Where is architecture missing the mark when it comes to awarding praise to "successful" designs? In a recent piece by Charles Rosenblum from the Pittsburgh City Paper, he expresses concern for the lack of outside architectural critique from organizations like the AIA. "If we don't speak up, we are on track to get more."
Other than visual aesthetics, the notable architecture critic from Pittsburgh highlights the issues with specific organizations praising projects and design proposals that poorly execute a good design. Rosenblum points out variables such as affordability, landscape, traffic, and parking are no longer in the discussion when assessing and awarding projects.
"Why are the designers proposing a kind of building that has been discredited nationally when better design approaches are available? Why does the profession praise its achievers, but not self-police its laggards, hacks, and profiteers?" explains Rosenblum. "No one goes to a restaurant run by nice people if it has bad food. Why should architecture be any different?"
Throughout his article, he makes it a point to address the failure at in how to design criticism is portrayed in a professional practice setting. "Every architect has an education that includes studio reviews and critiques in which outside experts study their design and submit criticisms, often harshly, during the process to improve the work. For some reason, this falls by the wayside in much professional practice."
For his closing remarks, Rosenblum expresses that the AIA should "resuscitate and promote such outside critiques of architecture." In doing so, he explains that these third party criticisms will not only allow for additional praise but also identify poorly executed design projects and call them out.
11 Comments
Why? Because architecture isn’t about design, it’s about money. Just like everything else.
I agree with Miles. We cannot compete in the market if we add 100 hours for design criticism - because our costs and fees go up. Unless the client specifically values that. 9.9 times out of 10, the client will not pay for that added service. The only way to make this happen is to build it into the permitting process. Which owners will have no choice to pay for.
I run into these kinds of issues daily in my firm. Where the ‘dezigners’ don’t listen to the technically savvy architects, and they continue to completely ignore the elephant on the roof (10-foot-tall air handeling units). Then in the end the owner gets these huge unexpected mechanical monstrosities over the main entry. All because the ‘dezigners’ say they don’t want to think about that in early SD.
1- snark missed
2- article not read
In all fairness, there's more to the article than is being suggested here. This is critique of the annual awards given out by AIA -PGH. Yes, there is a suggestion that this is a national problem, but it is grounded in using examples of specific projects from specific regions- noting loop holes in the selection criteria, project impacted by these loopholes that are exemplary for the region, and projects that are suspect based on national commentary from a range of publications.
Sarcasm, not snark.
Apologies for the misrepresentation. It was still missed.
This is a bad idea. Bad. First, this doesn't acknowledge the obvious; we don't build public architecture. Most of what is being discussed is private. Second, it's a little bit "horse out of the barn" to be critical of design, when it's the brief. Third, most, if not all public work, is design by committee, and therein lies an infuriating problem.
I think the article kind of conflates what seems like a very insiders-oriented local awards program with something bigger and more meaningful than it really is. It's just a local business association congratulating local businesses to impress potential clients. It might be nice to do something more ambitious, but it's not clear this article targets anyone who is in a position to do so.
Anyone anywhere can make an awards program, charge some money to enter, find some sponsors, and promote whatever agenda they want in the way they target and judge entries. There are more holistic awards programs than local AIA chapters. Critical media tend to produce more thoughtful awards programs because their target audience is different, usually an interested subset of the general public.
But an award's also got to be 'judgeable' - a lot of worthwhile social and context oriented outcomes don't present obvious metrics for judgement. And most awards programs are revenue generating, based on charging the entrants. So they are very openly pay-to-play, which isn't going to bring in the ideal entries. A non-profit awards program that just picks worthy winners off of some list sounds nice but would be a huge effort to do, for no particular benefit. No one pays attention to awards they didn't submit to.
This is a great idea who's chance of being executed is minimal at best. Imagine asking the people who use and have to live around these buildings what they thought. Then again, those against this proposal already know. Just ask your mother.
Reference NIMBY
My mother, is often wrong, and when she isn't, it's a lucky day.
What ever you do don’t stand in the way of progress and the job creators.
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