

Architecture and the Lost Art of Drawing

2012-09-04T12:32:00-04:00

IT has become fashionable in many architectural circles to declare the death of drawing. What has happened to our profession, and our art, to cause the supposed end of our most powerful means of conceptualizing and representing architecture? The computer, of course.

Michael Graves pens an opinion piece for the Times.

Bold, frank criticism can only nourish architecture

2012-05-10T11:07:54-04:00

Architecture critics are in a particular bind. Like art critics but unlike, say, those of film, they must swim in the same social sea as their targets. Further, because useful architectural criticism requires experience of the design process, they must also be prepared to offend those by whom they might otherwise be employed.