Design Observer :: Join the Discussion http://places.designobserver.com/feature/death-and-life-of-great-architecture-criticism/30448/ en-us Design Observer Group 2011-12-24T10:19:21-05:00 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/1.0
One ray of light - in comments from my most recent studio, the students requested more readings! Most said they had never been asked to read as part of a design course and were most excited to read non-architectural writing. Perhaps a course on architecture and American literature would be appropriate! ]]> http://places.designobserver.com/feature/death-and-life-of-great-architecture-criticism/30448/#comments 2011-12-24T10:19:21-05:00
I don't have the list of books with me, but I recall that his list included Plato's Republic, Thoreau's Walden, Emerson's Essays, as well as literature like Melville's Moby Dick and Whitman's Leaves of Grass. It was a "great books" list with a definite American tilt.

I agree that there is some good (and a lot of bad) architecture criticism in the blog sphere. Although I don't follow most of this, my sense is that there is a lot of opinion and very few ideas behind a lot of what I read on blogs.

I also agree that "energy" and a lot of the other big issues of our era need to be at the core of architecture criticism. Mumford and Jacobs in particular, were cultural critics first and architecture critics second, and I think that the great critics of the future will arise from those who have something meaningful to say to the general public not just about architecture, but also through architecture.

]]> http://places.designobserver.com/feature/death-and-life-of-great-architecture-criticism/30448/#comments 2011-12-23T16:25:43-05:00 ]]> http://places.designobserver.com/feature/death-and-life-of-great-architecture-criticism/30448/#comments 2011-12-10T07:05:07-05:00 http://places.designobserver.com/feature/death-and-life-of-great-architecture-criticism/30448/#comments 2011-12-09T11:01:42-05:00
I think this could well carry over to your questions about architecture criticism. So many of us in 2011's cities and towns, living increasingly narrow, compartmentalized and separate lives within built environments we pretend to understand as wholes, neglect the relationships and adjacencies and seams that really make these environments what they are, in favor of a few, often poorly sewn, "wow" parts. I'm not sure we need this -- there's a lot of rich work out there, amongst urban geographers and historians, about the seams of cities past and present -- but the idea of someone who's city-blind coming in to help us understand cities, just as face-blind Close helped us understand faces, intrigues me.

Also, I've recently been reading Mumford's art criticism, which is an interesting counterpoint to his writing about architecture and cities. Without contemporary access to the work he discusses, the essays are striking for a few reasons. First, they are compellingly relational... he cares both about the smallest details of the work, and about situating each artist not only amongst her peers, but also in the grand cycle of history and time, with the highest stakes. Scale, no doubt conditioned by his experience with cities, place, and time, feels vital within all his reviews, but he's also refreshingly adept at calling the linearity of scale into question, just as close is in a different way.

His suggestion to read more broadly and deeply makes perfect sense, too (and I'd also love to see that list he sent you): the second thing that strikes you about his art reviews is how much you trust him, whether you agree with every little thing he says or not, to be at least writing about the right things. I wonder whether Ouroussoff's issue was that he was saying the wrong things, or that he was picking his subjects too narrowly; Kimmelmann, by contrast, seems to be picking his subjects admirably, even if you don't agree with his every word.

We've been so far away from the questions that really matter about place, people, and community within architecture criticism for so long, that I think there's a danger of lauding anything that talks about these issues, even if it does so poorly. The real challenge will be to shift the debate back to where things matter enough that there can *be* a debate, and not just a back-pat for the shifting.
]]> http://places.designobserver.com/feature/death-and-life-of-great-architecture-criticism/30448/#comments 2011-12-08T15:28:56-05:00
John, you have hit the mark and I appreciate knowing about the book. Thank you.]]> http://places.designobserver.com/feature/death-and-life-of-great-architecture-criticism/30448/#comments 2011-12-06T07:50:35-05:00
Energy and architecture is not totally untrodden ground. Luis Fernandez-Galiano's "Fire and Memory: On Architecture and Energy" remains the definitive text. But he wrote that in 1991 (the English language MIT Press edition came out in 2000) and would be surprised if, today, 20 years on, even 1% of architecture students have read it.

Bill Braham is having another go at curing architecture's wilful energy blindness: he's organising a conference on architecture and energy in Philly at the end of January, followed by a book later. ]]> http://places.designobserver.com/feature/death-and-life-of-great-architecture-criticism/30448/#comments 2011-12-04T04:04:40-05:00 Chuck Close is an inspiring mediator when thinking big. Thanks for an inspiring piece.]]> http://places.designobserver.com/feature/death-and-life-of-great-architecture-criticism/30448/#comments 2011-12-03T06:48:48-05:00 http://places.designobserver.com/feature/death-and-life-of-great-architecture-criticism/30448/#comments 2011-12-02T19:40:53-05:00 http://places.designobserver.com/feature/death-and-life-of-great-architecture-criticism/30448/#comments 2011-12-02T03:05:03-05:00 Ouroussoff latched onto starchitects, while Kimmelman apologizes by saying "hey, this is serious architecture, but i'm going to tell you about more important things like the politics of low income housing because that is what people like nowadays" (not real quote). But is it good architecture? How publications of authority like the Times peddles safe, bland criticism is a mystery. At least the movie section gets a little spice. Meanwhile designers shrug and move ahead, to reality. ]]> http://places.designobserver.com/feature/death-and-life-of-great-architecture-criticism/30448/#comments 2011-12-01T21:22:21-05:00 http://places.designobserver.com/feature/death-and-life-of-great-architecture-criticism/30448/#comments 2011-12-01T13:00:22-05:00 http://places.designobserver.com/feature/death-and-life-of-great-architecture-criticism/30448/#comments 2011-12-01T10:23:04-05:00