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Chicago Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin requestions architecture criticism: Dead or Alive?

United States Architecture News - Jul 22, 2015 - 12:10   4144 views

Chicago Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin requestions architecture criticism: Dead or Alive?

Blair Kamin, architecture critic, image via chicagotribune.com 

Chicago Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin explains why the dynamic, tumultuous process of creative disruption should not be mistaken for permanent dissolution. Blair Kamin is an architecture critic, who writes in Chicago Tribune and Nieman Reports, Kamin requestions the issue of ''architecture ciriticism'' in several ways by referring to Alexandra Lange's book  “Writing about Architecture,” and some historical examples to concretize the impact of architecture criticism in terms of new digital age.

Responding to concerns that the field of architecture criticism is losing influence in the digital age, Kamin explored the state of his profession in a talk at the Society of Architectural Historians conference in Chicago this past spring. Edited excerpts follow:

Critics write the first draft of architectural history, but historians get the last word. Still, I would argue that, in some respects, your job is easier than mine.

After all, the architects and real estate developers I write about are still alive and can react to negative reviews with icy glances, or by hanging up the phone, or, if they happen to be Donald Trump, by mounting Twitter attacks that call me “third-rate,” “a loser,” and claim that I was fired from my job when, in fact, I was on a Nieman fellowship at Harvard. Most of your subjects, on the other hand, are dead. Maybe that’s why I’d really like to trade places with you. Dead architects can’t talk back.

In response to Paul Goldberger’s announcement three years ago that he was leaving The New Yorker, came these apocalyptic stories: “The Architect Critic Is Dead”…. “The Death of Criticism”—a message delivered, no less, by the distinguished critic Witold Rybczynski. This trope about the death of criticism has been proclaimed so often and with such self-righteous certainty that it must, like all conventional wisdom, be subject to rigorous scrutiny......Continue Reading

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