February 2, 2008 | Features Opinions
A Letter about Architectural Criticism
Many would have read Non’s Article “Culture of Criticism” and here is an article long overdue which would add on to the context of what Non is talking about. A couple of months ago, I received an email from Non about a series of correspondence exchanges that he had with some members of the architectural fraternity in Thailand. It sparked off a series of email conversation between me and Non and we have decided that what happened should be shared with the larger FFW community.
It all started with Non’s critique of an article published in Art4d (see scanned article)
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Adib is the co-founder of FIVEFOOTWAY and a senior designer at FARM. He is also sometimes known as misterdibster.
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I admire Non and FFW to take this important issue seriously… as it is far overdue! In Thailand, we don’t really have a foundational stage building for ‘criticism’, especially in the field of architectural and urban studies. Different interpretations of ‘criticism’ from different persons are always possible because we have different understandings of ‘how’ to criticise - if we even would understand its root meaning at all! Usually, ‘respect’ and ’seniority’ play far more priority than using intellectual ‘content’ to be frankly discussed. Therefore, less capacity to accept and react to criticism is the result. Are we ready for the paradigm shift? Yes for a few independent ones but there would be “No” answer from many, I guess!!!
Adib and Non,
I admire the effort to raise the issue of architectural criticism too. I fear however, that the real issue of criticism is in effect a bag of worms.
Firstly, as pointed out already, the word criticism carries multiple overtones. Etymologically, the word “critic” is derive first from the latin “criticus” (which itself came from Greek “kritikos”), which means “able to make judgements”.
The second meaning of criticism - to censure, to fault-find - stems from the idea of being “of the nature of a crisis”.
The notion of “criticism” thus becomes loaded with multiple meanings which is why I sense the the problematic has to be further framed on finely-grained levels.
Even in the realm of architectural criticism, one cannot help but notice its sheer diversity. On one hand we have the uber-brainy critical theorists like Michael Hays, Mark Wiggley, Foucault, Beatriz Colomina.
On another level, we have the architectural historians - like Vincent Scully, Robert Stern, Peter Blundell Jones, Nicholas Adams. Their writings on architecture are of a different language and frame of approach as comapred to the first group…. often placing the studied architecture within a socio-historical framework.
And then again, this group differs from the kinds of architectural critics we see in the newspapers - people like Nicolai Ourousoff (NY Times), Edwin Heathcote (Financial Times), Ada Louise Huxtable, Paul Goldberger … they cater to a different readership, are more often cultural commentators whose personal readings of buildings are not honed from architectural training but from an understanding of how architecture relates to popular culture, society, history and the issues of the day.
We all believe that a culture of criticism is important because it opens a kind of discursive dialogue that is the stuff that gives substance to form. But the sheer diversity in ways of engaging in this architectural criticism means that this dialogue isn’t always direct. How does the historian speak to the esoteric theorist?
The problematic is further confounded by the fact that a building can be read in 1001 ways by 1001 people…. across the trajectory of time, contemporary issues will re-alter the frame of how architecture is being judged, and re-judged, and re-judged. How then can criticism honestly reveal the truth underlying a real building when truth itself is amorphous and ever-changing? (think Mies’ less-is-more giving way to Venturi’s less-is-a-bore, which gives way to Johnson’s I-am-a-whore !)
Perhaps because of the complicatedness of the issue, I view criticism in more modest terms - that of being a feedback channel and a means of opening discursive dialogue/debate. An excellent Singaporean example Tay Kheng Soon’s stinging rebuke to Soo Chan’s professed “Neo-tropicality” (around year 2000?), in which TKS argued that Soo Chan’s works were mere formal derivations from European modernism (Van Doesburg, Rietveld, Malevich..) and should not pretend to live under a self-invented title of “neo-tropicality” since it was discursively nothing new
My concern with Singaporean architectural criticism culture is that writings on Singapore architecture still deal with the formal (how the plan was laid out, etc etc) in too deferential a manner, and often stop short of asking the crucial deeper questions that underlie the work.
To dare to ask such questions, there must be the sense of individual autonomy that is part of modernity. We still seem to be a culture that panders to a canon (or a trend) than to dare to ask the deeper questions that generate substance.
( On the side, I so want to see an architecture column on the Straits Times….. it’s about time!)