On Criticism and Architecture

Here is an interesting piece by Allison Arieff from the NYT: Interesting Piece

I agree we need to think more about architecture and, obviously, more and better writing about architecture can only help that cause. Here example of critical prose is, unfortunately, right on the money. I used to be an avid consumer of architecture periodicals, now I can't stand to look at them. I complained to a Ph.D in architecture, "Architecture articles are bullshit." Her response was, "No. They aren't." Two highly trained critical minds and that was as far as we got on that issue.

Off the top of my head, I can only think of one brilliant designer who is also a brilliant writer - Rem Koolhaas. But it is important to note his best writing (Delirious New York) was based on a complete theoretical framework the book was intended to explain.

Architecture criticism is not going to improve until it is based on a clear and comprehensive theory of architecture - one that explains not only how buildings are to be designed but also why they are to be designed that way. The writings of the early Modernists are crystal clear because they understood what they were doing and why they were doing it. Robert Venturi wrote elegant and lyrical prose about post-Modern architecture because he had an idea what architects should be doing (and why). Too bad no one agreed with him (and the resulting architecture was terrible). But if you read Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture or Learning from Las Vegas you will see how knowing exactly where you stand is crucial to writing well.

We should not expect architecture criticism to improve without a clear and comprehensive theory of architecture. The best a critic can do is assume the critical position of the architect - and that means writing only about buildings whose architects possessed such a position. I could write about the Guggenheim in New York or the Whitney and do a passable job of it because I understand what Wright and Breuer thought architecture was, what it meant. I couldn't do the same for any building post 1975 - with the possible exception of the Guggenheim in Bilbao.

If someone asked me how to write architecture criticism, I would say ignore the theory entirely. Concentrate on the experience of the building. The Whitney, for example, has one of the best (and certainly the most menacing) entrance sequence of any building I know. It pulls itself away from the sidewalk, forcing you to cross a bridge to reach the doors while it looms over you. It's a fantastic sequence, beautifully choreographed. Tell me how you move in the building. Peter Zumthor's Thermal Baths in Vals is one of the most admired buildings in recent history but I didn't know you had to approach the bathing area through an underground tunnel until I looked at the plans myself. No one photographs that part because it's too dark. I don't know why no one wrote about it.

Leave the heavy thinking out of it. People don't think about buildings, they use them. Or pass through them. How does the building touch the street? How do you get in? How do you navigate once you are inside? The "architecture" part of a building is 45% facade and 45% lobby. Tell me about those things and you are 90% of the way there.

As for the really "important" buildings, the ones that are so strange they demand interpretation - huge skyscrapers, buildings with exotic sculptural structures - you could do worse than considering them as, and describing them like, people. Calatrava's buildings, for example, are drama queens everyone is going to get sick of fast.