Russian architectural criticism can hardly be called prosperous: there are insultingly few influential figures, and most of them in their texts appeal to the professional community, and not to a wide audience - although the indifference of society to architecture issues is considered one of the important problems. But if things are not going well with us, maybe we will find an example to follow abroad? Out of research interest, we interviewed prominent Western critics, from whom we tried to learn about their work and professional position. But first, it is worth describing the general situation with criticism and publications about architecture abroad.
Obviously, the most important phenomenon for the architectural media of the last 10 years has been the growing influence of various kinds of blogs, mainly in English. On the one hand, due to the comparative simplicity of the texts and the abundance of attractive pictures, they draw the attention of the general public to architecture, but in fact these are endless reprints of the same press releases (often completely meaningless) under the guise of not even news notes, but full-fledged publications. The services Tumblr and Pinterest are becoming more and more popular, where there is practically no text, and only the visual row remains. The creators of ArchDaily believe that the instantaneous distribution of information about new projects across the network allows a much larger number of architects to reach the fame than before in the era of paper newspapers and magazines. But in this ocean of information, you can notice only the most quoted and popular, which is not always equal to the best.
Competition in the field of media requires a quick response from a journalist, so there is practically no time left to write an interesting, “long” text. As a result, changes are taking place even with respectable paper editions: in 2012, the Guardian, one of the most talented and original British critics, left The Guardian after many years of work, and was replaced by a young professional Oliver Wainwright, whose main responsibility is to constantly replenish the site. publication of notes on the topic of the day. Due to the economic crisis and the competition with online media around the world, major newspapers and magazines are abandoning the rate of an architectural critic, and while working publicists write less and less, that is, the connection with society disappears - despite the fact that architecture affects the lives of citizens much stronger than any other art.
In the United States, there is now a lively debate about what an architectural critic should be. Nikolai Urusov, who left The New York Times in 2011, angered the professional community with his frequent articles about building "stars", inattention to the problems of New York and his lack of "involvement." He was required to be indifferent and to defend the interests of the townspeople in the spirit of the first architectural critic of the NYT, Pulitzer Prize winner Ada Louise Huxtable (1921–2013), who held this post from 1963–82. The proliferation of various types of urban activism and the social problems exacerbated during the crisis have made these demands even louder. But the ideal turned out to be unattainable: the current critic of the NYT, Michael Kimmelman, listening to the wishes of the public, began to write a lot about urbanism and the problems of the city, and in response he was immediately accused of inattention to architecture itself, and was also condemned for lack of special education (he, unlike the vast majority of his Western colleagues, an art historian, not an architect).
The professional press is also going through hard times. If you do not take the "scientific" publications far from real criticism, which are more devoted to theory than to practice, then the rest are forced to publish almost exclusively positive "reviews", if that is how you can call these neat texts. Otherwise, the magazine runs the risk of never receiving design materials from an offended architect again (and competing media outlets will continue to successfully cooperate with him). If the journalist went to inspect the new building as part of a special press tour (after all, not all architectural media have funds for business trips), he can only praise him too. Again, the text about the construction should appear promptly in order to keep up with other publications, so there is simply no time to deeply research the project or wait for the first reviews from the "users". Australian critics are doing the worst, with tough anti-libel laws allowing architects to win trials against them in the event of a negative review. However, similar complaints about the forced "toothlessness" (already without any threat of a court) can be heard from both the Finns and the French … in The Architectural Review in August 2012. But its author, architectural historian William J. R. Curtis, only joined the chorus of voices outraged by the "desecration" of Le Corbusier's masterpiece, so the magazine did not show any special valor.
But these problems, generated by external causes, are exacerbated by a much more serious factor - the crisis of ideology. The time of a clear program of modernism and historicizing postmodernism has passed, and it is not easy to isolate architectural trends now. As a result, a unified (or at least dualistic) system of values has disappeared. Every architect and even every building came to be regarded as a unique phenomenon, the importance of which is guaranteed by its very existence. At first glance, there is nothing wrong with this pluralism, and for the hero of the publication it is even flattering to be “one of a kind”. But it was precisely this situation in criticism that led to the now so condemned cult of the "iconic" building, when no creative expression was evaluated, but only described, "chronicled". This happened because without a common value scale, even if conditional, the basis of any criticism - judgment - is practically impossible: you cannot distinguish "black" from "white". The context lost its importance, aesthetics became the only measure of assessment, and architectural criticism approached in its method to art.
Now, in the sobering atmosphere of the recession, "iconic" buildings are no longer held in high esteem, they have been replaced as an idol by "social" projects. Although public importance is also a dubious criterion: from this point of view, the "House above the Falls" will always lose to any chicken coop on the "city farm". However, all these signs may indicate the beginning of the "post-critical" era, when criticism as a genre will cease to exist. Whether this will be for the better is another question.
