I attended a panel discussion in New York City last night, sponsored by David Haskell's Forum for Urban Design. The audience, as you will see the invitation below, the firm represented a number of publications - which means the combined weight of critical and journalistic writers in the room was almost enough to redesign the Manhattan ...
In the end, it was a good conversation stimulating and worth the trip - but I'm going to think two or three points still need to be done. Although some of the things that came after that, without controversy, as he spoke with David Haskell and panelists, I want to expand and clarify some things.
First, since the beginning, one panelist stated: "It's not our job to say: Well, the new Home Depot sucks ..."
But of course it was!
That's your role; that's now built environment as experienced by the majority of the American public. "Architecture," for most Americans, means that Home Depot - not Mies van der Rohe. You have the right to talk about that architecture. For questions about accessibility, use of materials, and land policy itself, if you could change the way Home Depots around the world designed and built, you will have an impact on space and building construction industry was several times greater than the change is only one skyscraper in Manhattan - or San Francisco, or Boston's Back Bay.
You also will help people realize that their local Home Depot architectural concerns, and that every person has the right to critique - or celebrate - these buildings now popping up on every corner. If only the critics choose to write about avant-garde headquarters central pharmacies in the forests of New Jersey - to quote Le Corbusier - and then, of course, architecture critics will continue to lose viewers. And it is losing audience: this was agreed unanimously by all the panelists last night.
Simply put, if a user everyday everyday architecture does not realize that Home Depot, Best Buy, Walmart, and even Tesco, Sainsbury's and Waitrose, can be criticized - if people do not realize that even the suburbs and shopping centers, parking can be criticized - then you end up with a situation of architecture we have today: low quality, so is housing, not logically designed and comfortable with no excess amount of closet space.
And nobody said anything.
To use a musical analogy: You can have a thousand and one interesting, inspiring, intelligent, widely referred to, enthusiastic, and even opinion-changing conversation about music with almost anyone - including what the person is listening, why, what their own soundtrack, what "bip-hop" really means, whether or not "post-techno" there, what they really want to hear on the radio, file sharing should be legalized, Chris Cornell was this generation Sammy Hagar (answer: yes), etc.
But to infer from the conversation - because there is no mention Stravinsky or Bach - that those philistines who do not care about music is absurd. In other words, maybe my cousin could not say Deleuze and maybe he did not know who this Fumihiko Maki, or even Frank Lloyd Wright, but does that mean he does not care about architecture?
Because, one critic writing for approval by another critic, who writes another critic, who wrote for some editor somewhere, or head of department, and no one wants to step out of line. You want to talk about videogames, or Tim Burton film, or the court as described in the books of JK Rowling - but nope: it all Zaha, all the time.
Meanwhile, the subscription level falls.
Furthermore - though this may conflict with what I said above - a strong and interesting architectural criticism is determined by how you talk about architecture, not the building that you choose to talk about.
In other words, good: you can talk about Fumihiko Maki instead of, say, Half-Life, or Doom, or super-garage, but if you start quoting Le Corbusier, or arguing about whether something is truly "parametric," then You do not have to wonder if people who are not graduate students, studying with one of your friends at Columbia, put the article down, get in the car - and drive to the mall, up the knotwork crosses himself Crosstown flyovers and neo - Roman park that most critics architecture was too busy to consider analyzing.
Throughout, your non-Adorno-reading former customers will be able to interact with, naturally, and may complain about the architecture - but you have lost the perfect opportunity to participate
Which brings me to two points late, and I'll try to be quick:
1) Architecture criticism means writing about architecture, not writing about buildings.
Miraculously, in the middle of last night, one of the panelists mentioned Archigram - almost wistfully - commented that, although the lack of projects built, still managed to dynamize and Archigram re-inspired architecture of its era scene. This is done through silly ideas, cheap graphics, a sense of humor, and enthusiasm. But, wait, what the -? Oh, that panelists must have forgotten, because he returned to discuss the building immediatetly: no ideas, no enthusiasm, no architecture.
Architecture is not limited to the building!
While the Air Force bases, oil derricks, secret prisons, storey car park, JG Ballard novel, Robocop, art installations, China Miéville, the Department of Energy waste burial sites in the mountains of southwestern Nevada, Roden Crater, a subway station left, the valve Manhattan , where a helicopter refueling platforms on artificial islands in the South China Sea, emergency space shuttle landing strip, particle accelerators, the lunar base, Antarctic research station, Cape Canaveral, where the nursery on the outskirts of Poughkeepsie, King of Prussia shopping mall, chippies , Fat Burger stand, Ghostbusters, mega-slums, Taco Bell, Salt Lake City multiplexes, Osakan monorail hubs, weather research poles on the banks of the Yukon, Hadrian's Wall, Die Hard, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Warren Ellis, Grant Morrison, Akira, Franz Kafka, Gormenghast, San Diego's Rancho exurban islands bad housing, Denver sprawl, James Bond movies, and even, yes, Home Depot - not every one of them is a building, but they are all related to architecture.
Each item in the list that should be considered fair game for really interesting, dynamic, and other forms of intellectual adventure of architectural criticism. (And, obviously, many people have written about these things - including some panelists from last night. I'm just making a point).
2) Finally: The Archigram of today do not learn by Bernard Tschumi and blatant imitation of Manhattan Transcripts. Archigram was a working day for Electronic Arts, who did not know who Walter Gropius was, and offer more insight about the future of urban design, space, and the built environment for more people, in more age groups, in more countries, than the practice architecture critic will ever do, write about Toyo Ito.
Video games are a new architecture leaflets.
Being a critic of architecture means writing about architecture - even writes about Le Corbusier and Toyo Ito, sure - but it means writing about architecture in every manifestation: whether or not it was built, designed by an architect or not, appear in a videogame or not, found anywhere other than in a novel or not, whether it was intact or not - even if it was on the planet Earth.
If a critic can make people to realize that the world of everyday architecture and malls and garage bad haunted house novels worthy architectural analysis - and that architecture even interesting to discuss - then maybe the trade journals can get back some of their customers. At least, it's worth a try.
Even if it means to say: Well, the new Home Depot sucks. source: bldgblog.blogspot.com
In the end, it was a good conversation stimulating and worth the trip - but I'm going to think two or three points still need to be done. Although some of the things that came after that, without controversy, as he spoke with David Haskell and panelists, I want to expand and clarify some things.
First, since the beginning, one panelist stated: "It's not our job to say: Well, the new Home Depot sucks ..."
But of course it was!
That's your role; that's now built environment as experienced by the majority of the American public. "Architecture," for most Americans, means that Home Depot - not Mies van der Rohe. You have the right to talk about that architecture. For questions about accessibility, use of materials, and land policy itself, if you could change the way Home Depots around the world designed and built, you will have an impact on space and building construction industry was several times greater than the change is only one skyscraper in Manhattan - or San Francisco, or Boston's Back Bay.
You also will help people realize that their local Home Depot architectural concerns, and that every person has the right to critique - or celebrate - these buildings now popping up on every corner. If only the critics choose to write about avant-garde headquarters central pharmacies in the forests of New Jersey - to quote Le Corbusier - and then, of course, architecture critics will continue to lose viewers. And it is losing audience: this was agreed unanimously by all the panelists last night.
Simply put, if a user everyday everyday architecture does not realize that Home Depot, Best Buy, Walmart, and even Tesco, Sainsbury's and Waitrose, can be criticized - if people do not realize that even the suburbs and shopping centers, parking can be criticized - then you end up with a situation of architecture we have today: low quality, so is housing, not logically designed and comfortable with no excess amount of closet space.
And nobody said anything.
To use a musical analogy: You can have a thousand and one interesting, inspiring, intelligent, widely referred to, enthusiastic, and even opinion-changing conversation about music with almost anyone - including what the person is listening, why, what their own soundtrack, what "bip-hop" really means, whether or not "post-techno" there, what they really want to hear on the radio, file sharing should be legalized, Chris Cornell was this generation Sammy Hagar (answer: yes), etc.
But to infer from the conversation - because there is no mention Stravinsky or Bach - that those philistines who do not care about music is absurd. In other words, maybe my cousin could not say Deleuze and maybe he did not know who this Fumihiko Maki, or even Frank Lloyd Wright, but does that mean he does not care about architecture?
Because, one critic writing for approval by another critic, who writes another critic, who wrote for some editor somewhere, or head of department, and no one wants to step out of line. You want to talk about videogames, or Tim Burton film, or the court as described in the books of JK Rowling - but nope: it all Zaha, all the time.
Meanwhile, the subscription level falls.
Furthermore - though this may conflict with what I said above - a strong and interesting architectural criticism is determined by how you talk about architecture, not the building that you choose to talk about.
In other words, good: you can talk about Fumihiko Maki instead of, say, Half-Life, or Doom, or super-garage, but if you start quoting Le Corbusier, or arguing about whether something is truly "parametric," then You do not have to wonder if people who are not graduate students, studying with one of your friends at Columbia, put the article down, get in the car - and drive to the mall, up the knotwork crosses himself Crosstown flyovers and neo - Roman park that most critics architecture was too busy to consider analyzing.
Throughout, your non-Adorno-reading former customers will be able to interact with, naturally, and may complain about the architecture - but you have lost the perfect opportunity to participate
Which brings me to two points late, and I'll try to be quick:
1) Architecture criticism means writing about architecture, not writing about buildings.
Miraculously, in the middle of last night, one of the panelists mentioned Archigram - almost wistfully - commented that, although the lack of projects built, still managed to dynamize and Archigram re-inspired architecture of its era scene. This is done through silly ideas, cheap graphics, a sense of humor, and enthusiasm. But, wait, what the -? Oh, that panelists must have forgotten, because he returned to discuss the building immediatetly: no ideas, no enthusiasm, no architecture.
Architecture is not limited to the building!
While the Air Force bases, oil derricks, secret prisons, storey car park, JG Ballard novel, Robocop, art installations, China Miéville, the Department of Energy waste burial sites in the mountains of southwestern Nevada, Roden Crater, a subway station left, the valve Manhattan , where a helicopter refueling platforms on artificial islands in the South China Sea, emergency space shuttle landing strip, particle accelerators, the lunar base, Antarctic research station, Cape Canaveral, where the nursery on the outskirts of Poughkeepsie, King of Prussia shopping mall, chippies , Fat Burger stand, Ghostbusters, mega-slums, Taco Bell, Salt Lake City multiplexes, Osakan monorail hubs, weather research poles on the banks of the Yukon, Hadrian's Wall, Die Hard, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Warren Ellis, Grant Morrison, Akira, Franz Kafka, Gormenghast, San Diego's Rancho exurban islands bad housing, Denver sprawl, James Bond movies, and even, yes, Home Depot - not every one of them is a building, but they are all related to architecture.
Each item in the list that should be considered fair game for really interesting, dynamic, and other forms of intellectual adventure of architectural criticism. (And, obviously, many people have written about these things - including some panelists from last night. I'm just making a point).
2) Finally: The Archigram of today do not learn by Bernard Tschumi and blatant imitation of Manhattan Transcripts. Archigram was a working day for Electronic Arts, who did not know who Walter Gropius was, and offer more insight about the future of urban design, space, and the built environment for more people, in more age groups, in more countries, than the practice architecture critic will ever do, write about Toyo Ito.
Video games are a new architecture leaflets.
Being a critic of architecture means writing about architecture - even writes about Le Corbusier and Toyo Ito, sure - but it means writing about architecture in every manifestation: whether or not it was built, designed by an architect or not, appear in a videogame or not, found anywhere other than in a novel or not, whether it was intact or not - even if it was on the planet Earth.
If a critic can make people to realize that the world of everyday architecture and malls and garage bad haunted house novels worthy architectural analysis - and that architecture even interesting to discuss - then maybe the trade journals can get back some of their customers. At least, it's worth a try.
Even if it means to say: Well, the new Home Depot sucks. source: bldgblog.blogspot.com
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