On the Role of Architectural Criticism T

Constructivism and Beyond. David Wild. (Courtesy of the artist.
Journal of Architectural Education, On the Role of Architectural Criticism Today 6

pp. 6–7 ª 2009 ACSA
On the Role of Architectural
MICHAEL BENEDIKT
University of Texas, Austin
Criticism Today
Let’s start with the obvious: architectural criticism building would deserve a book. Each book would Engineering Building in Oppositions? My own
takes different forms as it addresses different have not just chapter titles (in eternal deferment of Deconstructing the Kimbell? That was a try, but too
audiences. Compare a page in JAE to a page in what one might actually read in them), but text, short by about three hundred pages.
Architectural Record to a page in Dwell or the diagrams, ideas, norms, and facts-by-the-score The fact is that criticism in all the nonverbal
Chicago Tribune. Consider also the criticism that that would satisfyingly answer questions about how arts—from painting to music to cuisine—is a hasty
flowers at school reviews—the jousting, the ad this building ‘‘lives’’ (as in how this car ‘‘drives’’), as affair by comparison to the art’s production. I take
hominem remarks repurposed to refer to buildings well as questions of how it was built, what other this asymmetry to be deep and endemic to the whole
. . . a ‘‘discourse,’’ in all, that moulds the souls of buildings it resembles, and so forth. Such criticism enterprise of criticism. Altered reality, which all these
future architects while raising (or sinking) the stock could come close to matching the complexity of its arts set out to produce, is reality still, infinitely deep
of young professors—and one wonders what could subject, just as literary criticism can approach the in its subtlety and infinitely elusive in its effects upon
possibly be said in eight hundred words about complexity of its subject. And every building would consciousness. Serious artists wrestle with its very
‘‘architectural criticism today. have been experienced—by the critic anyway— body, like the biblical Jacob, emerging wounded and
I think this: that there is an unsettling igno- first-hand and over days, in equivalency of reading transformed with every work. Some critics are able to
rance in our field about what buildings do and how a literary piece. convey that struggle‘s meaning. Some critics strug-
they do it. But maybe this comparison to literature is gle, themselves, to create an altered reality by their
We lack the science: the science not so much wrong. Maybe works of architecture are more like words, be it a glimpse of the artist’s or their own. But
of materials, fabrication, or form making, or even of movies, rather few of which are examined with any most, with hands politely behind their backs, sniff at
the resource efficiencies that mark ‘‘sustainability:’’ care, and none of which are examined with any- the work and think of something to say—something
We have our eyes upon these things now, and thing like the intelligence, artistry, know-how, and entertaining, something . . . not untrue, of course,
progress, in the main, will fall into the category of hard work it took to make them. Ordinary viewers but something summary nonetheless and preferably
engineering. I mean the science—scientia, might pour out of movies like Alexander cooing with a zing at the end.
Enlightenment-style knowledge—of how buildings about how ‘‘cool’’ it was. Fine. But film critics do
attract, generate, and sustain life in and around not do much better: twenty or so smart sentences in Who wants critics to do more? I do. If I
them. What kind of life? Human life to be sure but verdict of a two-year, six-hundred-person, one- am right about the shallowness of our present
also animal and plant life. Needed is a post-post- hundred-million-dollar deployment of expertise, understanding of what buildings do, then the role
postmodern understanding of the speed of shad- technology, and energy, the sheer size and com- of critics role (beyond showing evidence of that
ows, of how air moves in a building, of what makes plexity of which could well have matched fact) is to avail themselves of the knowledge that
for spaciousness, of how we know where things are Alexander‘s original foray into Persia. It is in this would give them the eyes to see and ears to hear
we cannot presently see, of how to make rooms we disproportionality of content that architectural what, perhaps, the architect could not and the
are reluctant to leave, and sidewalks we long to criticism is comparable to film criticism, especially casual observer could not be expected to. And
walk dogs on. Needed is a post-post-postmodern when it comes from writers who have never suffered where that knowledge is not available, the critic’s
understanding of human needs and how buildings (or triumphed) through the day-to-day bringing- role would be to call for deeper investigation.
satisfy them, knowledge consisting of accurate into-being of an ambitious building. Gehry’s Bilbao The phenomenon of architecture, after all,
phenomenological analyses, been-there insights, has yet to be really written about. There are books as over and above building, is close to magical.
and even (hold on to something, now) measure- of film criticism of course, with scene-by-scene From stone and wood and steel and glass
ments, offered at a level of detail that goes far analysis of, say, Hitchcock‘s The Birds, brimming disposed this way and that, that way and this,
beyond our present-day recitation of ‘‘issues’’ and with insight about both the production and the memories and desires flutter up like doves from
how they have ‘‘been addressed—next slide reception of the work; but one is hard pressed to a hat, while spatial sensations—up, down, over,
please.’’ find the equivalent in architecture. William H. close, far, here, there—soundlessly sound out, like
For if we were to look closely enough, patiently Jordy’s American Buildings and Their Architects? chords that reverberate in the sky and in our bones
enough, and knowledgeably enough, every good Eisenman‘s 1974 account of the Leicester and make us glad to be alive.
7 BENEDIKT

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Constructivism and Beyond. David Wild. (Courtesy of the artist.

Journal of Architectural Education, On the Role of Architectural Criticism Today 6

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