Paul Goldberger, a prominent American architectural critic, began his career at the New York Times as a young man in the early 1970s; in 1984 he received the prestigious Pulitzer Prize, in 1997 he went to work for the intellectual magazine New Yorker, and in 2012 for the glossy Vanity Fair. Goldberger's list of publications is very significant, but there are relatively few books, and most of them belong to the 21st century. Among them - now published in Russian by Strelka Press, and in 2009 - in English "Why architecture is needed": Why Architecture Matters, which rather translates as "why architecture is important" or "matters", that is, it is more about the meaning (importance, significance) than about functionality (need, necessity). Goldberger immediately stipulates the direct function of architecture - to provide a person with shelter, a protected space for life, and devotes the book to discourses on the types and shades of its meaning for people.
The author's goal is more than understandable and noble: to explain to the general public why architecture deserves its attention, how it differs from other types of plastic arts, where is the border between architecture and non-architecture, its high-quality and unsuccessful samples, what is a city from an architectural point of view - etc. However, as his example shows, even a great experience of talking with society from the pages of a newspaper does not provide the skill of explaining the basics, which is necessary for a good educational literature. Fortunately, there are such wonderful examples of it as "The World of Architecture" by Alexei Gutnov and Vyacheslav Glazychev, miraculously translated into Russian encyclopedia "Architecture" by Jonathan Glancey, "Love Architecture" by Joe Ponty (unfortunately, even published in English only once), published Strelka Press in 2014 “Urban Designer: Ideas and Cities” by Witold Rybczynski, and others - but there are many more opuses where it is boringly explained: here is a column, and here is an arch. But the latter can at least serve as a reference: this cannot be said about Goldberger's book.
“Why Architecture is Needed” is written in a vivid and figurative language, and its structure - the chapters “Architecture as an Object”, “Buildings and Time”, “Sense, Culture, Symbol”, etc., seem to set interesting topics. But when you read, you realize that these themes and plots are constantly eluding the author. First, he declares his position, after a few pages he completely abandons it, tries to cover several views on the problem at once, and as a result, he does not hold one. This causes annoyance even with a good acquaintance with the material described, and what will remain in the head of an unprepared reader, for whom the book seems to be designed - one can only guess.
If we take the “basis” itself as an example, then this is what Goldberger writes about the definition of architecture: “You can put it this way: architecture is what happens at the moment when people begin to build with the understanding that their actions go beyond the boundaries at least a little. utilitarian. " Or: “This house is a practical structure, built for more than just a practical purpose. Value judgments aside, this is the best definition of architecture I can imagine. " It is difficult to argue with these statements of his, but Goldberger is trying, entering into a discussion with the historian of architecture Nikolaus Pevzner, who believed: "The bicycle shed is a building, Lincoln Cathedral is architecture." Although this does not contradict the position of our author described above, he suddenly becomes offended for the shed, and he devotes many paragraphs to how important sheds are to our habitat. Can't a barn (and even a residential building) completely remain within the boundaries of the utilitarian, which Goldberger himself speaks of at the beginning of his book, and therefore not be architecture (after all, this is what Pevzner means)? However, the sheds also fall below: "These buildings are not masterpieces, and woe to those who, for reasons of political correctness, dare to assert the opposite." In general, it is not possible to understand what the author really thinks, and this applies to most topics. For example, is there a "style of time" or not? Goldberger gives an answer to this question depending on the chapter.
Another major drawback is the specific treatment of topics. The chapter "Architecture and Memory" is largely devoted to Goldberger's childhood memories - how he perceived (or it seems to him now that he perceived in those years) two towns where he lived with his parents. This is interesting in its own way, but his book is not a memoir; it would be much more important for the reader to learn about the problems of perception (although I'm not sure that they should be written about in the chapter on memory) using more vivid and universal examples. In the same chapter, there are a lot of extensive fragments of descriptions of architecture from various literary works, which can also be instructive, but not in such a volume. In general, quotes are the scourge of Goldberger's book. He constantly and in detail quotes the words of a variety of people - not only famous architects, which would be justified for a popular publication, but also numerous researchers and publicists, sometimes - the authors of the only and already half-forgotten book. Such an abundance of quotes is especially strange because they are not always interesting and original.
Another problem with the book "Why Architecture Is Needed" is the author's bias. This is partly due to market demands: American readers really prefer US-centric books, so the bias of examples and plots in the direction of domestic architecture for Goldberger is understandable. However, the regularity of his attacks on modernism, deconstructivism, etc. can only be compared with their banality. At the same time, the masters of postmodernism and traditionalism are praised, and their names seem to have been inserted into the text automatically, because "Robert Stern and Jacqueline Robertson" are there surprisingly often in the same wording. The only non-columnar modern artist who is mentioned as often and in a positive way in the book is Frank Gehry (almost always paired with his Guggenheim in Bilbao) - possibly used by Goldberger as a preventive defense against accusations of bias. If we recall that the author received his Pulitzer Prize in 1984, in the heyday of "po-mo", this position becomes understandable, but it is strange in an educational publication that claims to be objective - moreover, it was published not in 1979, but in 2009, when the dichotomy of modernism - postmodernism is completely outdated.
However, he who is warned is armed, and if you remember all the weaknesses of this publication, it can deliver some funny minutes. For example, when Paul Goldberger famously calls the banal Washington neoclassicism of the 1920s or 1940s, evidence of the considerable backwardness of American architecture of that time, advanced and related to the best examples of world architecture, and Jeanne d'Arc - "not a very pretty lady", or he writes about the town of Nutley in New Jersey with an American football field in the center (instead of a cathedral or market square) as "the most complete architectural expression of the public sphere" that he has met in his entire life - unless, of course, you count the Philadelphia City Hall and Campo square in Siena.
