Recent architecture seems to have undergone a deconsecration process, a kind of secularization. It seems indeed as if it lost the ability to represent its institutional framework, or its sense of community. Architecture seems to have lost its role. And, in such a context, even the architectural critic’s view is becoming more and more partial. It seems as if the heroic figure of the critic in these recent times has been transformed into the more captivating profile of the exhibition curator, the event producer, the showman, or the blogger. Those characters apparently lack an autonomous life because they feed themselves on anything that happens around them. Nevertheless, they are granted a power that paradoxically dictates their action, the power of the logic of the market, a power that can cause their rise or fall. There are only a few critics who manage to elude this power by proposing transversal interpretative readings in a landscape deeply marked by background noises that seldom rise above didactics, technical reports, descriptions, or narrations. Has the role of the architectural critic disappeared for good, or did critics bow down to pressures, urgencies and contemporary fashions, thus embodying all their contradictions?
“Italy is taking a position”, Journal of Visual Culture, vol. 15, no. 3, December 2016, London: SAGE Publications
MALFONA, LINA
2016-01-01
Abstract
Recent architecture seems to have undergone a deconsecration process, a kind of secularization. It seems indeed as if it lost the ability to represent its institutional framework, or its sense of community. Architecture seems to have lost its role. And, in such a context, even the architectural critic’s view is becoming more and more partial. It seems as if the heroic figure of the critic in these recent times has been transformed into the more captivating profile of the exhibition curator, the event producer, the showman, or the blogger. Those characters apparently lack an autonomous life because they feed themselves on anything that happens around them. Nevertheless, they are granted a power that paradoxically dictates their action, the power of the logic of the market, a power that can cause their rise or fall. There are only a few critics who manage to elude this power by proposing transversal interpretative readings in a landscape deeply marked by background noises that seldom rise above didactics, technical reports, descriptions, or narrations. Has the role of the architectural critic disappeared for good, or did critics bow down to pressures, urgencies and contemporary fashions, thus embodying all their contradictions?I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
