Design Observer's Alexandra Lange discusses "why Nicolai Ouroussoff is not good enough", or why he is not worthy of being the last (widely-read?) architecture critic.
Design Observer's Alexandra Lange discusses "why Nicolai Ouroussoff is not good enough", or why he is not worthy of being the last (widely-read?) architecture critic.
12 Comments
This article is a bit of a revelation. Worth talking about, for sure.
Alexandra Lange's piece reads like she wants Ouroussoff's job with basically same kind but more nerdishly written articles. Both boring, but one with more readers. And Sorkin sold his criticality and humor to gated communities he has been designing. Archinect has better articles and writers.
Lange's piece was, to someone who doesn't live in New York and follows NO as a matter of obligation to stay connected to the east, a thorough dissection and very enlightening article.
Not knowing anything about NO's background beyond that he used to be in LA, it seems there IS a strong argument that he's looking at buildings as objects more than as elements of a bigger city, which has in past decades been a simple way of defining the two coasts: object in drivable field vs. dense urbanism. I'll toss out that time is more important in the latter situation, and that the interest in "the new" rather than the context of an object in an ongoing historical continuum is explained by his West coast background.
On a separate note, should criticism really involve stories about one's family, dog walking routine, neighbors, etc? I certainly enjoy (prefer) reading personal stories, but I've always felt that was what prevented me from seriously engaging in respectable "criticism" on any level - I can't not read things personally.
Herbert Muschamp was Ourousoff's predecessor, not Paul Golberger as Lange states. He was perhaps one of the last, great architecture critics.
Goldberger in fact i think (still) writes for the New Yorker right?
As for lbs point re: the family stories et al. I did think that was a bit weird. I mean the idea that he should be grounding his criticism more in the lived experience of the city is one thing, architecture as an urban object not a standalone.
Goldberger in fact i think (still) writes for the New Yorker right?
As for lbs point re: the family stories et al. I did think that was a bit weird. I mean the idea that he should be grounding his criticism more in the lived experience of the city is one thing, architecture as an urban object not a standalone.
I mean out of the three problems she lists she has with him
If that’s what he’s selling, I’m not buying it. For three reasons: We don’t know where he lives. He’s slippery. And he doesn’t care (enough).
The third one is i think the one i would "agree" the most with. As in perhaps a lack of rigor or an urbanism perspective in NO's writing.
As in lb's object in drivable field
I think I read somewhere that he lives in SoHo.
And if Archinect has better articles and writers, then architectural criticism (and the New York Times) is really screwed. Ideally, architectural criticism would extend architectural issues to the big world outside the field, and Archinect, while it often has interesting things to read, doesn't do that at all. To be fair, I haven't seen any architectural publication or website that doesn't already "preach to the converted" so it may just be an impossible thing to ask. It all seems so insular and just chasing it's own tail.
while i certainly don't agree with her every point, i love this piece! not because it tears down NO but because it injects SOME criticism SOMEWHERE. everybody (including me) is always so nice and positive anymore. i, too, love reading sorkin's village voice stuff. he was not only critical but substantial and incisive, in a way that we don't see in the era of 'like' or 'un-like'.
also love the dialogue that happens after the piece, both for and against - again because people are giving reasons for their opinions, and those reasons are personal, agenda-driven in some cases.
would love to see ms lange's architectural criticism and will search some out.
Probably could have formed her plea for impassioned criticism, not more coldly (ha!), but -at least- not as an alien exploding from the belly of Nicolai Ouroussoff’s corpus.
Ends up sounding like “I think his job is so important that he should agree with me,” which isn’t the best structure for an argument.
I agree with libertybell (like usual) and also with ol' dirty.
Pathos is just one part of a three part persuasion. I think as knowledge and the transmission of knowledge evolves-- we start to realize that many of the fetishes that modern culture has are fetish-ized myths.
I don't think it is necessarily a bad thing to pull the blinders on once in a while. But even a blind man knows that the stairs still exist whether or not one can see them. And we all know certainly what happens to a culture when it subscribes to all things logically in too strict of a manner.
If we want to break it down even further... we can find parallels between Aristotle's 6 elements of drama, poetics, and architectural discourse.
Plot-- What is the purpose of the building?
Character-- Who populates the building? What are their expectations? What are their realities?
Idea-- What does the building suggest? Does it suggest grandeur? Does it suggest safety? Does it "emote?"
Language-- Does the programmatics of the building have a viable language? Can one navigate the building without maps or signs? Can one find the front door?
Music-- Does the building have rhythm? Is there appropriate context? Does it generate some livability? Does it operate 24, 7, 365... on evenings... on weekends? How does it "move?"
Spectacle-- Does it captivate? Do the aesthetics make an "appropriate" statement? Does it charm? Does it talk?
NB: when she writes of Goldberger as a predecessor, she doesn't mean *immediate* predecessor--and her subsequent emphatic invocation of Muschamp should make that clear.
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