November 5, 2009 | Broadcast News

Independent blog Eikongraphia asks if architecture criticism can survive in the commercial environment. An interesting question, especially if asked in the context of sites like this. You see, we too wanted to go down the path of criticism and critical discourse in the media of print but decided to go electronic. We were duly advised that criticism doesn’t pay, literally.

“It doesn’t have to cost a lot”, the Dutch historian Bernard Colenbrander claimed in his lecture at the Masterclass Architecture Criticism that I am following this autumn: “Architecture criticism costs about 250.000 euro a year. With that kind of money you can pay about seven editors, at least a couple of them full-time.”

In the nineties, Colenbrander had been a regular contributor to Archis, the predecessor of Volume. In that magazine, Colenbrander remembered, architecture criticism flourished. Back then Archis was state-funded through the Dutch Architecture Institute by the amount of… 250.000 euro a year. Architecture criticism can only exist if it’s funded like that, Colenbrander believes.

Can architecture criticism really not survive in a commercial environment? The answer to that question definitely depends on one’s definition of architecture criticism. The Dutch ‘Van Dale’ dictionary defines architecture criticism simply as analytical writing on architecture. Bernard Colenbrander however uses a much more elaborate definition. Next to an analysis of the actual architecture, in his view architecture criticism should dive into the physical, ideological, historic and academic context too.

more via Eikongraphia

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JJ is the co-founder of 5ft Creatives and is presently enrolled as a graduate student at the Yale School of Architecture.