things like standard expansion joints and flashing or stair details, or conduit, as silly as that may sound, have stories to tell, though they are not usually the focus of anyone, and in some ways that makes their narratives more interesting (to me) b/c they are unmediated... i like when designers use these elements, too, but i find their habitual use by the trades more interesting in most cases
habitual use requires a history of interaction of economy and force on material within the constraints of time and practice by the trade. unions play a role in how your building is executed. i really appreciate my friends stories from the construction management side, they for some odd reason are always more intrigueing than the built-up design premises for something made by an architect. not to say archtiects aren't involved, the architects that impress me are the guys and ladies who tell the same stories. they don't tell stories about concept but about life in the process of creating the concept.
a NYC curb and vault story if i were to change the names is as follows, although the detail itself is a picture worth a 1000 words. i probably spent 40 hr alone on the detail, sounds ridiculous to you new construction guys i know.
two buildings built in the late 1800's but still in the era of cast iron in which one building used the brick masonry demising wall of the neighbor as support for the beams by pocketing the wood joists into the wall. both having vaults under the sidewalk, but not in the same location. imagine the diliemna here, you buy the neighboring lot but can not dmo your building without demolishing the neighbor.
a sidewalk vault, if you're from the burbs, is the basement of the building under the public thruway sidewalk above, but can go under the street. what happened in this case is over the 100 some years the street became wider to allow parking on a one way street. remember both building have different locations for their vaults, so one was under the street and the other under the sidewalk. if you don't waterproof correctly you will have leakage in the vault, which in this case was a basement movie room on side and something else on the other. the guys who do the street don't care what happens. the guys who do the electrical, sewage, telecommunications don't care what happens. the interior contractor of vault doesn't care. the guy who does the sidewalk can avoid caring but will be the reason for leakage. long story short, jack hammer, demo, open up, hours spend resolving the border of everything at that point. a contractor capable of cutting steel, masonry, concrete, and waterproofing was required, one guy and one firm of architects willing to tackel everything at once.
i could write more on that, but the point is, if you've practiced architecture and remember your academic theory and critisism this case is a beautiful example of all out architecture in action that most people will never understand.
i could make the curb detail a proof of Kwinter's theories, maybe i will one day.
"Buildings in themselves constitute neither texts nor a true language; their complex of meanings and their subtle powers operate almost exclusively at pre- or non-linguistic levels." (M. Benedikt, 1991).
'There is already nothing BUT humanity in all architecture.'
Are you sure? When architecture--or most of what we call architecture today anyway--are mostly the mantle pieces of a technocratic process of forced consumption in order to keep the game going? Unless humanity goes beyond buying and selling (and the glory in excelling in these activities), it is impossible for architecture to be humane. It is at best an excellent piece of machine masquerading as a humanist structure through the guise of a critic's words.
The reason that there are so many Romantic accounts of architecture out there in industrial times (e.g., the poetics of space) only speaks of the following: they are the desperate struggles of free spirits to wrestle some humanity into what is an otherwise inhumane reality.
BE are you that naive? consumption has been the humane game since day one...sometimes it takes the form of religion, sometimes money, and sometimes NPR liberal ideological bullshit.
consumption - desire - is the game.
the two qoutes you state sum it up and you are in denial.
Yea, I guess if you're speaking about Architecture with a capital A, particularly through the guise of critics' words, there is some of what you mention going, towns, cities, etc.
I don't need to read Benedikt's quote to know that buildings don't actually speak: only us humans do that, and we tend to speak a lot about what's gotten inside us, what we've lived through and in, what we remember; and since we made the built environment, and we spend a great deal of our time in it, then we will tend to want to speak a lot about it, and humanity is already part and parcel on any level you want to consider. I'm not lining up behind the "inhumane reality" that you see all around, way too somber for me. The buying and selling has always gone on since the first barter, but don't tell me that has killed the humanity, because I don't believe it has.
As far as the "technocratic process" forced on us, well.....rage against the machine...that's humanity too.
Yea, I guess if you're speaking about Architecture with a capital A, particularly through the guise of critics' words, there is some of what you mention going, but I was speaking of all architecture: caves, huts, houses, bridges, towns, cities, etc.
@jmanganelli re: the story of Mayne and Kipnis I feel like I have seen hat a million times in lectures/videos/interviews, where someone will suggest a reading of a design to the architect and the architect will respond in such a way as too make clear that the reading has no basis in their reality of the design/construction process.
For that matter read the current feature (interview with Meier about the New Harmony Athenaeum) for some good examples of this. But then again they interview does feature a number of times where the reading matched the designed intent directly.
Uxbridge:
It is true that different disciplines use different approaches in testing the validity of an argument, the question is what/how does architectural criticism work, which are the parameters there? It has been such a grab bag for so long - like the on/off relationship with a "scientific" approach shows - that there is no coherent way to even frame what architectural criticism is - or what it is supposed to achieve.
jmangarelli (01.07):
The similarity you draw between architectural criticism and ecological interface design seems a way of crafting a glorified scientific - gather the facts and do some computing, albeit now on many different levels - approach to architecture. The way to forge a "master narrative" like this seems to me so complicated and many faceted as to ultimately result in conclusions packaged as objective facts but actually formed by factors having mostly to do with the critics/designers personal choices.
nam & jman:
the case with the Kipnis / Mayne discussion and the idea that criticism is the dissection of the agendas and thought patterns of the author/auteur have both at its root the fact that it is easier to spin projective bullshit and readings when focusing on intangibles - is it so that we want criticism to be "a ballet" of word-fencing and spin, not dealing with the built world we inhabit straight on, but with almost everything else? I certainly don't see any value in that, beyond it being a bysanthine way of passing the time.
Olaf nailed (01.08) the way I feel about architecture and the way criticism should meet the challenge it poses - a head on take on the piece and its place in the world, with the material reality in all its splendor as context.
nam:
It's a crap shoot that shouldn't even happen - because I don't see why second guessing / reading the work should be done in the first place - a rude and false thing would be to call it spending the time while gathering some academic money & prestige - but the resons for the bullshit-circus can't be that cynical - maybe some critics focus on the architects and their "philosophy", agendas and intent because (a) they don't have the experience / tools to deal with the reality factor - illustrated by olaf's curb & vault story and inherent in any built work, or (b) they really believe that architects are the main drivers of progress, and picking their brains is the highway to a better understanding of our day & age. don't know really. If I had to choose, I'd say (a).
helsinki, i think a big issue is the drive to build as you say a master narrative... however i agree that those kinds of readings are less fruitful than an analysis of the actual project: spaces, circulation etc, context etc...
Yes, I think there is always problems with big narratives, they are more about themselves than the work. They may be good for discussing certain oeuvres, but that is a different animal than project specific Architectural criticism in my books. However, "master narrative" always summons up modernism, and then in quick succession all the micro-narratives of postmodernism and the ensuing "splinterism" - feminism, post-colonialism, localism, etc. etc. and they all also carry the same burden - rarely being about thinsg material and present, but things perceived and relational.
Careful and unprejudiced analyses of projects - like you put it, space, circulation, context, all that - makes it possible to actually have discordant strains in the same "criticism" / analysis - something that is not so easy when trying to squeeze the essential "master" meaning out of a work.
[I'm getting very favorably inclined towards localism at the moment though: the Finnish state-run distributor of alcoholic drinks managed to get Brooklyn Brewerys Local no2 on the shelves finally... so sorry about the typos. Hopefully the using of brackets will not make this look like a thread hijacking...]
i don't think it is an either or proposition --- whether a hospital or a massive GUI, not imposing some consistency makes for unintelligible interfaces/environments
the question would be is the narrative specious, contrived to serve a political or economic agenda without sufficient regard for the actualities of the technology and organizational dynamics upon which the system is based?
is it properly situated but nonetheless overreaching thus coercive?
or is it rooted in that which it serves to accentuate and as unobtrusive and flexible as possible yet enhancing legibility and usability?
in this sense the narrative is a useful illusion for the user.
if reading the narrative:
then it is creative folly for entertainment, for mental exercise, to develop one's own philosophy, but should not be implemented as a design intent (see Scott's literary fallacy)
jman - well put about constructing the narrative - but still, the narrative is really an explaining element - slightly inferior to the built actuality of the project, and its importance is in what it does to the other elements.
And it should be stated that consistency can grow "naturally" (hate the word, but have to use it...) - out of for example the local conditions - withouth being constructed as a "narrative".
Well what is the narrative really?
Is it the creative design process for the concept and design intent?
Is it the practice of enforcing the execution of the concept and design intent?
is it the funding of the concept and the making of choices as advised by everyone involved?
Is it the building process?
Is it the building?
if your creative process has no intentions of being reflected in the final product of the building then what narrative do you read? And is there any reason for the creative process to be read?
Did Frank Gehry crumple paper like homer simpson did or was there more involved in his creation of his buildings?
If the architecture is sensous why you reading it logically?
I find the creative process is best post-rationalized for me otherwise it is a stifling process of logic and philosophy. Just doing random ideas and then post rationalizing the presentation for jury always worked for me. Sometimes its just a good idea.
If anything criticism of built architecture could be a post-rationalization of the processes leading up to the buildings completion. The critic would explain things like - the columns ended up not being clad with fiberglass as the client had become aware of fiberglass material properties and manuf. Processes and felt that perhaps a raw finish of the columns was more true to the nature of the client and the overall concept/narrative of the creative design process, etc...or in most cases the client dreamed big and had little money.
Right now Nam I feel it is a crapshoot, just let the buildings be.
but what's the fruit of this thought besides being mere "qualified interpretations"? what's an unqualified interpretation?
if you have a Ph.D. in architecture history but had no involvement in the process of the designing and building of the architecture, are you qualified?
T.S. Eliot is cool and all and takes books upon books to really understand, but man is Jim Morrison even cooler and you can just drink to his stuff.
has architecture criticism actually improved not only the architecture in the world but the profession of architecture?
Criticism has never pretended to be 'more qualified' over 'less qualified' interpretations. One can say that the upside of postmodernism and poststructuralism is that everyone is entitled to his or her own interpretation. Getting published does not mean it is more qualified; it merely means it is more qualified over less qualified papers in the pool of applicants seeking to be published.
The trouble I have with your view, olaf, is that you seem to hint that the lack of involvement in design and building hinders one's interpretation. But is it possible that criticism sees some aspects of the design and build process, while the knowledge-in-action of practitioners observes another dimension of the same process? I think it is possible; qualified interpretation does not need to be monistic or one-dimensional or mutually exclusive. It can be both.
The only charge I can agree with you is that criticism has not visibly improved the profession, nor the practice, nor education as a whole. In fact, it has contributed to the problematic view that architecture is a tightly-wound, hermetic and tightly enclosed discipline, when it is not. Till's neat little book explained why. Larson wrote the same things long ago in more academic language and so did Gutman. Architecture depends on lots of things, and criticism as a whole seldom brings this point up.
But things are changing, especially now when the profession is at its historic nadir. Criticism will have to evolve or risk obsolescence.
But is it possible that criticism sees some aspects of the design and build process, while the knowledge-in-action of practitioners observes another dimension of the same process?
Prediction is a risky business. My guess is as good as anyone's.
But I think in the short term things will not shake up too much. The crisis of architecture that began during the po-mo phase where architecture ended up as the play-thing of the wealthy will only continue. Look at the majority of works today: most are still private projects for private or corporate clients. With the unprecedented insolvency of the public sector hovering over the next decade, and with a borrowing ceiling nearly reached (or superceded!), architecture can only go--rather willingly really--into more privatized realms. In tandem, architecture is losing an entire generation of young practitioners. Guess who is likely to be an avant-garde and strike out in a new direction? You guessed it.
Overall, I also think that there is a consensus today under neoliberal politics that buildings are liabilities rather than assets. And Neo-Keynesians have shown that public buildings or infrastructure tend to be a waste of precious resources, because their economic effects tend to be short-term. To be politically correct, it is better to invest in a kid's education program rather than the room that affords the program, even though we cannot dismiss the 'room' at all in the education process. But with partisan politics at an extreme level (especially so now), who wants to stake their political career on any one of these grand projets? Who has the money and political mettle to do it anyway?
In such a conservative climate, criticism is likely to remain conservative. In other parts of the world where buildings are coming up every second, what more can criticism say (because no one really thinks it is significant)--the building is an object of speculative asset rather than of political or social significance. In other words, if the teleology of the building is accepted to be different, criticism is at best an elitist's game; no one is going to listen.
Tied both ways like that, criticism has to remain conservative--playing the same game it has been playing so far--as academic language games.
This is my bleakest assessment. Maybe others have a more optimistic view. I am all ears.
Eew...can't read site well on blackberry (will get back to you)
Isn't illumination intellectually just post-rationalization of something you intuitively knew? The ahh ha moment, as in "you designed that because it made sense anyway" as in you'd just performed what you were educated to do and it felt right?
Stationary and ham - in short maybe just make curation and criticism the same thing. I think making up more written fantasies about a built fantasy seems a bit unnecessary, an eletist game as BE points out. Ultimately no one takes games seriously anyway. Now putting a bunch of pieces together and explaining that the visible pattern of similarity is a result of factors outside the creators realm and control, that may be both interesting and helpful? I would say you are hard pressed to curate a single piece by it self.
They had this calatrava exhibit once in nyc sponsored by by a high end builder (can't remember name)...but it was clearly a marketing gimick for the builder who was proposing that 50x50x50 tower downtown. When catering to clients of that wealth the museum is the right place for marketing. Anyway, half the exhibits were moving calatrava sculptures and the other half his work at WTC...multiple pieces informing what his architecure was doing at the WTC. So there's your critisim - movement.
Just outside the exit door was Boccini's sculpture of that melted looking running guy (on blackberry)...thank you curator...if you didn't get it in the exhibit maybe you got it on the way out - movement.
It seems laughably simple, but if you aren't the artist type maybe you need all that to. Get it.
Helsinki - boorklyn brewery and schneider and sohns (german) did a beer toogether, goes down easy but packs a wallup..recommend if you can find it
There's a pretty interesting debate/gloves off Jersey Shore thing going on right now on twitter between Christopher Hawthorne and Kazys Varnelis... two smart dudes with some strong opinions: http://twitter.com/#!/kazys
houseofmud didn't notice you had posted that previously. that was an interesting little debate.... If only because it was interesting to see a current practitioner defending his professional position.
But my point was more that we should never be inhibited by worries about getting it right in the sense of pre-emptively confirming the judgment of history. It is far more important to be interesting, and some of the critical writing I cherish most — like Mary McCarthy’s brutal dismantling of “A Streetcar Named Desire” — strikes me as both very wrong (which is only to say I disagree strongly with its conclusions) and brilliantly interesting.
Scott and Dargis are obviously talking about film but i think the idea that criticism is useful/valuable even it it differs in aesthetic preference to you, in terms of helping to formulate and frame a discourse, can be applied to building/architectural criticism just as fruitfully...
This may be a controversial opinion, but I often think of many critics on the American scene as opportunistic parasites.
Kipnis, to my mind, is the example par excellence. He had a somewhat marginal career as a gallerist, but found that he could talk in obfuscating, overly grandiose terms about architecture. A few people bought what he was saying (or perhaps didn't understand, but it sounded important.) Thus he found himself at the center of architectural debate for a generation, despite having no design skills and being a rather bad writer (for evidence, see the badly-written essay "Twisting the Separatrix," in which narrates the collaboration of Derrida and Eisenman as if they were God and Moses.)
Kipnis and others like him found a niche where they could be listened to even if they really had nothing to say. In a funny way, he talks very little about architecture, mainly because he seems to know so little about how it actually happens. But he's also been a bit of a chameleon, morphing to fit the trend. Like I said, he's opportunistic.
This old way of practicing criticism often ignores the question of design practice and talks ultimately about itself: extreme narcissism. But it couches this narcissism and meta-discourse under the inert sounding term 'autonomy,' as in, "we need autonomy to really discuss these issues of architecture in depth--we can't be bothered with practicality and pragmatics while discussing these important issues."
What this really means, to my mind, is that the 'autonomy' critics wanted the freedom to talk about anything, to bring in literary and philosophical references without context, but then be able to stuff it all under the umbrella of architectural theory. This kind of criticism now seems outdated, a product of mid-20th century debates rooted in deconstructivism, new criticism, and so on. Kipnis is an inheritor of this tradition, and is running only on gas fumes from the 20th century.
The anecdote above about Kipnis and Mayne is a great example of how out of touch a certain strain of criticism is.
Then there is a way of practicing criticism that centers on design practice and actually moves the profession forward. We've recently tended to call this kind of criticism post-critical, despite the fact that it is fundamentally critical, it's just not in the terms of the Frankfurt School or deconstructivism or the logics of the mid-20th century. One might think of Stan Allen, Robin Evans, some of Sarah Whiting's work, Ignasi de Sola-Morales, many others, as examples of a 21st century criticism that actually cares about design practice.
But to depend solely on 'design practice', a broadly conceived notion of what people do in design, to move the profession forward is too narrow on two counts. One, design is usually more than what people do; as a matter of fact, design is also about the unintended and unanticipated consequences following from the expression of a set of design intentions. Hence, much of design is NOT about what people do in design, which in turn, not about design practice. Two, there is so much about design that has to do with broader notions of justice, equity and ethics beyond performance and technologies that we are usually interested in--but which our designs are incomplete as they are inadequate without addressing these notions.
This is why it is still possible to pursue an 'autonomous' line of pursuing criticism without adhering to the canonical way of arguing for autonomy, the kind of poststructuralist disease that infected the discipline for a while. Besides, the discipline is certainly greater than the profession, and criticism has the duty not only to cater to the profession, i.e., move it forward, but must also address the issues that are beyond the broad definitions of what the profession of architecture mean.
Kipnis is a particularly bad example; there is really no need to look at Kipnis when a wealth of other theorists exist outside of architecture but who speak to architecture more intimately than Kipnis does and did.
But of course, the terrible thing they do to students of architecture in many canonical and prestigious centers of study is to define architecture through the demarcation of Kipnis, Evans and Whiting (and that few others). The irony however lies in the fact that across in the next building, many brilliant minds are shunned because architects do not want to engage them (or sadly, do not know that they exist!).
Is interview a form of criticism? at least if the interview is then edited and published. If so this essay The Art of the Interview on the putative self-unveiling of writer Janet Malcolm in The Paris Review qualifies for this thread i guess....
“In most interviews, both subject and interviewer give more than is necessary,” Ms. Malcolm wrote in “The Silent Woman.” “They are always being seduced and distracted by the encounter’s outward resemblance to an ordinary friendly meeting.”
this passage highlights the "critical" place an interview can occupy
which is often called journalism, is in fact some wholly original form of art,” Ms. Roiphe notes, “some singular admixture of reporting, biography, literary criticism, psychoanalysis, and the nineteenth-century novel — English and Russian both.”
It’s a form that has distinguished antecedents, notably the “dialogues” of Socrates (actually written by Plato); Eckermann’s “Conversations of Goethe”; and of course James Boswell’s “Life of Samuel Johnson,”
Lange writes "Reading her pieces (collected in the wonderfully and evocatively named Kicked A Building Lately? and Will They Ever Finish Bruckner Boulevard?), it is clear that her first loyalty is to the citizens of New York — and that she thinks they deserve better."
Which I think points to the strength/necessity of criticism coming from a more immediate stance not that of a theory driven narrative but rather one shaped with concern for the local.
Lange concludes by listing some lessons that the citizen or aspiring critic can learn from Huxtable's writing. These are:
“One, description: She sets the scene, and her theme, through opening paragraphs that bring the city vividly to mind. Two, history: She demonstrates that the skyscraper is not something new (via her neighborhood tour) and that Marine Midland is part of a lineage (via her discussion of curtain walls)...Three, drama: Many people consider architecture boring...Finally, the Point: Huxtable has 1200 words with which to make her point. When you read her review, you feel at all times that she knows exactly where it is going...(If you have selected a theme and a mode of organization, and if you know what your critical approach is, having a point shouldn’t be hard. Leave out more than you leave in.)"
The final point is perhaps the most widely applicable I find in my own efforts at writing. Whether personal, or quasi-professionally, namely that the writer/critic should "Leave out more than you leave in."
I find repeatedly that i tend to muddy my thesis/point and that the more editing I do the more refined and focused it becomes. Even memos or emails at work.
Also really like this image which accompanies the piece
She states it's not the alleged and ongoing "crisis" of architectural criticism that she concerns herself with, rather her "primary complaint with architectural criticism is with its conventionality as a specific genre of writing." She goes on to argue against the strong literary conventions of architectural criticism. Specifically she wants a more populist criticism.
I posted the comment below and pointed readers of her essay to this thread.
I like the author's idea of exploring "the genre and mode of the belle-lettre as one model for architectural writing, and architectural criticism" through the the frame of popul(ism).
She is of course right that the new digitized masses can be seen as a sort of little guy anti-literariness. An everyman culture.
What i find interesting though would be a more political reading of populist. Rather than the elite vs mainstream in a cultural sense. Populist in an original sense of "the masses", civic engagement, a la the American show "Spontaneous Interventions: Design Actions for the Common Good" at the Biennale this year.
Either way what i do think is that the form of criticism has changed away from explicit literary criticism and into a notion of the expanded field either more open to other voices and/or doing/making as criticism.
Finally, @faslanyc I word say no to your questions has "the time has come to let architectural criticism pass away"? I think it is if anything more needed necessary than ever. In fact i started a thread re: Criticism a couple of years over at Archinect, to help me understand the topic and my thoughts on it better. Some really good discussion there by and for architects re: criticism/crisis/bad crits etc...
Although speaking specifically about literary criticism he states
"We are drowning in them. What we need more of, now that newspaper book sections are shrinking and vanishing like glaciers, are excellent and authoritative and punishing critics — perceptive enough to single out the voices that matter for legitimate praise, abusive enough to remind us that not everyone gets, or deserves, a gold star."
I wonder whether the same could/should be said about architectural criticism?
Architectural criticism and most writing has dwindled down to writing giddy urban hipster captions for social events with photographs. If you write something slightly critical you are shunned by most popular media and the other media where you "might" see critical discourse is out of reach of most people who want to read. They keep it highly internal. Institutions and publications in that respect are closed circuit peer support groups where you see the relentless canonization of the same people. Yes, it is that religious and elite in the same time.
Unfortunately, historians --putatively objective analysts-- frequently allow themselves to be co-opted for partisan purposes in venues artistic, economic, and political.
That said, academics are allowed to have opinions, and to write about them. It's when the line between critical analysis and personal bias is not made clear that they hurt their credibility.
He notes "There are difficulties in fostering a genuinely critical culture in an industry that has pretensions to art but is nevertheless firmly based in the world of business" then offers up some specific suggestions for changing the content and tone of architectural criticism both within academia and within the press. He then concludes "I don’t mind if journals want to publish articles that read like advertisements, travelogues (“archilogues”?) or even belle-lettrism, but let’s be clear about what genuine criticism is and what it isn’t. And let’s encourage more explanation from architects and other players, as well as lots more formal evaluation from archi schools".
i think the author here either has an ill-defined understanding of criticism or a much too defined one (i.e. merely on the scientific and functional performance of the building) . i agree with the sentiment that a lot of "critical" writing is not critical however...i don't think that the author figures in the now tradition owed to the cross 'contamiantion' from the postmod genres of literary studies where "critical" is not critical in the sense of identifying the negatives and the positives but moreso the associative cultural and domain-specific tentacles. he doesn't allude to the supra-architectural level as a hsitorical abstract practice but only to "performance". ok, again please with this reductivist capitalist fetishism please..
Rather, he succumbs to criticising "architect as an artist" cliche, which in my opnion, very very few architects actually do entertain. (we exclude the case of architects-artists (installation works..etc)). i feel some aberrant assumptions...why, when faced with false criticism does he bring up post-occupency? why does he bring up not minding travelogues and minding falsely reviews together?
the only well thought out sentiment is an attack against non genuine/critical reviews - but the author doesn't even delve into what he sees as a rendering these non-genuine and uncritical.
in short, the largest percentage of this article is , infortuantely, nagging. the author hasnt bothered to come up with nourishment only offered an aroma. is is real food or a chemical lab simulation? he doesnt give us a good change to determine that
"There are difficulties in fostering a genuinely critical culture in an industry that has pretensions to art but is nevertheless firmly based in the world of business"
That is really well pointed.and it gets to the main issue. Architects, when interviewed, automatically expect you are going to write something about them that will improve their business. Or, expect a journalist will only write about how great he or she is. Because that is what magazine industry and newspapers did for architects over the decades. It is so much so that as a writer it is almost de facto rule that you will write a positive piece for the magazine because the architect's work features products by their advertising clients. So, as pointed, you have a whole group of so called "architectural writers" who will only write puffed up pieces and will have audacity to call anything critical as negative, mean and cynical in a dismissive tone and close the door to these writers.
Popular media has no room for criticality in design arts and basically consumer driven.
Digital media is different type of puff. People will call themselves writers for writing captions for iphone images or writing puff as the online extension of printed magazine. So, the level of criticality has not changed for the digital publications either.
The only thing is good that there are a lot more outlets you can write for and every once in a while ran into a good critical piece.
Christian Lorentzen reviews film critic A.O. Scott’s new book, Better Living Through Criticism: How to Think About Art, Pleasure, Beauty, and Truth.
This line is a bit much... re: A.O.'s writing -
"This style of argument is melded to the Emersonian spirit that cleaves to the Democratic ideal that every citizen has a stake in the culture."
But this quote re: contemporary criticism/culture today, I find noteworthy
"There’s a certain kind of false populism...that I think is actually always in defense of corporate interests, spuriously in the name of democracy. You complain about — oh, the critics are such elitists — but the people who run the studios are a much more empowered elite. You’re writing in opposition to any kind of independent mediation in between the customer and the producer. You claim to be defending the public taste, but you’re actually defending the sales department."
And if below is true for movies seems just as true (if not more) re: architecture in terms of blood/sweat/tears, monies spent, embodies energies etc...
"If someone is spending $200 million to make and market a movie, there’s no way you can say, 'That’s just nothing.' Plus, it’s two hours of your own life, $15 of your own money, and all the dreams and emotions you bring into the theater with you. Why empty out your own experience? Why be passive about it? Why accept it on the terms that it’s given to you? The book is a plea to be more active, more engaged, and more thoughtful."
Criticism is the antithesis of advertising, which places it in direct conflict with advertisers. Thus the deletion of various critical comments in the 'news' forum. As the old saying goes, "don't bite the hand that feeds you".
Oddly enough, advertising is the most honest part of media because you know they are trying to sell you something.
Stuart Walker @Design Observer, contrasts design critique vs art criticism and argues "The discipline of design needs substantive, broader-based design criticism because active critical engagement and reflection are essential if the discipline is to move forward in ways that are informed, thoughtful, and relevant to the times."
He then contends that the future of design criticism requires expanding beyond "the rarefied atmosphere of the university."
Also offers some thoughts on modern China, kitsch, pastiche and "a bogus Bohemia bolted onto a shopping mall".
Aug 19, 23 12:23 am ·
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nabrU
Upvoted just for his comment about "the rarefied atmosphere of the university". Should architects take a while to be architects? Is there some example of a prodigal architect who just did it from early years in the modern world?
"On Criticism" an aggregate thread
i feel your point, olaf
things like standard expansion joints and flashing or stair details, or conduit, as silly as that may sound, have stories to tell, though they are not usually the focus of anyone, and in some ways that makes their narratives more interesting (to me) b/c they are unmediated... i like when designers use these elements, too, but i find their habitual use by the trades more interesting in most cases
habitual use requires a history of interaction of economy and force on material within the constraints of time and practice by the trade. unions play a role in how your building is executed. i really appreciate my friends stories from the construction management side, they for some odd reason are always more intrigueing than the built-up design premises for something made by an architect. not to say archtiects aren't involved, the architects that impress me are the guys and ladies who tell the same stories. they don't tell stories about concept but about life in the process of creating the concept.
a NYC curb and vault story if i were to change the names is as follows, although the detail itself is a picture worth a 1000 words. i probably spent 40 hr alone on the detail, sounds ridiculous to you new construction guys i know.
two buildings built in the late 1800's but still in the era of cast iron in which one building used the brick masonry demising wall of the neighbor as support for the beams by pocketing the wood joists into the wall. both having vaults under the sidewalk, but not in the same location. imagine the diliemna here, you buy the neighboring lot but can not dmo your building without demolishing the neighbor.
a sidewalk vault, if you're from the burbs, is the basement of the building under the public thruway sidewalk above, but can go under the street. what happened in this case is over the 100 some years the street became wider to allow parking on a one way street. remember both building have different locations for their vaults, so one was under the street and the other under the sidewalk. if you don't waterproof correctly you will have leakage in the vault, which in this case was a basement movie room on side and something else on the other. the guys who do the street don't care what happens. the guys who do the electrical, sewage, telecommunications don't care what happens. the interior contractor of vault doesn't care. the guy who does the sidewalk can avoid caring but will be the reason for leakage. long story short, jack hammer, demo, open up, hours spend resolving the border of everything at that point. a contractor capable of cutting steel, masonry, concrete, and waterproofing was required, one guy and one firm of architects willing to tackel everything at once.
i could write more on that, but the point is, if you've practiced architecture and remember your academic theory and critisism this case is a beautiful example of all out architecture in action that most people will never understand.
i could make the curb detail a proof of Kwinter's theories, maybe i will one day.
"Buildings in themselves constitute neither texts nor a true language; their complex of meanings and their subtle powers operate almost exclusively at pre- or non-linguistic levels." (M. Benedikt, 1991).
'There is already nothing BUT humanity in all architecture.'
Are you sure? When architecture--or most of what we call architecture today anyway--are mostly the mantle pieces of a technocratic process of forced consumption in order to keep the game going? Unless humanity goes beyond buying and selling (and the glory in excelling in these activities), it is impossible for architecture to be humane. It is at best an excellent piece of machine masquerading as a humanist structure through the guise of a critic's words.
The reason that there are so many Romantic accounts of architecture out there in industrial times (e.g., the poetics of space) only speaks of the following: they are the desperate struggles of free spirits to wrestle some humanity into what is an otherwise inhumane reality.
BE are you that naive? consumption has been the humane game since day one...sometimes it takes the form of religion, sometimes money, and sometimes NPR liberal ideological bullshit.
consumption - desire - is the game.
the two qoutes you state sum it up and you are in denial.
Yea, I guess if you're speaking about Architecture with a capital A, particularly through the guise of critics' words, there is some of what you mention going, towns, cities, etc.
I don't need to read Benedikt's quote to know that buildings don't actually speak: only us humans do that, and we tend to speak a lot about what's gotten inside us, what we've lived through and in, what we remember; and since we made the built environment, and we spend a great deal of our time in it, then we will tend to want to speak a lot about it, and humanity is already part and parcel on any level you want to consider. I'm not lining up behind the "inhumane reality" that you see all around, way too somber for me. The buying and selling has always gone on since the first barter, but don't tell me that has killed the humanity, because I don't believe it has.
As far as the "technocratic process" forced on us, well.....rage against the machine...that's humanity too.
that should have read:
Yea, I guess if you're speaking about Architecture with a capital A, particularly through the guise of critics' words, there is some of what you mention going, but I was speaking of all architecture: caves, huts, houses, bridges, towns, cities, etc.
@jmanganelli re: the story of Mayne and Kipnis I feel like I have seen hat a million times in lectures/videos/interviews, where someone will suggest a reading of a design to the architect and the architect will respond in such a way as too make clear that the reading has no basis in their reality of the design/construction process.
For that matter read the current feature (interview with Meier about the New Harmony Athenaeum) for some good examples of this. But then again they interview does feature a number of times where the reading matched the designed intent directly.
SO i guess it is a crap shoot??
Uxbridge:
It is true that different disciplines use different approaches in testing the validity of an argument, the question is what/how does architectural criticism work, which are the parameters there? It has been such a grab bag for so long - like the on/off relationship with a "scientific" approach shows - that there is no coherent way to even frame what architectural criticism is - or what it is supposed to achieve.
jmangarelli (01.07):
The similarity you draw between architectural criticism and ecological interface design seems a way of crafting a glorified scientific - gather the facts and do some computing, albeit now on many different levels - approach to architecture. The way to forge a "master narrative" like this seems to me so complicated and many faceted as to ultimately result in conclusions packaged as objective facts but actually formed by factors having mostly to do with the critics/designers personal choices.
nam & jman:
the case with the Kipnis / Mayne discussion and the idea that criticism is the dissection of the agendas and thought patterns of the author/auteur have both at its root the fact that it is easier to spin projective bullshit and readings when focusing on intangibles - is it so that we want criticism to be "a ballet" of word-fencing and spin, not dealing with the built world we inhabit straight on, but with almost everything else? I certainly don't see any value in that, beyond it being a bysanthine way of passing the time.
Olaf nailed (01.08) the way I feel about architecture and the way criticism should meet the challenge it poses - a head on take on the piece and its place in the world, with the material reality in all its splendor as context.
nam:
It's a crap shoot that shouldn't even happen - because I don't see why second guessing / reading the work should be done in the first place - a rude and false thing would be to call it spending the time while gathering some academic money & prestige - but the resons for the bullshit-circus can't be that cynical - maybe some critics focus on the architects and their "philosophy", agendas and intent because (a) they don't have the experience / tools to deal with the reality factor - illustrated by olaf's curb & vault story and inherent in any built work, or (b) they really believe that architects are the main drivers of progress, and picking their brains is the highway to a better understanding of our day & age. don't know really. If I had to choose, I'd say (a).
helsinki, i think a big issue is the drive to build as you say a master narrative... however i agree that those kinds of readings are less fruitful than an analysis of the actual project: spaces, circulation etc, context etc...
Yes, I think there is always problems with big narratives, they are more about themselves than the work. They may be good for discussing certain oeuvres, but that is a different animal than project specific Architectural criticism in my books. However, "master narrative" always summons up modernism, and then in quick succession all the micro-narratives of postmodernism and the ensuing "splinterism" - feminism, post-colonialism, localism, etc. etc. and they all also carry the same burden - rarely being about thinsg material and present, but things perceived and relational.
Careful and unprejudiced analyses of projects - like you put it, space, circulation, context, all that - makes it possible to actually have discordant strains in the same "criticism" / analysis - something that is not so easy when trying to squeeze the essential "master" meaning out of a work.
[I'm getting very favorably inclined towards localism at the moment though: the Finnish state-run distributor of alcoholic drinks managed to get Brooklyn Brewerys Local no2 on the shelves finally... so sorry about the typos. Hopefully the using of brackets will not make this look like a thread hijacking...]
if constructing the narrative:
i don't think it is an either or proposition --- whether a hospital or a massive GUI, not imposing some consistency makes for unintelligible interfaces/environments
the question would be is the narrative specious, contrived to serve a political or economic agenda without sufficient regard for the actualities of the technology and organizational dynamics upon which the system is based?
is it properly situated but nonetheless overreaching thus coercive?
or is it rooted in that which it serves to accentuate and as unobtrusive and flexible as possible yet enhancing legibility and usability?
in this sense the narrative is a useful illusion for the user.
if reading the narrative:
then it is creative folly for entertainment, for mental exercise, to develop one's own philosophy, but should not be implemented as a design intent (see Scott's literary fallacy)
jman - well put about constructing the narrative - but still, the narrative is really an explaining element - slightly inferior to the built actuality of the project, and its importance is in what it does to the other elements.
And it should be stated that consistency can grow "naturally" (hate the word, but have to use it...) - out of for example the local conditions - withouth being constructed as a "narrative".
Well what is the narrative really?
Is it the creative design process for the concept and design intent?
Is it the practice of enforcing the execution of the concept and design intent?
is it the funding of the concept and the making of choices as advised by everyone involved?
Is it the building process?
Is it the building?
if your creative process has no intentions of being reflected in the final product of the building then what narrative do you read? And is there any reason for the creative process to be read?
Did Frank Gehry crumple paper like homer simpson did or was there more involved in his creation of his buildings?
If the architecture is sensous why you reading it logically?
I find the creative process is best post-rationalized for me otherwise it is a stifling process of logic and philosophy. Just doing random ideas and then post rationalizing the presentation for jury always worked for me. Sometimes its just a good idea.
If anything criticism of built architecture could be a post-rationalization of the processes leading up to the buildings completion. The critic would explain things like - the columns ended up not being clad with fiberglass as the client had become aware of fiberglass material properties and manuf. Processes and felt that perhaps a raw finish of the columns was more true to the nature of the client and the overall concept/narrative of the creative design process, etc...or in most cases the client dreamed big and had little money.
Right now Nam I feel it is a crapshoot, just let the buildings be.
but what's the fruit of this thought besides being mere "qualified interpretations"? what's an unqualified interpretation?
if you have a Ph.D. in architecture history but had no involvement in the process of the designing and building of the architecture, are you qualified?
T.S. Eliot is cool and all and takes books upon books to really understand, but man is Jim Morrison even cooler and you can just drink to his stuff.
has architecture criticism actually improved not only the architecture in the world but the profession of architecture?
my answer is absolutely not.
Criticism has never pretended to be 'more qualified' over 'less qualified' interpretations. One can say that the upside of postmodernism and poststructuralism is that everyone is entitled to his or her own interpretation. Getting published does not mean it is more qualified; it merely means it is more qualified over less qualified papers in the pool of applicants seeking to be published.
The trouble I have with your view, olaf, is that you seem to hint that the lack of involvement in design and building hinders one's interpretation. But is it possible that criticism sees some aspects of the design and build process, while the knowledge-in-action of practitioners observes another dimension of the same process? I think it is possible; qualified interpretation does not need to be monistic or one-dimensional or mutually exclusive. It can be both.
The only charge I can agree with you is that criticism has not visibly improved the profession, nor the practice, nor education as a whole. In fact, it has contributed to the problematic view that architecture is a tightly-wound, hermetic and tightly enclosed discipline, when it is not. Till's neat little book explained why. Larson wrote the same things long ago in more academic language and so did Gutman. Architecture depends on lots of things, and criticism as a whole seldom brings this point up.
But things are changing, especially now when the profession is at its historic nadir. Criticism will have to evolve or risk obsolescence.
@StationeryMad
But is it possible that criticism sees some aspects of the design and build process, while the knowledge-in-action of practitioners observes another dimension of the same process?
I would say yes, but i am not a practicioner...
Any ideas on how or where it might evolve to?
Prediction is a risky business. My guess is as good as anyone's.
But I think in the short term things will not shake up too much. The crisis of architecture that began during the po-mo phase where architecture ended up as the play-thing of the wealthy will only continue. Look at the majority of works today: most are still private projects for private or corporate clients. With the unprecedented insolvency of the public sector hovering over the next decade, and with a borrowing ceiling nearly reached (or superceded!), architecture can only go--rather willingly really--into more privatized realms. In tandem, architecture is losing an entire generation of young practitioners. Guess who is likely to be an avant-garde and strike out in a new direction? You guessed it.
Overall, I also think that there is a consensus today under neoliberal politics that buildings are liabilities rather than assets. And Neo-Keynesians have shown that public buildings or infrastructure tend to be a waste of precious resources, because their economic effects tend to be short-term. To be politically correct, it is better to invest in a kid's education program rather than the room that affords the program, even though we cannot dismiss the 'room' at all in the education process. But with partisan politics at an extreme level (especially so now), who wants to stake their political career on any one of these grand projets? Who has the money and political mettle to do it anyway?
In such a conservative climate, criticism is likely to remain conservative. In other parts of the world where buildings are coming up every second, what more can criticism say (because no one really thinks it is significant)--the building is an object of speculative asset rather than of political or social significance. In other words, if the teleology of the building is accepted to be different, criticism is at best an elitist's game; no one is going to listen.
Tied both ways like that, criticism has to remain conservative--playing the same game it has been playing so far--as academic language games.
This is my bleakest assessment. Maybe others have a more optimistic view. I am all ears.
Eew...can't read site well on blackberry (will get back to you)
Isn't illumination intellectually just post-rationalization of something you intuitively knew? The ahh ha moment, as in "you designed that because it made sense anyway" as in you'd just performed what you were educated to do and it felt right?
Stationary and ham - in short maybe just make curation and criticism the same thing. I think making up more written fantasies about a built fantasy seems a bit unnecessary, an eletist game as BE points out. Ultimately no one takes games seriously anyway. Now putting a bunch of pieces together and explaining that the visible pattern of similarity is a result of factors outside the creators realm and control, that may be both interesting and helpful? I would say you are hard pressed to curate a single piece by it self.
They had this calatrava exhibit once in nyc sponsored by by a high end builder (can't remember name)...but it was clearly a marketing gimick for the builder who was proposing that 50x50x50 tower downtown. When catering to clients of that wealth the museum is the right place for marketing. Anyway, half the exhibits were moving calatrava sculptures and the other half his work at WTC...multiple pieces informing what his architecure was doing at the WTC. So there's your critisim - movement.
Just outside the exit door was Boccini's sculpture of that melted looking running guy (on blackberry)...thank you curator...if you didn't get it in the exhibit maybe you got it on the way out - movement.
It seems laughably simple, but if you aren't the artist type maybe you need all that to. Get it.
Helsinki - boorklyn brewery and schneider and sohns (german) did a beer toogether, goes down easy but packs a wallup..recommend if you can find it
After my last post
Either architecture criticism is for the masses or if for architects on how their concepts can be understood and accepted by the masses.
That's your reference, the masses. Critical mass or nothing.
Now go burn some eiseman autonmous bullshit...useless monads all stuck on themselves.
There's a pretty interesting debate/gloves off Jersey Shore thing going on right now on twitter between Christopher Hawthorne and Kazys Varnelis... two smart dudes with some strong opinions: http://twitter.com/#!/kazys
houseofmud didn't notice you had posted that previously. that was an interesting little debate.... If only because it was interesting to see a current practitioner defending his professional position.
I also wanted to post this article Better to Be Interesting Than Right
But my point was more that we should never be inhibited by worries about getting it right in the sense of pre-emptively confirming the judgment of history. It is far more important to be interesting, and some of the critical writing I cherish most — like Mary McCarthy’s brutal dismantling of “A Streetcar Named Desire” — strikes me as both very wrong (which is only to say I disagree strongly with its conclusions) and brilliantly interesting.
Scott and Dargis are obviously talking about film but i think the idea that criticism is useful/valuable even it it differs in aesthetic preference to you, in terms of helping to formulate and frame a discourse, can be applied to building/architectural criticism just as fruitfully...
This may be a controversial opinion, but I often think of many critics on the American scene as opportunistic parasites.
Kipnis, to my mind, is the example par excellence. He had a somewhat marginal career as a gallerist, but found that he could talk in obfuscating, overly grandiose terms about architecture. A few people bought what he was saying (or perhaps didn't understand, but it sounded important.) Thus he found himself at the center of architectural debate for a generation, despite having no design skills and being a rather bad writer (for evidence, see the badly-written essay "Twisting the Separatrix," in which narrates the collaboration of Derrida and Eisenman as if they were God and Moses.)
Kipnis and others like him found a niche where they could be listened to even if they really had nothing to say. In a funny way, he talks very little about architecture, mainly because he seems to know so little about how it actually happens. But he's also been a bit of a chameleon, morphing to fit the trend. Like I said, he's opportunistic.
This old way of practicing criticism often ignores the question of design practice and talks ultimately about itself: extreme narcissism. But it couches this narcissism and meta-discourse under the inert sounding term 'autonomy,' as in, "we need autonomy to really discuss these issues of architecture in depth--we can't be bothered with practicality and pragmatics while discussing these important issues."
What this really means, to my mind, is that the 'autonomy' critics wanted the freedom to talk about anything, to bring in literary and philosophical references without context, but then be able to stuff it all under the umbrella of architectural theory. This kind of criticism now seems outdated, a product of mid-20th century debates rooted in deconstructivism, new criticism, and so on. Kipnis is an inheritor of this tradition, and is running only on gas fumes from the 20th century.
The anecdote above about Kipnis and Mayne is a great example of how out of touch a certain strain of criticism is.
Then there is a way of practicing criticism that centers on design practice and actually moves the profession forward. We've recently tended to call this kind of criticism post-critical, despite the fact that it is fundamentally critical, it's just not in the terms of the Frankfurt School or deconstructivism or the logics of the mid-20th century. One might think of Stan Allen, Robin Evans, some of Sarah Whiting's work, Ignasi de Sola-Morales, many others, as examples of a 21st century criticism that actually cares about design practice.
great post, farwest1
Yep, good post farwest.
But to depend solely on 'design practice', a broadly conceived notion of what people do in design, to move the profession forward is too narrow on two counts. One, design is usually more than what people do; as a matter of fact, design is also about the unintended and unanticipated consequences following from the expression of a set of design intentions. Hence, much of design is NOT about what people do in design, which in turn, not about design practice. Two, there is so much about design that has to do with broader notions of justice, equity and ethics beyond performance and technologies that we are usually interested in--but which our designs are incomplete as they are inadequate without addressing these notions.
This is why it is still possible to pursue an 'autonomous' line of pursuing criticism without adhering to the canonical way of arguing for autonomy, the kind of poststructuralist disease that infected the discipline for a while. Besides, the discipline is certainly greater than the profession, and criticism has the duty not only to cater to the profession, i.e., move it forward, but must also address the issues that are beyond the broad definitions of what the profession of architecture mean.
Kipnis is a particularly bad example; there is really no need to look at Kipnis when a wealth of other theorists exist outside of architecture but who speak to architecture more intimately than Kipnis does and did.
But of course, the terrible thing they do to students of architecture in many canonical and prestigious centers of study is to define architecture through the demarcation of Kipnis, Evans and Whiting (and that few others). The irony however lies in the fact that across in the next building, many brilliant minds are shunned because architects do not want to engage them (or sadly, do not know that they exist!).
Is interview a form of criticism? at least if the interview is then edited and published. If so this essay The Art of the Interview on the putative self-unveiling of writer Janet Malcolm in The Paris Review qualifies for this thread i guess....
“In most interviews, both subject and interviewer give more than is necessary,” Ms. Malcolm wrote in “The Silent Woman.” “They are always being seduced and distracted by the encounter’s outward resemblance to an ordinary friendly meeting.”
this passage highlights the "critical" place an interview can occupy
which is often called journalism, is in fact some wholly original form of art,” Ms. Roiphe notes, “some singular admixture of reporting, biography, literary criticism, psychoanalysis, and the nineteenth-century novel — English and Russian both.”
It’s a form that has distinguished antecedents, notably the “dialogues” of Socrates (actually written by Plato); Eckermann’s “Conversations of Goethe”; and of course James Boswell’s “Life of Samuel Johnson,”
Over at places Alexandra Lange writes about how we can learn to talk about buildings. Lange suggests starting with “Sometimes We Do It Right,” Ada Louise Huxtable's classic review of the Marine Midland Bank Building in New York. The essay thus gets a bit meta: critic, critiquing the criticism of another classic critic.
Lange writes "Reading her pieces (collected in the wonderfully and evocatively named Kicked A Building Lately? and Will They Ever Finish Bruckner Boulevard?), it is clear that her first loyalty is to the citizens of New York — and that she thinks they deserve better."
Which I think points to the strength/necessity of criticism coming from a more immediate stance not that of a theory driven narrative but rather one shaped with concern for the local.
Lange concludes by listing some lessons that the citizen or aspiring critic can learn from Huxtable's writing. These are:
“One, description: She sets the scene, and her theme, through opening paragraphs that bring the city vividly to mind. Two, history: She demonstrates that the skyscraper is not something new (via her neighborhood tour) and that Marine Midland is part of a lineage (via her discussion of curtain walls)...Three, drama: Many people consider architecture boring...Finally, the Point: Huxtable has 1200 words with which to make her point. When you read her review, you feel at all times that she knows exactly where it is going...(If you have selected a theme and a mode of organization, and if you know what your critical approach is, having a point shouldn’t be hard. Leave out more than you leave in.)"
The final point is perhaps the most widely applicable I find in my own efforts at writing. Whether personal, or quasi-professionally, namely that the writer/critic should "Leave out more than you leave in."
I find repeatedly that i tend to muddy my thesis/point and that the more editing I do the more refined and focused it becomes. Even memos or emails at work.
Also really like this image which accompanies the piece
Now, for a hat trick i will post a link to Naomi Stead's recent essay A New Belle-Lettrism and the Future of Criticism for Places, journal.
She states it's not the alleged and ongoing "crisis" of architectural criticism that she concerns herself with, rather her "primary complaint with architectural criticism is with its conventionality as a specific genre of writing." She goes on to argue against the strong literary conventions of architectural criticism. Specifically she wants a more populist criticism.
I posted the comment below and pointed readers of her essay to this thread.
I like the author's idea of exploring "the genre and mode of the belle-lettre as one model for architectural writing, and architectural criticism" through the the frame of popul(ism).
She is of course right that the new digitized masses can be seen as a sort of little guy anti-literariness. An everyman culture.
What i find interesting though would be a more political reading of populist. Rather than the elite vs mainstream in a cultural sense. Populist in an original sense of "the masses", civic engagement, a la the American show "Spontaneous Interventions: Design Actions for the Common Good" at the Biennale this year.
I also think there is a not that recent turn towards criticism situated as/in praxis along the lines of the discussion at the Critical and Activist practice
http://dsgnagnc.com/the-critical-and-activist-practice-a-discussion/
Either way what i do think is that the form of criticism has changed away from explicit literary criticism and into a notion of the expanded field either more open to other voices and/or doing/making as criticism.
Finally, @faslanyc I word say no to your questions has "the time has come to let architectural criticism pass away"? I think it is if anything more needed necessary than ever. In fact i started a thread re: Criticism a couple of years over at Archinect, to help me understand the topic and my thoughts on it better. Some really good discussion there by and for architects re: criticism/crisis/bad crits etc...
In NYT magazine section Dwight Garner wrote A Critic’s Case for Critics Who Are Actually Critical.
Although speaking specifically about literary criticism he states
"We are drowning in them. What we need more of, now that newspaper book sections are shrinking and vanishing like glaciers, are excellent and authoritative and punishing critics — perceptive enough to single out the voices that matter for legitimate praise, abusive enough to remind us that not everyone gets, or deserves, a gold star."
I wonder whether the same could/should be said about architectural criticism?
Architectural criticism and most writing has dwindled down to writing giddy urban hipster captions for social events with photographs. If you write something slightly critical you are shunned by most popular media and the other media where you "might" see critical discourse is out of reach of most people who want to read. They keep it highly internal. Institutions and publications in that respect are closed circuit peer support groups where you see the relentless canonization of the same people. Yes, it is that religious and elite in the same time.
As some people are re-writing history and calling themselves historians.
http://blogs.kcrw.com/dna/sci-arc-at-forty-the-original-alternative-architecture-school
Orhan thanks for weighing in. I was beginning to think I was speaking to myself.... :p
Great comments (here and at the blog), Orhan.
Unfortunately, historians --putatively objective analysts-- frequently allow themselves to be co-opted for partisan purposes in venues artistic, economic, and political.
That said, academics are allowed to have opinions, and to write about them. It's when the line between critical analysis and personal bias is not made clear that they hurt their credibility.
citizen, for example see the recent shit-storm caused by Harvard historian Niall Ferguson baldly partisan and fact twisting hit piece on Obama admin.
Yes. And the conservatives can point to Howard Zinn. So there ya go: it's equal-opportunity reporting, if we're going to be honest.
Alan Davies recently asked How can architectural criticism improve?
He notes "There are difficulties in fostering a genuinely critical culture in an industry that has pretensions to art but is nevertheless firmly based in the world of business" then offers up some specific suggestions for changing the content and tone of architectural criticism both within academia and within the press. He then concludes "I don’t mind if journals want to publish articles that read like advertisements, travelogues (“archilogues”?) or even belle-lettrism, but let’s be clear about what genuine criticism is and what it isn’t. And let’s encourage more explanation from architects and other players, as well as lots more formal evaluation from archi schools".
i think the author here either has an ill-defined understanding of criticism or a much too defined one (i.e. merely on the scientific and functional performance of the building) . i agree with the sentiment that a lot of "critical" writing is not critical however...i don't think that the author figures in the now tradition owed to the cross 'contamiantion' from the postmod genres of literary studies where "critical" is not critical in the sense of identifying the negatives and the positives but moreso the associative cultural and domain-specific tentacles. he doesn't allude to the supra-architectural level as a hsitorical abstract practice but only to "performance". ok, again please with this reductivist capitalist fetishism please..
Rather, he succumbs to criticising "architect as an artist" cliche, which in my opnion, very very few architects actually do entertain. (we exclude the case of architects-artists (installation works..etc)). i feel some aberrant assumptions...why, when faced with false criticism does he bring up post-occupency? why does he bring up not minding travelogues and minding falsely reviews together?
the only well thought out sentiment is an attack against non genuine/critical reviews - but the author doesn't even delve into what he sees as a rendering these non-genuine and uncritical.
in short, the largest percentage of this article is , infortuantely, nagging. the author hasnt bothered to come up with nourishment only offered an aroma. is is real food or a chemical lab simulation? he doesnt give us a good change to determine that
"There are difficulties in fostering a genuinely critical culture in an industry that has pretensions to art but is nevertheless firmly based in the world of business"
That is really well pointed.and it gets to the main issue. Architects, when interviewed, automatically expect you are going to write something about them that will improve their business. Or, expect a journalist will only write about how great he or she is. Because that is what magazine industry and newspapers did for architects over the decades. It is so much so that as a writer it is almost de facto rule that you will write a positive piece for the magazine because the architect's work features products by their advertising clients. So, as pointed, you have a whole group of so called "architectural writers" who will only write puffed up pieces and will have audacity to call anything critical as negative, mean and cynical in a dismissive tone and close the door to these writers.
Popular media has no room for criticality in design arts and basically consumer driven.
Digital media is different type of puff. People will call themselves writers for writing captions for iphone images or writing puff as the online extension of printed magazine. So, the level of criticality has not changed for the digital publications either.
The only thing is good that there are a lot more outlets you can write for and every once in a while ran into a good critical piece.
Christian Lorentzen reviews film critic A.O. Scott’s new book, Better Living Through Criticism: How to Think About Art, Pleasure, Beauty, and Truth.
This line is a bit much... re: A.O.'s writing -
"This style of argument is melded to the Emersonian spirit that cleaves to the Democratic ideal that every citizen has a stake in the culture."
But this quote re: contemporary criticism/culture today, I find noteworthy
"There’s a certain kind of false populism...that I think is actually always in defense of corporate interests, spuriously in the name of democracy. You complain about — oh, the critics are such elitists — but the people who run the studios are a much more empowered elite. You’re writing in opposition to any kind of independent mediation in between the customer and the producer. You claim to be defending the public taste, but you’re actually defending the sales department."
And if below is true for movies seems just as true (if not more) re: architecture in terms of blood/sweat/tears, monies spent, embodies energies etc...
"If someone is spending $200 million to make and market a movie, there’s no way you can say, 'That’s just nothing.' Plus, it’s two hours of your own life, $15 of your own money, and all the dreams and emotions you bring into the theater with you. Why empty out your own experience? Why be passive about it? Why accept it on the terms that it’s given to you? The book is a plea to be more active, more engaged, and more thoughtful."
This line, from Jon Caramanica's obit for Greg Tate
"He rightly understood that the scope of criticism extended far beyond
the borders of the subject work. The subject was the pretext, the intro,
the foyer to a whole house."
Criticism is the antithesis of advertising, which places it in direct conflict with advertisers. Thus the deletion of various critical comments in the 'news' forum. As the old saying goes, "don't bite the hand that feeds you".
Oddly enough, advertising is the most honest part of media because you know they are trying to sell you something.
Advertising and vernacular visual communication is criticism though, like architecture? A response to condition, a way to design a solution?
Stuart Walker @Design Observer, contrasts design critique vs art
criticism and argues "The discipline of design needs substantive, broader-based design criticism because active critical engagement and reflection are essential if the discipline is to move forward in ways that are informed, thoughtful, and relevant to the times."
He then contends that the future of design criticism requires expanding beyond "the rarefied atmosphere of the university."
Also offers some thoughts on modern China, kitsch, pastiche and "a bogus Bohemia bolted onto a shopping mall".
Upvoted just for his comment about "the rarefied atmosphere of the university". Should architects take a while to be architects? Is there some example of a prodigal architect who just did it from early years in the modern world?
No surrender#
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