Pixel Points -- in a post on one of my favorite subjects: the formation of public opinion about the built environment -- notes
Architects often puzzle about this paucity: about why the large and costly constructions in which we pass our lives, and which are the most conspicuous shows of our civilization, should command so little space in the mainstream press.
I wonder, too. But I think the problem -- lack of media attention to the built world -- stems from its capture by snobs (I won't call them cognoscenti as I wouldn't want to elevate the judgment of folks like Muschamp and Ourossoff) and the subsequent characterization of architecture as art. There's your problem: art. It's a verbal sieve which separates. Get rid of eye-candiness as the way to measure a building and you might have a chance to broaden the discussion so that it is not merely subjective opinion on whether red is a nicer color than blue, which is really what much of the fancy-pants critics are all about.
Btw, her criticism here is not entirely fair:
...it's time to enlarge the scope of mainstream architectural journalism, to move beyond the tight focus on beautiful and often remote objects and consider buildings and places of all sorts, and in terms not just of aesthetics but of technology, ecology, politics, economics, race, class, etc.
I do not think that's a fair criticism for the writers in my list of Mainstream Media Design Critics (see sidebar.) Most of them, maybe all of them, really do cut a fairly wide swath intellectually. But Pixel Points' comment is certainly well-taken when it comes to the 400 pound gorilla on West 43rd Street.
Despite the disclaimer -- "I'll confess I've been concerned that this post runs the risk of unseemly self-interest" -- Levinson's article reads more like an intense exercise in looking deeply, deeply into the navel of architectural criticism rather than an unfair swipe at other architecture critics, or any sort of call to arms. Actually, navel gazing for architectural critics is to explore a navel within a navel: it's discussing how criticism of the subject is doubly pointless because architecture is not a widely considered topic. The weak invitation to other approaches at the end of the article can't possibly be taken seriously:
if only because she throws entire other intellectual disciplines and subjects in apropos of nothing. Has she seriously considered that any of the disciplines that she mentions, such as technology and ecology, might have (a) entirely different aims, such as technological rationalism or development, ecological sustainability or restoration, and (b) have already moved this debate beyond where architects and their critics currently are? There is a great deal of compelling discussion about green buildings and ecology (Hi, I'm global warming) occurring in the mainstream media but well outside of architecture.
I may be preaching to the choir here, but is it possible, just possible, that architectural criticism has reached its absolute nadir because the discussion of architecture among architects themselves is so poor? Do we have any compelling examples of architectural discourse that go beyond the cult of celebrity (aka "star"chitecture), haphazardly borrowed theoretical concepts, fetishization of the image, self-published and self-glorifying monographs, and commission/job-hunting through endless post-rationalization?
Levinson misidentifies the "categorical mismatch" as space when she says that the "buildings are far-flung or off-limits". The problem is more likely time, in that architects themselves spend little time actually looking at buildings and cities well after the fact -- ten, twenty years down the road -- and evaluating what they dubiously 'achieved'.
Posted by: David Hsu | Jun 14, 2005 at 05:23 AM