After reading and digesting the articles, I found myself dwelling on the importance of the architectural critique. Critiques hold value to the success of past and present architecture and can be used as a learning reference for future design.
One of the main points from the readings that caught my attention was the importance of experience in a critique. Jeffrey L. Meikle describes in the beginning of his essay Writing About Stuff: The Peril and Promise of Design History and Criticism:
“Thirty years ago I published a cultural history of the industrial design profession in the United States during the Great Depression. Only Later did I realize I had not actually interrogated the objects that I wrote about. In fact, while researching Twentieth Century Limited, I rarely saw, touched, used or otherwise physically interacted with the material objects and from environments I purported to describe, analyze and interpret.”
How can anything be critiqued if the critic has yet to physically experience it?
In addition, I was very drawn to Lange’s Introduction How To Be An Architectural Critic. There are many compiling factors that make for a good critic. Knowledge, historical context, vocabulary, and experience are the factors that I seemed to focus on. Lange outlines the basics for architectural critique, and I feel that although it’s not stated in her writings, that their must be some set of minimal qualifications in order for someone to critique architecture. I would not set out and critique a meal from the French Bistro down the street, because I have no formal background or understanding of the culinary arts. The same goes for architecture, and I would hope that a critique from blog wasn’t written by chef. Not to say that critics outside of our field are unsuited to critique architecture, because everyone experiences it, this is just a thought topic I couldn’t seem to work out.
On a different track, Lange discusses in detail the critical writings of Ada Louise Huxtable. Huxtable was a seasoned local to the North Shore and actually spent her summers in my home town. I had the pleasure of meeting her years ago when I was still in high school, she was very normal and at the time, I had no idea who she was. I’m getting off topic.
In 1965, Ada published a critical piece in the New York Times titled Urban Renewal in Downtown Salem. Her review focused on the historical Essex Street block in Downtown Salem as well as detailed plans for its demolition and new construction of parking garages, retail spaces, and new roads. The article did not save historical Salem entirely, but urban renewal was never completed, or even started depending on how to look at it. My point is, that although Huxtable’s critique was not the deciding factor in pursuing urban renewal, could her words have had an impact on that decision?
Lange quotes Huxtable’s parting words from her critique “Sometimes We Do It Right”
“Space is meaningless without scale, containment, boundaries, and direction… This is planning. It is the opposite of non-planning, or the normal patterns of New York development. See and savor it now, because it is carelessly disposed of.”
Does architectural criticism have the capacity to impact future design decisions? Was the area surrounding Marine Midland Bank Building altered? or has it remained? I don’t know personally.
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