Assessing the State of Architectural Criticism in Today's Press

Just listen in on any conversation among today’s architects and you will quickly sense the turmoil and frustration surrounding the state of architectural criticism in magazines and newspapers. Apparently our hands are even emptier than they were twenty years ago. Apart from the few critical voices we still have, today’s press criticism is either excessively reliant on description or based on emotional reaction (such as declaring a building “superb”) and lacking in conceptual framework. Of course, America has never enjoyed the kind of vigorous criticism that exists in England. But it has not been devoid of its peak moments either.

Moreover, the deepest debates in America today take place in small academic journals. In fact, it is as though theory has become a productive industry sustained by books, pamphlets, conferences, and doctoral programmes in schools of architecture. What is more, their language is often so abstract and their content so enigmatic that most people—even architects—cannot understand them.

This barrier of language (and thought) has created a gap between the “practical” criticism of journalists writing about cities and buildings on the one hand, and the theoretical criticism of academics who raise particular philosophical questions concerning architecture on the other. Such a gap did not exist before the 1980s. Practice served theory, and in certain periods—such as early modernism—both advanced with extraordinary determination. But today no such vision exists. Over the past fifteen years, critics have repeatedly been accused of emphasizing certain criteria while turning a blind eye to others. For instance, it was said that aesthetics had triumphed over structural and programmatic expression, or that functionalism was emphasized at the expense of symbolic representation and contextualism. Today, many critics find “criteria” to be constraining. So what should criticism do and how should it be conducted?

First, let us clarify what we mean by criticism. The critic, employing the senses and understanding, analyzes and evaluates the built environment and its impact on inhabitants and users. As Miriam Gusevich aptly stated in her essay on building criticism (1991): “Criticism is more hazardous than interpretation. Its purpose is to judge and condemn, to enthrone and to take a particular stand. Serious criticism is not mere negation; it is the discerning and thoughtful revelation of aspects that would have gone unnoticed had they not been brought to light.”

In every sense, Gusevich’s words ring true. But criticism also means taking a stand in order to expose the flaws of a building or an urban environment.

Press Critics: A Report from the Front

Once upon a time, press criticism was at its zenith. Ada Louise Huxtable, architecture critic and member of the editorial board of the New York Times from 1963 to 1982, played a major role in raising public awareness among newspaper readers about architecture. The Times, of course, was a general-interest publication. But she made it an undeniable authority on architectural matters.

Other newspapers also began regularly hiring architecture critics and commissioning profiles and personality features. She points out that “styles fell into very specific categories and people knew the main players, like members of a football team.”

But the profusion of styles also led to infatuations; the economic recession of the late 1980s caused a decline in construction; and the slimming-down of newspaper and magazine operations shrank the space devoted to architectural criticism. For example, after Diana Ketcham, architecture critic of the Oakland Tribune from 1979 to 1993, and Michael Sorkin, architecture critic of the Village Voice in New York from the late 1970s to the late 1980s, left their papers, no one replaced them. After Beth Dunlop, architecture critic of the Miami Herald from 1979 to 1993, departed that paper, her place was taken by a “writer.” As Dunlop explains, “the newspaper didn’t want ‘criticism’; it wanted writing that would promote projects.”

Jane Merkel, architecture critic of the Cincinnati Enquirer from 1977 to 1988, also ran into problems from real estate and economic interests in the city, falling victim to the phenomenon of boosterism. In her view, “the newspaper didn’t mind having an architecture critic, but it didn’t like what she actually did.”

Blair Kamin, architecture critic of the Chicago Tribune and a contributing editor of Architectural Record, believes Chicago is an exception in this trend. The Tribune not only appointed Kamin to the position of architecture critic in 1992, shortly after the death of his predecessor Paul Gapp, but also allotted him considerable space in both the daily and Sunday editions. Furthermore, the Chicago Sun-Times also has an architecture critic by the name of Lee Bey.

On the West Coast, the Los Angeles Times—which during the glory days of architecture in the 1980s and 1990s lacked a permanent architecture critic—finally hired Nicolai Ouroussoff in 1996. Nevertheless, in 1997 the respected editor Shelby Coffey was dismissed, and the paper was reorganized for a heavier workload and collective editorial effort. Ouroussoff remains optimistic, though he does not yet have a regular column. He does, however, publish extensively in the calendar section, writing previews and reviews.

Another Los Angeles paper, the Herald-Examiner, had an architecture and urban design critic named Joseph Giovannini from 1979 to 1983. Fortunately, before the paper folded in the mid-1980s, Giovannini had already secured a position at the Times’ local section. Today, Giovannini writes criticism for Architecture magazine and manages a column in the Times’ local section. He describes his work as “a blend of criticism and reportage.” He says this arrangement works well: “I’m not forced to confine my writing to criticism alone to make a living.”

But the prevailing trend in the general press and consumer magazines over the past twenty years has not been toward the kind of blend that includes “criticism.” On the contrary, the tendency has been toward profiles and biographical features rather than criticism—which might be perceived as an uncomfortable intrusion into the quality of a work. Glossy housing magazines shy away from dissecting a house whose owner has consented to its publication, because doing so would upset the owner and, of course, the designer. The increase in colour photography over the past thirty years—which is usually highly misleading—in both consumer and professional press has made any negative commentary seem out of place.

From the Barbed Past

Sharp-tongued criticism was also prevalent in more mannerly eras. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Montgomery Schuyler, writing in the pages of the New York World, the New York Times, and Architectural Record, mercilessly attacked examples of the eclectic style. His most acerbic writings—especially his series of articles titled “Architectural Aberrations” in the Record—were unsigned. After him, Lewis Mumford, renowned for his humanistic outlook, did not shy from ridiculing the visual aspects of New York’s Chrysler Building—which he compared to the Escorial¹—in the New Republic in 1931.

Yes, that was how things were in those days. But today, debate in general-interest magazines is not even as common as it was ten years ago. Criticism, as it emerges from articles about Michael Graves’ Whitney addition, Gwathmey Siegel’s Guggenheim expansion, and Moshe Safdie’s Coliseum², was not merely polite discussion of successful and unsuccessful features. It was damning and devastating.

What has happened since then? Has the number of provocative projects declined? In one sense, one could say yes, because construction has decreased. In the view of Cathleen McGuigan, architecture matters less: “Apart from Gehry’s Guggenheim Bilbao and Richard Meier’s Getty Center in Los Angeles, there hasn’t been much of consequence.” McGuigan says the decline in general-press attention to architecture has coincided with increased coverage by weekly magazines of popular culture.

Dunlop claims: “Today, the mainstream press is utterly insipid.” She adds that “instead of paving the way and conveying the message ‘this is what we are striving for,’ they rely on focus groups and market research.”

Timing

Architecture is treated as an “event”—like the Guggenheim Bilbao or the Getty Center—and one must wait for the dust to settle before it becomes clear whether criticism has been substantive or superficial. In particular, Kamin, the Chicago Tribune critic, speaks passionately about “jumping the gun.” When McGuigan wrote in the January 13, 1997 issue of Newsweek that Gehry’s Guggenheim Bilbao was “becoming a masterpiece,” Kamin responded that this article, published eight months before the opening (and before the completion of cladding and before most art installations), was “the most flagrant example of a broader problem that shapes our perceptions about buildings that will shape our world.” Newsweek was fortunate that McGuigan’s predictions held up, and the reviews that followed were not only about the building’s exterior but also its interior, where artworks were impressively housed. Nevertheless, luck is not always on one’s side, and Kamin’s point is valid: only sufficient time and real evidence can aid criticism. But does a senior editor who wants to be first on the scene care about that?

Ada Louise Huxtable, who currently writes architectural criticism for the Wall Street Journal, believes that time for writing is extremely important. Huxtable no longer runs a weekly column as she did at the Times. Her contract with the Journal is to write at least six articles a year, usually appearing on Thursdays.

Herbert Muschamp, the current critic of the New York Times, has also discovered that the Times deadline is utterly exhausting. Last winter he intended to leave the paper and join The New Yorker, but after a meeting he changed his mind and returned to the Times on different terms. As he tells it: “I asked to spend a year writing for the Sunday arts section and the entertainment column instead, and to write for other sections.” He continues: “The Sunday editors have to fill their space every three weeks. There is no flexibility. And I had been doing this without a break for five years.”

The critic’s predicament is undeniable. But on the other hand, readers who wait for Sunday in anticipation of architectural discussion receive nothing but a handful of advertisements for antiques and art objects. The demotion of architecture’s status is disheartening. Readers across the country who had been looking forward to the Sunday Times share this disappointment.

Needless to say, support for criticism (and the critic) is essential. Critics often say the problem lies with editors who lack the necessary knowledge and interest. Huxtable says on this point: “Their knowledge and interest are sometimes even below the readers’ level.” Diana Ketcham says: “Editors always ask whether the architecture under discussion is fashionable or not. You have to justify your article on those grounds.” Martin Filler, who wrote for a long time in the New York Review of Books and House Beautiful, believes that the magazines themselves don’t know why they put on these airs. He says: “Fashion-conscious publications don’t really engage with the writer about what kind of article they want. They don’t have a clear idea.”

Paul Goldberger, who was the lead architecture critic of the Times from 1981 to 1992, joined The New Yorker after Muschamp parted ways with it. Now there is no longer any room for “The Sky Line”—the column that Lewis Mumford made famous. Goldberger says: “Not only must the quality of writing be there, but every idea must be marketable.”

Brendan Gill, the late critic who had long written theatre reviews at The New Yorker and wrote architectural criticism before Goldberger, used to say that weekly reviews of plays, films, and art exhibitions still had their place, but as he put it shortly before his death in an interview, “these reports tell readers to see the show or read the book, but criticism deals with the work of art and its creator.”

Agreeable or Disagreeable

Press critics rarely risk offending architects with negative commentary about them or their work, and in this way engage in a kind of polite dishonesty. Robert Campbell, who has been writing architectural criticism for the Boston Globe for twenty-four years, believes: “In urban design and architecture, terrible things happen, but critics don’t stir and don’t expose them.” He says: “I myself don’t do it enough either; I’m too gentle.”

Muschamp agrees: “In England, critics are more merciless. I take no pleasure in offending others.” In his view, the critic’s role is “to interpret the building. Evaluation is only part of it.” Others, such as Merkel, share this view.

Professional journals, too, may shy away from wounding an architect’s feelings. But their reasons are more practical. If criticism is negative, architects may refuse to cooperate with the magazine in the future, since they own their designs and can withhold them from publications, and they often bear part of the considerable photography costs. Of the three or four magazines that once existed, today only two remain with which architects seeking publication of their work can collaborate.

At present, both the Record and Architecture publish more reviews out of a sense of duty. However, they often assign these not to their own staff writers but to outside contributors. This policy may please established architects who are more offended by criticism from lesser-known staff critics than by criticism from more recognized outside reviewers. But it limits opportunities for new generations of press critics who need to learn on the job. This policy will also restrict criticism to “major events” involving celebrated architects. If the many significant buildings that are introduced in incomplete and half-finished form were subjected to more serious evaluation, the landscape of American criticism would be better than it is.

“Gray Hair (Now Dyed)”: Madam Chairperson

People do read the New York Times architecture critic’s work. They talk about it. And more than anyone else, depending on the critic’s reputation or distinguished standing, they quote from it.

Muschamp, who employs a much more personal style in his criticism, is probably more provocative than Goldberger. Muschamp’s approach bears no resemblance to Goldberger’s method. It was said facetiously that Goldberger was so intent on maintaining balance that the reader was constantly whipped from one side of the argument to the other (he apparently abandoned this method at The New Yorker).

Muschamp’s own feeling toward a building or urban ensemble, as he himself puts it, is “without ceremony.” But he defends his personal mode of criticism, which is more analytical than impressionistic. In his own way, he tries to examine the psychological motivations of architects and clients, as well as his own reaction to the work. He also attends to “the contradictory psychological dimensions of the city.”

Muschamp’s supporters appreciate the fact that he filters his analysis of a building through his own personal and emotional state, finding it refreshing. But others consider it self-indulgent and one-sided. In his defence, Muschamp says: “Self-absorption, visual sensuality, and psychology are all interesting to me intellectually. I have been a follower of Zen Buddhism for years.” He adds: “In the Buddhist tradition, enlightenment means the integration of mental perception and objective reality.”

Criteria for Criticism Evolve over Time

How a critic structures an argument is one matter; what criteria are used to evaluate architectural work is another. Since the mid-nineteenth century, when architectural criticism began appearing in American journals, various criteria have taken shape according to the values and design principles of each era. In the late nineteenth century, visual aesthetics based on harmony, proportion, and rhythm gave way to belief in honest expression of materials, structure, and function, together with decorum.

With the ascendancy of functionalism and honesty in structural and material expression in the first half of the twentieth century, aesthetic criteria gradually embraced modernist characteristics: volume (as opposed to mass), asymmetry (as opposed to symmetry), and the elimination of ornament. By mid-century, the concept of kinesthetic movement—the visual and tactile sensations perceived by a viewer moving through architectural space—emerged prominently in architectural criticism. In the late twentieth century, symbolic representation, contextualism, and tectonicism (with its renewed emphasis on craft, structure, and space) appeared.

Many press critics today, when asked about their criteria, associate the term with some ideology or a set of vague rules. Although evaluation is based on criteria formed within a rational framework and reflecting the values and perceptions of the age, the suspicion that has developed toward criteria and standards is bewildering. Robert Campbell believes that a critic need not be precisely aware of these criteria, but adds: “There comes a moment when you are searching for something in a building, and the building helps you articulate things that go beyond the building itself.”

What will the sum of all this be? What unknown factors and psychological pressures, in addition to all the external factors we have enumerated, affect judgement? The absence of measured standards of evaluation, a weak cultural environment for debate, and the critic’s necessity of writing for diverse audiences with different needs and varying degrees of knowledge are among the significant obstacles. Add to these the lack of editorial support, insufficient time, and even very little money. Then it is not difficult to accept why criticism is in trouble.

Finally, one last question deserves asking: does it even matter? Do press critics have any real effect? Sorkin has said: “Frankly, I don’t think I’ve made a mark on the real world.” However, Kamin and Dunlop point to specific instances where their firm stands have yielded results. Other critics, like Ouroussoff, say they don’t claim to have stopped or advanced any project, but have at least fuelled discussion and debate.

Whether Muschamp’s personal approach has the power to change the experience of criticism for better or worse is a matter on which opinions differ. In Joseph Giovannini’s view, “Muschamp has broadened the scope of criticism today with his ‘identity criticism.’” But Diana Ketcham warns that “the subjectivism of architectural writing, if taken to the point where the critic becomes so absorbed in self-reflection as to block every differing viewpoint, will be harmful.”

Theoretical Criticism: A Thriving Field

For more than thirty years, theoretical criticism—as opposed to practical or applied criticism—has been a thriving academic field. Since before Vitruvius, theory, criticism, and architectural practice have been interdependent.

Nevertheless, the latest round of theoretical research in architecture differs from earlier ones because of its diminishing regard for practice and its separation from the concerns of press criticism (including a preference for discursive prose). In the 1980s, a younger generation of architecture theorists—who had studied architecture and often held doctoral degrees—appeared. They continued the previous generation’s efforts to integrate concepts from other disciplines such as literature, philosophy, and psychology into architectural discourse. But they shifted the focus.

K. Michael Hays, founding editor of Assemblage—the leading American journal in theoretical criticism—says: “For the first time, specialists in architectural theory appeared who no longer claimed to practice—and there was no blame in that.” Of course, exceptions still existed, such as Peter Eisenman and Bernard Tschumi, who transformed their practical experience into theory and vice versa. But the times were pregnant with something else. The focus of debate shifted from ideas about built things to ideas about ideas. The gap between theory and practice, and between theoretical critics and press critics, widened rapidly and in the 1980s became a chasm.

Catherine Ingraham, a theory writer, had already noted this in 1987 in Inland Architect. Joan Ockman, who was editor of Architecture Culture from 1943 to 1968, stated in 1993 that one of the factors exacerbating this gap had been scholars’ suspicion about how postmodern architects of the late 1970s had used semiological or structuralist theories. Perhaps the sweeping impact of the 1980s prevented the wider dissemination of theory. But the other side of the story also deserves attention. As Mary McLeod, who holds a doctorate in architecture, has noted, the social and political dimensions of architecture remained neglected.

Nevertheless, the gap between theory and practice is now receiving attention. Theoretical debate in practical areas of architecture or in socio-cultural matters such as gender, race, and questions of identity is gaining wider currency. Books such as The Sex of Architecture (1996), of which Diana Agrest was co-editor, and Mark Wigley’s White Walls, Designer Dresses: The Fashioning of Modern Architecture (1996), as well as theoretical-historical works—such as Beatriz Colomina’s brilliant study of Adolf Loos and Le Corbusier in Privacy and Publicity: Modern Architecture as Mass Media (1994), or George Baird’s The Space of Appearance (1995), which seeks to unite theory and building criticism—play a major role in bridging the world of ideas with tangible issues, to the benefit of both.

At the same time, opinions differ on whether such a gap exists, and if it does, on whether the gap is even a problem. Mark Wigley, who teaches architectural theory at Princeton, believes that between theorists and practitioners there is no serious gap, and that if there is one between theoretical critics and press critics, it is understandable and unsurprising.

Wigley, who claims to deal with a broad readership of various nationalities in the field of theory, continues: “The most intelligent remarks I have heard have come from practitioners.” Nonetheless, he does not believe that press critics should purge criticism of theory and then present it to the public. He says: “If theory is pre-digested for immediate consumption by the reader, it will lose its value. Moreover, the time when the press critic represented society at large has passed. The internet attends to the needs of each group of readers in their own language.” He says: “Architects are like physicists—to advance knowledge and develop concepts, they must use a specialized language.”

At the same time, some experts, such as George Baird—a Toronto architect and Harvard professor—claim that press criticism is “not entirely sufficient.” In Baird’s view, “if the different kinds of criticism had overlapped more, the health of criticism would have been better assured.” Cynthia Davidson, editor of Architecture New York (ANY)—a magazine that is “intellectual, illustrated, and in plain language” and is part of the Anyone Corporation—and Peter Eisenman believe that “points of connection” should be created to encourage “more voices of criticism and, consequently, more fully-fledged criticism.”

One of the most intelligent examples of applying theory to practice was provided by Peggy Deamer in her essay “The Problem of Form: Exploring the Work of Charles Gwathmey” in ANY, issue 11 (1995). Deamer, an architect with a doctoral degree, analyzed Gwathmey’s work in terms of his formalist use of abstraction and composition. Rather than criticizing Gwathmey’s excessive formalism—as others have done—she argues that Gwathmey has not pushed his formalism to the point where it enters “the realm of materials, tectonic quality, scale, and bodily pleasure.”

Deamer’s argument, in terms of her expanded definition of formalism, points to a kind of evaluation based on the mental experience of the individual, derived from visual and kinesthetic factors. She is not alone in this view. Others too, in Agrest’s phrase, examine “the position of the observer in the perception and experience of architectural work.” But all of them warn of the danger inherent in this kind of introspective inquiry—it is a trap in studies that are based solely on self-reflection.

View from Above

The question that must be answered is this: how far can the critic go in conveying mental experience to the reader before the evaluation becomes excessively personal? For the mental experience to be effectively conveyed, it must be comprehensible on a broad level.

The importance of this mental dimension was recently highlighted in a provocative passage by Herbert Muschamp about Guggenheim Bilbao in the New York Times Magazine (September 7, 1997 issue). Muschamp compared Gehry’s moonlit, curvilinear, titanium-clad building to a famous American actress, expressing his view as follows: what reminds me of the resemblance between the actress and this building is that both represent American-style freedom—a sensual, exciting, intuitive, and exhibitionistic style. A shifting, fluid, physical, fleeting, bold, glittering, and fragile-as-a-newborn style... that, if aroused, would strip itself bare.

Muschamp’s comparison is obviously provocative. In particular, the passage quoted from him elicited reader reactions. Some found the imagery appealing; others considered it a disconnected flourish. Questions arose—for example, why should a 1950s American sex symbol be the appropriate vehicle for comparison with a work set in the Basque region of Spain in 1997? Had Muschamp more clearly explained his intention with this comparison, or his interpretation of that kind of freedom, people might have said all these words were merely an attempt to prove that the visual resemblance between the actress’s slipping dress and the building’s undulating walls is an intrinsic reality.

Nevertheless, Muschamp’s attention to the critic’s mental state is important. Because a critic who pronounces judgements in an authoritative manner as though they were objective facts has often proved nothing but superficiality. In connection with subjectivity, kinesthetic experience must also be taken into account—the critic’s mental perception of the various surfaces of a building as one passes through it. The participation of others in this experience that the critic conveys becomes the basis for an evaluation that is comprehensible to the general public as well as professionals.

Although kinesthetic experience has not achieved the acceptance of other criteria for judging architecture—such as aesthetics or functionalism—its strengths and weaknesses become apparent in a number of evaluations. One of the most salient examples is the Getty Center by Richard Meier in Los Angeles, which opened amid extensive critical coverage in December. Among those who took up the Getty, Martin Filler, Lawrence Weschler, Nicolai Ouroussoff, Robert Campbell, Aaron Betsky, and Blair Kamin all made coherence the basis of their judgement of the complex. Each defined coherence in a different way, but ultimately it was in the visual and tactile reaction of the body while moving through the centre that this coherence was—or was not—confirmed.

Martin Filler, in his highly controversial review of the Getty—from which “big rock candy mountain” was repeatedly quoted—in the New York Review of Books (December 18), explained that the buildings, designed with a savage excess and with “restless forms and the intermingling of stone, metal, and glass,” had failed to achieve coherence.

Lawrence Weschler, one of The New Yorker’s staff writers, stated in an article in the Los Angeles Times Magazine (December 7, 1997) that “the Getty Center has not achieved a concise definition of a single entity... despite its ingeniously discernible coherence of lines and arcs, it neither carries the force of a single symbol nor creates a sense of unique place in its entirety.”

Robert Campbell, in the November 1997 issue of the Record, criticized the Getty in similar terms: “There is no master narrative that tells you about the Getty. You are drawn into it in the same way—without ever entering a place that has a centre and a sense of settlement.”

Aaron Betsky, in the December 1997 issue of Architecture, said: “What has been created lacks hierarchy or logic.”

Whether the complex is defined in terms of vistas and panoramas, or as a series of movements culminating in a focal point of concentration, the impression of coherence emerges in the experience of the complex. As Blair Kamin noted in the Chicago Tribune (December 7), referring to what the Getty lacked: a “single great building” or “a Parthenon atop an Acropolis” could have reinforced that coherence.

View from Above (Continued)

None of the critics discussed whether the aerial perspective (or bird’s-eye view) of the Getty—the architect’s vantage point when designing the complex as he looked down at his drawing board—possessed coherence or not. This viewpoint is precisely what Le Corbusier championed in the modern perspective: a complement and even a corrective to the experience of architecture at ground level. According to Beatriz Colomina, Le Corbusier played an important role in demonstrating the difference between these two types of perspective by directing attention to this new way of experiencing architecture from above. Of course, Le Corbusier did not wish to deny the importance of the experience of architecture from the ground, or of the promenade architecturale—in which body, eye, and mind are all engaged.

When we look at the Getty, we realize that the complex as seen from above (or from the perspective with which Meier worked on the plan) is more coherently integrated with the topography of its site. Meier, like Le Corbusier, was drawn to the aerial perspective. But the scale of the Getty complex overwhelms the sense of totality or unity expected by the observer’s mind. As Meier’s critics contend, he did not give sufficient weight to the most common experience—the experience from the ground.

It is obvious that this kind of experiential criticism is especially suited to readers of non-specialist publications like the New York Review of Books or the New York Times, where photographs are used sparingly and plans are almost never published. Filler, in his article on the Getty, with his rich but slightly acerbic prose, takes the reader from the white structure to the grey parking garage and then to the sunlit white-grey centre on top. He then writes: “The first sneer of this sanctuary of the visual arts is that after the tiresome journey to reach it, the sun won’t even let you see it properly.”

Filler uses his experiential descriptions to bring the reader inside the galleries, but once he tries to weave the Getty’s historical background and art collections into the text, the role of kinesthetic qualities diminishes. The rest of the discussion about architecture is overshadowed by accounts of behind-the-scenes manoeuvres before the building’s construction.

Filler believes that kinesthetic experience is a trap that deceives the critic into relying on description born of sensory pleasure. Indeed, the writing can even descend into the vagueness of Muschamp’s prose. In his piece on the Getty for the December 1, 1997 Times, Muschamp describes his impressions interspersed with his characteristic witticisms. He mentions that Meier invited a few people to watch the sunset at the Getty Centre: “‘The sun’ sinks into your body, inside your eyes. It grows more golden and more golden, and in the twilight you arrive at a pure Apollonian moment.” “Deer eating the flowers join this party,” and their merriment, like the critic’s, has nothing to do with architecture. But the reader is ultimately left wondering what Muschamp really thinks about the architecture.

Weschler’s writing about the Getty in the Los Angeles Times is suffused with romanticism: “It is that same breathtaking panorama I remember with love, but so exalted that it defies imagination. It suddenly retreats and once again, of course, from a different vantage point, appears everywhere.” It should be noted that Weschler, like Ouroussoff in an earlier piece in the Los Angeles Times, emphasizes spatial design in the totality of the architecture. In Ouroussoff’s view, the spaces between the buildings “dazzle the eye and yet draw the visitor along in pursuit of art.”

Apart from press critics, theoretical critics too have examined the feeling of experience and architecture by reflecting on their own impressions. Many of these examinations have been oddly impersonal and abstract, but evidence suggests that the situation is changing. ANY has devoted its issue 21 to this discussion: “Ways of Looking: How Seven Critics View Seven Buildings.”

In particular, two pieces—Sarah Whiting’s review of Jean Nouvel’s Congress Centre in Tours, and Cynthia Davidson’s analysis of Rem Koolhaas’s Kunsthal in Rotterdam—represent important efforts to cultivate an experiential form of criticism in which the critic serves as a moving observer who sees and thinks. Davidson, instead of dwelling on sensations, takes a cinematic approach: “Jean-Luc Godard’s editing in film, with his abrupt cuts, comes to mind—where the time between frames dissolves so that we no longer witness the continuity of narrative scenes but are suddenly, in the blink of an eye, hurled into a new visual realm.” Whiting, too, while gravitating more toward visual and kinesthetic examination, employs cinematic references: “The interior of the building is actually a realm where games of real reflection, luminosity, transparency, and the complete intermixing of the conventional distinctions of walls, floors, and ceilings constantly strike your senses.”

The difference between theoretical criticism and the press variety is well illustrated by comparing these examples about the Getty. The first group, written by men, leans toward a passive, formless, and optimistically hedonistic world. The second group, all written by women, is—while still focusing on sensory perception—more precise, more rigorous, and freer from personal indulgence. The point of this comparison was to recognize that much more work remains to be done in criticism, both at the practical and theoretical levels. Most importantly, critics must become acquainted with methods of communicating with diverse audiences.

An obvious matter we did not address in this article is how architectural criticism should connect with the larger world—with the major cultural and political issues in the way Mumford practiced it. In examining criticism within the political and social arena, the role of the individual and their engagement with the environment is forgotten. The introspective movement observed among both press and theoretical critics was a response to this situation. The next step must be an effort to restore meaningful architecture and urbanism to the larger political and social picture.