S K Y L I N E | 20 | Critical Mass
…and the Week Ahead for May 24
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And we’re back. The Venice Architecture Biennale kicked off this past weekend, one year after it was originally scheduled to have opened. Was it worth the wait? Initial impressions on social media were mixed, and the first review out of the gate, by Guardian critic Olly Wainwright, pointed to curatorial bloat and uneven, directionless displays. Were you in Venice? Or perhaps you slogged through the virtual launches and programming offered up by the national pavilions? If so, get in touch—we’d love to hear your thoughts.
In the meantime, we wanted to share a relevant piece published in issue #19. In the article, “Critical Mass,” Marianela D’Aprile finds utility in events like Venice, writing how they form “a kind of scaffold for architecture criticism.” She expands on the point and calls on critics to redirect their energies away from Twitter toward more productive, collective ends.
For those of you wondering when #20 will hit mailboxes, the answer is…soon. You can preview the issue’s contents by visiting our website and clicking on the main graphic.
Lastly, here is a sampling of this week’s events. Scroll down for the rest!
Monday, 5/24 Lecture with Eric Howeler and J. Meejin Yoon at 3:00pm; Wednesday, 5/26 SCI-Arc Presents PLANET THESIS, a Public Symposium at 9:00pm; Thursday, 5/27 Regimes of Attention with Kieran Long at 12:30pm; Friday, 5/28 Virtual Arts & Architecture Student Exhibition at 9:30am
Critical Mass
We’re one year into the Covid-19 pandemic, and the seemingly endless crises it has set off—the breakdown of our healthcare system and also of the ruthless economic system that sustains it; the urban uprisings against racism; the growing appeal of the far right—have called into question the relative import of architecture and its criticism. The inequality that rules our lives is right in our faces. It’s hard to look away, and it’s hard to find a reason we should care about buildings when more than half a million people have died. Architecture criticism can’t save lives. So, what is it good for, anyway?
Acknowledging the sense, if not the truth, of that question has led a few peers down some interesting paths. For instance, recent pieces by Chicago-based journalist Zach Mortice and Los Angeles–based critic Mimi Zeiger evidence a desire to find a new mode of criticism that more fully engages with politics. Both rightly contend that the priorities of architecture criticism have historically been set by those with power (that is, capital) or proximity to power, but part company on where to go next. Zeiger calls for the voice of the single, expert architecture critic to be replaced by a multiplicity of voices—the implication being that this multiplicity would better reflect the varied experiences of those who navigate the built environment differently than Zeiger’s rarified critic. Meanwhile, Mortice encourages critics of all stripes to recognize their role as one of calling attention to buildings as instruments of power and of the powerful, as a way to make clear how architecture perpetuates injustice. Identifying vectors of injustice—he makes special mention of gentrification—might be the first step in fighting back.
I welcome these interventions, though in my view, they both overemphasize the power of the individual critic and downplay the role of a critical institution. By “institution,” I do not mean an exclusive realm watched over by gatekeepers, but rather the sets of collective priorities and shared vocabularies that give coherence to the practice of architecture and the discussions that emerge from it. Put another way, criticism alloys the words and ideas of people generally after the same thing—to make a more humane, more sensibly designed built environment. It does this by setting parameters and standards, if only that they may be broken; and by setting priorities, if only that they may be challenged. Were we to dismantle the institution of criticism (as some suggest), then we would be depriving ourselves of the means with which we sharpen a critical line.
The pandemic has shown us what comes from that. Criticism—already flimsily held together prior to Covid—becomes splintered into hundreds of floating heads talking past each other. There are people duking it out on Twitter; there are Instagram meme accounts; there are podcasts. Everyone is reacting and responding, though the exchanges are often fleeting and temporary, and rarely all that substantial. Sometimes it feels like much of the “dunking” energy previously reserved for particularly galling displays of elitism is now directed horizontally, critic to critic.
Around this time last year, just as the reality that we were not going anywhere for a while began to sink in, the Venice Architecture Biennale announced that it was postponing the vernissage by several months. It seemed too trivial to care about then. Only now do I realize that the absence of the Biennale and of many other disciplinary “touch points” has contributed to criticism’s fragmented state.
Events like Venice act as a kind of scaffold for architecture criticism. For a few weeks every (other) year, we all agree to talk about—or make a point not to talk about—whatever happened at the Dutch Pavilion, or the installation so-and-so put up in the Chicago Cultural Center, or who the curator is at Istanbul and why, and how come it wasn’t someone else. These events condition the conversations we all have with and around each other. They set a pace and a tone; they determine which topics will matter and get a lot of attention—or, alternatively, which things don’t get a lot of attention, the glaring gaps that we notice and point out and criticize. (Politically tone-deaf exhibits, frustrating as they can be, also serve as gateways through which critics with political agendas can launch their critiques.)
Of course, it would be wrong to mistake these high-publicity spectacles for the institution of criticism itself. And besides, their temporary suspension presents opportunities for us to look ahead and think about what might take their place.
I do not mean we should make our own biennials, or start new journals, or stage new exhibitions. (Though don’t let me stop you.) I dream of something much more quotidian and mundane that starts with seeing each other not as competitors but as colleagues whose work builds on one another’s—and then acting accordingly. This means that any disagreements we have are not opportunities for point-scoring, but rather avenues through which to refine and extend our interventions while raising the overall quality of the critical discourse. Exchanges of this sort already happen in the ones and twos; it is time we take it upon ourselves to expand those circles.
For those of us committed to a critical practice that serves to clarify something about the world and the role of architecture in it, the current moment compels us to work together to build new institutions, new scaffolding, for that practice. There can be no critical mass of one, just as no sole critic can hold down a critical line for long. Marianela D’Aprile
IN THE NEWS
in Glossolalia…
Guardian critic Olly Wainwright caused a stir on Twitter when he posted an image of a garrulous wall text.
in Surprising Career Turns…
In a shock to students and faculty alike, Amale Andraos is stepping down as dean of Columbia GSAPP.
in Remembrance…
The great modern architect Paulo Mendes da Rocha had passed away at 92.
Terence Riley, former chief architectural curator at MoMA, dead at 66
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Have a hot take? Write a letter to the editor! Link here. Letters run weekly.
THE WEEK AHEAD
Monday, 5/24
Hip-Hop Architecture book talk with Sekou Cooke
1:00pm, AIA New YorkLecture with Eric Howeler and J. Meejin Yoon
3:00pm, UCLA Architecture and Urban Design
Wednesday, 5/26
New Realism, Neo-Materialism: How Global Warming and the Pandemic are Rematerializing the Debate with Philippe Rahm
8:00am, Architectural AssociationReconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America – A conversation with Sean Anderson, Arièle Dionne-Krosnick, Mabel O. Wilson, Mpho Matsipa, and Jess Myers
6:00pm, The Architectural League of New YorkSCI-Arc Presents PLANET THESIS, a Public Symposium with Kristy Balliet, John Cooper, Michael Young, Sylvia Lavin, Cyrus Peñarroyo
9:00pm, SCI-Arc
Thursday, 5/27
Regimes of Attention with Kieran Long
12:30pm, The Berlage Center for Advanced Studies in Architecture and Urban DesignHow to Run Operations at a Mid-size Firm with Trevor Bullen and Sarah Hughes
4:00pm, Monograph
Friday, 5/28
Virtual Arts & Architecture Student Exhibition
9:30am, Syracuse School of Architecture, Cornell AAP, The Caribbean School of Architecture at the University of Technology, Jamaica, Florida A&M University Division of ArchitectureThe Thompson Center: Populist Postmodernism with Elizabeth Blasius, Jonathan Solomon
5:00pm, Docomomo
Email us if you would like to write up any of the above events for SKYLINE: editor@nyra.nyc.
Five desk editors run NYRA: Alex Klimoski, Phillip Denny, Carolyn Bailey, Samuel Medina & Nicolas Kemper (who also serves as the Publisher). They rotate duties each month—the current SKYLINE editor is Samuel Medina, and the Issue Editor is Alex Klimoski.
If you want to pitch us an article or ask us a question, write us at: editor@nyra.nyc
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