Criticism, even if it is unjust, and all the
more so when it is impartial, is indispensable
to the artist because it makes obliges
him to reflect, to compare and,
later, to reform. It is always of use to him.
Paul Planat, La Construction Moderne, 1987
There is nothing that is more difficult to enter the mind
of the world, and even that of criticism, than the incompetence of the author in relation to his work, once produced.”
Paul Valéry
From these stimulating encounters we have gathered uncertainties and enlightened, virtuous perspectives, as well as an interest in architectural criticism1. Nevertheless, we remain stupefied by this contemporary paradox. In the age of consumerism is it the case that everything is pleasant, nice and effective provided that we make sure that the market guarantees it, that the packaging is correct? Without any other discriminating reference, will the glorious uncertainty of art shut criticism up, considering it a vile and contemptible exercise because it is wrapped up in the suspicion of impotence highlighted in extraordinary fashion by Flaubert when he mockingly affirmed, that “one becomes a critic when one cannot be an artist”? More generally, is this fragility of criticism, particularly architectural criticism, not a symptom of a fin d’époque: that of the influence of science, or even of a positivism more predisposed to wallow in obstinate and infinite dissection than in the effort to view the quality of a work in global terms? If, as Collins argues, the profession of architect excludes professional critics, is it then inevitable that we will consider, as many advocate2, that this lack of activity will lead to all criticism elaborated by non-architects being rendered llegitimate? Without a connection to the profession, is criticism not supplanted by that which has a tendency towards contemporary common places: assesssment, communication? Is this restriction of criticism not born in the entrails of that “contemporary flacid belly” of opinion which simulates tolerance and enables the parading of productions that affect our urban landscapes because “it is democratic”, because one should not distinguish anxieties from losses3, because one should not lose one’s way in assessments that are subsequently, more or less, disavowed, because the separation between the usages and the approvals (the only ones on which criticism is founded) presupposes a legitimate theoretical armour with connections that were at times clear (Benedetto Croce and Bruno Zevi), and are less legible at present, which is a result, amongst other things, of not knowing what patron saint of judgement we should pray to?
Criticism raises problems because it would seem to have experience its ups and downs over history but also because, probably, it questions and doubts that which the heart dictates. I intend to look at both these aspects, while relating the question of the difficulties with the need to overcome, get over or dislodge them in order to rediscover their essence.
“Political” positionings in architectural criticism
Placing this idea of politics in inverted commas serves as a signal, an alert, and also revisits Marcel Cornu4. Under no circumstances to be understood in the sense of political sociology, the idea of politics diverts us to a more anthropological view of social existence; everything: ideas, buildings, industries… Accordingly, the judgement of an architectural product takes place in a social context; it is affected by, “caught up” in, a unique climate. Indeed, we could ask ourselves if the world of architects is not at a crossroads. The reception of criticism may contribute, on the one hand, to the strengthening of a brotherhood, to the pacification and legitimisation of the corps of architects as a community (against the foremen, the corporations…). But, on the other, is it not the case that criticism disaggregates them by reproducing a classification? Is criticism not a type of threat to an established architectural “state”, with users and producers trying to gain influence, according to their conveniences, over the productions and transformations of the world to be created? Was the architect in the 1970s not pilloried for failure to pay attention to the residents? He was likewise questioned by the, itself questionable, economic/technological supremacy on the part of the construction site. Did he not suffer a painful form of social disqualification simultaneously with the drainage of the markets around 1995? With the demise of the Welfare State, a great market provider, with the end of the classifications referenced on the great academic prizes and with the arrival of European architects breaking with the more performative techniques, we are most certainly not experiencing the twilight of the history of architects, but are perhaps witnessing the dawn of productive configurations that will prove to be problematic in varying degrees. This criticism that goes to lengths to steer clear of the polemics in work field of architects cannot avert the risk. Trying to stay free of it is to orient the work of the critic towards architecture and its works and inscribe it in two socially opposed directions inspired by two different political orientations.
An anachronistic policy of architectural criticism
“Time is the architect, the nation is the builder.”
Victor Hugo
That criticism finds itself transported, or exiled, by a diachrony that distances it from the time in which the building that is the object of the criticism emerged. The time that has passed disaggregates the circumstances that made it intelligible, without doubt. But at the same time, it brings the object closer, due to the fact that it emerges out of a “common gangue” full of conflicts of communities of decision, orientation and management of its construction, and of collaborations and competitions that preside over its conception and construction. The protagonists who could generate controversies about that are no longer around… or they are very simply old and tired, no longer leading the same gritty struggle to “occupy” a position in the architectural community. The launch of a product, the emergence of a work constitutes a privileged and delicate moment for all. And while, for Hugo, “to be questioned is to be noticed”, positive criticism, however, proves to be a better omen than the other kind. Finding the support of the critics who represent a public or a product is a necessary stage in the elaboration of a work. And all agree in the texts we have presented in underlining the obstacles and the difficulties that emerge when polemics is added to controversy5. “Taking time” to formulate a judgement consists in avoiding making waves, in following the public opinion carried by the surprise, the novelty, a fleeting emotion… Indeed, this anachronistic perspective underlines the critical renunciation of the pretext that “it is not easy, when visting an art exhibition, to exercise one’s humour or merciless criticism […] the words pass, the work remains and the moment of justice arrives6”. In short, this anachronistic aspect of criticism allows History to do the judging, so to speak, to compose “its work”. Returning to André Comte-Sponville7, when it is necessary to consider tradition as judgement, as evaluated history, we think more of instituted evaluation, in the sense than it imposes itself socially, being of repute; in short, a dominant opinion, a renowned attestation that can – most of the time but not systematically – be based on well-founded evaluations.
The fragilisation of the credibility given to this conserving policy of criticism was to come above all from the fact that modernity accelerated architectural production, along with the obsolescence and disappearance of numerous modern works. It proves to be likewise surpassed by the ascension of the body of built heritage which tends to affect the value attributed to any work because it is part of the context of the existence of ancestors for those who feel indebted. We have become used to relieving ourselves, if not totally freeing ourselves, of the conservation of built memories. This is a function similar to sedimentation, without an apparent reason. Correct or not, the final register does not clarify the processes according to which the work is consecrated as such.
A progressionist policy of architectural criticism
In this case, criticism is exercised immediately, in synchrony with the appearance of the building. This calls into question the hypothesis of the “insularity of criticism” in relation to the social context in which the building emerges, the place, the architectural product. The judgement could be threatened, in this case, with floundering on two formidable obstacles.
The first obstacle leads us to trick ourselves excessiveky for different reasons. In a first phase, due to ingenuity, finds himself bound to the dominant opinion, following the taste of the time or that which enchants us. Put very simply, he would judge works as if he had the guarantee that, in them, we had found the philosophal stone of architecture. Each one could discover judgements proffered in a peremptory fashion that would be totally condemned some years later. Then the judgement would be animated by a “secondary strategic intention”, to use the words of Ève Chiapello and Luc Boltanski8. A strategic objective that is altered by non-confessed intentions: making oneself loved, getting the thing sold, or making it or oneself admired... A manipulative objective, it approaches the negation of criticism to dedicate itself to reinforcing a social phenomenon of recognition, the circle of companions – not a demanding public stimulated by the work, but above all loyal fans, groupies... In short, there is the dange of it succumbing to the kind of promotional hagiography denounced by Bernard Huet and Michael Ragon and which led Frédéric Edelmann from Le Monde to organise his “kenosis”, his “flight into the desert” to escape the toils of architects9, a question that continues to concern these authors.10
The other obstacle emerges in the context of criticism without concessions, derailing a controversial “question” into the irrational. Many insist on the distortions and the relationships of principle involved in another form of erosion of criticism. As Pierre Vago11 has written: “happy that they are published and, without doubt, that they are praised, they cannot bear the slightest reservation... It has already been the case that a critique of this type has provoked reactions... even leading to a refusal on the part of the offended creator to reveal future works. This is depriving an architectural magazine of its daily bread12”. Criticism likewise questions economic interests. Again according to the same author, “there also exist the interests and ‘rights’ of corporations, the manufacturers of materials or holders of patent systems, which constitute a not negligible restraint, not merely because the balance of any magazine is based to a large extent on advertising but also because a critique can constitute, in some circumstances, a commercial loss and may give rise to persecutions and demands for losses and damage.”
Thus, the dramatic mechanisms of the “question” are most likely reorganised, in the sense in which Luc Boltanski13 shows us that this model of action will veer from the social sphere to that of the legal dispute. The critical article is not only a judgement based on arguments resulting from serene deliberation within a community of peers, but an injustice constructed as a public denunciation, asserting opinion as testimony, threatening the architect’s credibility, his access to the markets, etc. The organism that hosts in its columns uncompromising critics... assumes the role of the denouncer. The built object that has become the target of the criticism metamorphoses the designing architect into the victim. The third protagonist, the author of the critical judgement published, assumes the appearance of the offender, the persecutor. This “affair”, which can install itself in the centre of the politics of progressionist architectural criticism, clearly represents a conflict, a dispute, given that the accuser and the author will defend themselves in turn, endeavouring to demonstrate, by presenting accumulated evidence in their favour, that the question is not one of a prejudice originating in a “settlement of accounts” but the defence of architectural quality, which is in the interest of all. As for the final actor in the question, the judge, the role can be diverse: “the victim”, first and foremost, who takes justice into his own hands –
that is the sense of the first quotation from Vago; or, more commonly, he uses justice, illustrating the second reaction identified by that author.
Can we construct an exteriority of criticism?
Up to the present moment, we have found ourselves in a rather unclear position. After the enthronement of capitalism, “literary and artistic activities remained on the margins [...] or came into conflict with it, the artwork being priceless in structure and principle, even if material exigencies made it necessary to offer it on a market14”. Because, based on an aesthetic register, the beautiful created by any genius many times damned, considered sacred, a lout (who wants nothing)15, unknown, would inscribe dazzling works to the purest disinterest. This attitude was later to constitute the admiration of the intelligentsia. But, the situation changed substantially in the first half of the 1980s. Critics of authenticity “contributed to discrediting the artistic rejection of consumer goods, of comfort and of ‘everyday mediocrity’ – assimilating this to a démodé position – thus also freeing numerous intellectuals from what was, for them, in the post-war years, at once an ascetic restriction and a point of honour: contempt for money and the comfort it provides16”. In short, all are integrated in the same capitalist world, that dominated by the moral of comfort and the wellbeing that he proposes. Some of these fringes would suggest the impossibility of exteriority, the curb of the loss, an effective force in diluting and annihilating the critical perspective. Is it important therefore, in this strategy of incorporation in a system, that we verify the signature on the death certificate of artistic criticism, in particular that of architectural criticism?
Far be it from us to suggest that all are curbed by these two pitfalls. Invocation of the social dimensions is insufficient for explaining the lethargy of architectural criticism. Another reason that eludes what one could call socio-criticism directly questions the capacity to judge.
TOWARDS A VIRTUOUS CIRCLE OF CRITICISM
Interpretation
“He who is able to interpret a built work, taking this or that point of view, can enrich it, can confer a complementary stimulus upon that work”, wrote Jürgen Joedicke17. Without wishing to split hairs, first and foremost let us recognise, with Pareyson18, that judgement is by no means an interpretation. The latter is an active and creative mode of contemplation. This relationship implies an “intense and laborious activity” that works at the level of converting a stranger to the work into an audience; that audience may be targeted by the work, integrated in the work itself.... “Interpretation, as an activity, is desire to get to know and attentive effort and, as a result, infatigible inspection that is difficult to contain, abandoned as it is to the uncertainty of attempts...” Thus, this process of appropriation of a work of architecture can activate and perpetuate the creative capacity of those who frequent it, of the habitants who occupy it. That is not the type of interpretation Philippe Boudon does when he analyses Le Corbusier’s Pessac19 and discovers how the residents, each in his own way, have updated and added character to the work. And to return to Eupalinos, “the beautiful drives us, leads us to some place: by recreating, at least in us, through contemplation, the beautiful form, we become architects”. This action is perfectly comparable to a contemporary reinterpration ofMedea or a piece by Bach. But criticism, in our view, cannot be based on this.
Ways to identification of the work
“Tell me [...], have you not noticed, in walking about this city, that among the buildings with which it is people, certain
are mute; others speak and others, finally – and they are
the most rare – sing?
Paul Valéry, Eupalinos or The Architect, 192420
As many of the authors cited here testify, applying this faculty of assessment can also not be reduced to speaking of taste21, which is nothing more than expressing emotion or affirming our preferences. If Kant’s brutal rejection of taste closes one path, we find it nevertheless interesting to revisit the question of our complex confrontation with the artwork22: face to face and eye to eye.
John Dewey’s23 pragmatic view
Has one consequence of the Kantian path of criticism not been to place art somewhere in a world of privileges, of absolute “freedom”? Art that is perceived of as having originated in the minds of geniuses that invariably create unprecedented and original norms by definition adopts hallowed styles, which societies then place in the margins – in the museums, the theatres or the concert halls – so that they become consecrated through “museification”. The works would be admired socially for the fact that they thus were withdrawn from the taste of the common citizen, and proposed for the appreciation and delight of the elites only, thus being sacralised and, accordingly, untouchable. Dewey denounces the collusion of this line of thought with the growth of capitalism, which “had an elemental influence on the evolution of the museum as a centre for hosting works of arts and the idea that artworks should be kept separate from everyday life”24. In this challenge, that of bringing art down from Olympus, where learned Kantian criticism contributed strongly to placing it, Dewey argues that, on the contrary, artworks do not reveal themselves as such “in the act, but in the live dynamics of the experience”, which is summed up in the “interaction of organism (and not merely the spiritual subject) with its environment, an environment that is human as well as physical, that includes the materials of tradition and institutions as well as the local surroundings”25. Dewey, pragmatic inspirer that he is, opposes a gallery of ordered and sacralised artworks subjected to learned analytical appreciation with a dynamic and vivid relationship with makes sense to each one without constituting a fragilised pleasure. This experience, in which the “moment of passage from disturbance into harmony is the intensest of life”, would be an ephemeral, unstable but, in his eyes, necessary moment because neither chaos nor repetition of the same experience could manage to maintain the intensity of the aesthetic delight.
Art criticism, and architectural criticism in particular, is oblivious to the economy of this personal, ontological and sensitive experience. Nothing is more illustrative of this than this exchange between two members of an examination jury in a school of architecture, the director and a design professor, on the eve of the presentation. “I am going to put myself in the place of a visitor, who does not know the school, who wants to get to the library, and I will follow the trajectory. My way of getting into the design is that of telling the possible stories, creating various scenarios, seeing how that unfolds, what one finds along the way [...] One could think that this is about functionality, but it’s not just that, because, as I advance, am I feeling a pleasure of architecture – what kind of space am I passing through? If I am in a corridor, or on a monumental staircase, will I feel the light, the fresh air?” In other words, architecture should be assessed as architectural industry26 favouring a useful and functional kinetic dynamic, as a space that stimulates the senses27, giving rise to pleasure or not; sociability, conviviality, urbanity.
With all due respect to Kant and his followers, this type of criticism would allow one to place reception and appreciation, the echoes of the vital sentiment in this intimate and necessary relationship. And we find some aspects of this contribution in our final point of view. For this reason, we cannot reduce architectural criticism to the scintillation, magnificence or vivacity of the art. It is essential that we make the effort to explain this passage, which does not take place with any old object, but precisely with an artwork. The mere affirmation of a troubling experience, overflowing with emotion, stimulation and enthusiasm, even though it may respond to psychological expectation in the field of art, is not sufficient to delimit the meaning of the work in an anthropological perspective. However, we retain that access to an architectural product cannot be envisaged without this experience; this experience is one of the components of the work itself.
A European anthropological view
While it is true that the critic should be a person of culture whose knowledge in the field of architecture is without gaps, it would be a cruel illusion to believe that erudition was a necessary and sufficient condition for being a competent critic. If such were the case, then why do we not bestow criticism certificates upon historians of art and architecture? Indeed, the problems of architectural criticism – and criticism in general – derive in part from a weakness at the level of aesthetic theory, our incapacity to define the foundations of harmony. Critical attitude and solid reasoning for a judgement would imply a reference framework, “thematic material”. To put it another way: is it not necessary to have a coherent and minimal conception of the work? In the following we will briefly problematise this weakness with a view to distancing ourselves from the Kantian opinion28.
A preliminary question. We are amazed, when reading critics, at the disparity of the works in terms of construction. Sometimes it is a delimited, specific product, and sometimes the body of novels, plays, painting or buildings of a whole lifetime of creativity. Would this not be the mark of a difference29 – the style is the man – that one holds as a principle that is implicit in defining them? In the case of architecture, the conception of spatial form, one cannot speak of the work unless the previous output of the author is taken into account. Likewise, one must understand an “attack” on a work of architecture as one that inevitably targets the architect. The latter can do nothing but claim the position of the creator, for if he admits that he exposed his design to all types of requests, then he will lose his dignity and his legitimacy as a creator. Which is from where, a contrario, the idea of the impossibility of another work being created comes, as raised by Henri Lefebvre in his time30. The affirmation “the city is a work”, bringing it closer to the work of art rather than a simple material product, has transformed itself into a petition of principle for architectural criticism that disparages or does not totally recognise the city as an object in the manifestation of their judgements.
The work of art sets up an endocentric world. What does that mean? The architectural work would organise construction differently; with it, the edifice would become edifying, creating a self-referenced universe that would “sublimate” it; in other words, would transcend it, lift it above the usual limits31. We propose the analysis of two aspects that would allow us to discern this aesthetic unity. It would not be reduced to a utilitarian, functional and pragmatic purpose. Similarly, calligraphy products signs and words but at the same time sets up another plastic universe that can “charm” the reader to the point of blinding him to, or causing him to forget, the meaning of the written message. Likewise, the poem by Max Jacob32 rapidly transports us to a world that is not the realm of the pragmatic designation. The power of the rhythm lulls and tricks us. We escape from a real or familiar universe to go adventuring elsewhere. The derivation is operated by the phonetic, rhythmic and rhyming coherence which insinuates and imposes itself, and is the exclusive of the other.
“Towering up within itself, the work opens up a world and keeps it abidingly in force. To be a work means to set up a world... The world is not the more collection of the countable or uncountable, familiar and unfamiliar things that are just there. But neither is it a merely imagined framework added by our representation to the sum of such given things. The world worlds, and is more fully in being than the tangible and perceptible realm in which we believe ourselves to be at home”, underlines Heidegger33. This world can be qualified as endocentric. Why? The work discovers in itself its own objective, then it awaits a coherence without reference to an external model, conceives its own principles of rhythm, connection, return, form... from which it takes its qualities and its references; in short, the work is self-sufficient! This feeling is specifically confirmed by the Swiss architect, professor and contemporary creator, Peter Zumthor, who, recalling a strange experience of his during the design process, remarked: “I had not expected this concurrent hardness and softness, this smooth yet rugged quality, this iridescent gray-green presence emanating from the square stone blocks. For a moment, I had the feeling that our project had escaped us and become independent because it had evolved into a material entity that obeyed its own laws.34”
The architectural work results from aesthetic verifications. There is not just one register of beauty, and that affirmation leads to the radical negation of a purely logical conception of the work35. In taking that road, we find ourselves in company of authors (R. Bastide, Luigi Pareyson, Jean Gagnepain36) who question the fact that aesthetics having only one acception. For our part, we postulate aesthetic intentions: poetic (mobilising language as in the example of Max Jacob); plastic (resulting from the ordering of the elements); choral (in the sense of ceremonial and festive get-togethers37 that celebrate the pleasure of being in a group); heroic (based on the overcoming of the usual boundaries – for example, Florence Cathedral – hence the sublime38). One of the complexities, indeed a very singular one, of the architectural work is based on the fact that it could result from the crossing or arranging of four different aesthetic capacities. To put it another way, does it not tend, for the same reason that we would continue working on the work on the basis of the enunciation of these aesthetic registers, in short, to establish hierarchies of accomplishment depending on whether it satisifies one or more worlds of harmony? Did Paul Valéry not open the door to a similar hypothesis when he argued that the architectural work finds plenitude when it sings (or makes man sing39).
So how can one draw up a well-reasoned judgment? According to Pareyson, the judgements consists in deciding if a work exists and not just from the moment in which there is cohesion, adaptation between the “work as it presents itself and the work as it wishes to be” and, to return to the Italian formulation, that presupposes identifying “the immanent teleology from the form”. Accordingly, expressing a judgement to deliberate on the existence of any work or a work of architecture would simultaneously imply an almost hermeneutic capacity to determine what that work wanted to be, what the intentions are that have given risie to this thing become world (plastic, heroic, choral...) and what is finally achieved, both in terms of the intention and the final project; and would the extent of adaptation or distancing between the two not provide the foundations for a judgement? Such a conception of criticism would prevent those who consecrate it from applying to the product to be judged their own reference framework and oblige them to discover the creative “thematic material” (or aesthetic reference). The apropos aspect and legitimacy of criticism would gain support and strength in these approximations to the supposed endocentric organising principles at work in the elaboration and setting up of the work. If the grounds for such a deliberation are possible, then could the judgement not be unique? Could this be the only gateway, a narrow one indeed, to the development of architectural criticism? Whatever the case, the need for clarification proves to be necessary for criticism to be able to take a new step forward.
THE INDISPENSABLE NEED FOR CRITICISM
The crisis of meaning in current criticism
Modern architecture that is concerned with consigning the realm of ossified beauty, proposed by Vignole, to oblivion, has become obsolete for the simple fact that it attributes an almost exclusive primacy to utility (architecture reduced to the utensil), functionality, efficiency, convenience, rapidity. The dissatisfaction of the citizens, of the residents in relation to the [built] heritage of the Trente Glorieuses40 could be experienced as an escape from a kind of plastic “age of emptiness”. Critical formulations could stimulate, instigate debates, and throw up propositions and orientations for architectural creation. This debate, which is amorphous in the opinon of many, could give rise to controversies as to critical marks of reference, aesthetic qualities, doctrines, models capable of representing building qualification ideals; it could encourage research, aesthetic allusions, even though criticism has a vocation for screening and denouncing illusions. But the other aspect of the crisis of architecture also holds for the doctrines that remain fragile, diverse and less subject to major controversies. Who speaks of doctrine, speaks of references that legitimise a conduct of architectural conception, of action41. The critic could thus organise itself proceeding from the doctrine in order to appreciate the work and thus discredit or legitimise the creator’s belonging to a certain school or style of reference
The process of conception and reception
As the first audience for a work in the making, in the terms of a theoretician such as Pareyson, the creator laborans42 of an architectural work is also the first critic of that work. But this assumes great virtuosity and also great commitment on the part of the artist, or more specifically in the context at hand, the architect! Should one not place at the centre of the work that is elaborated the resident, the operator and comtemplator who, one must recognise, could take pleasure, be at ease, or see their daily routine sublimated or transcended so as to make their surroundings sing, to metamorphose “their cell” into a temple of life and avoid “walling [themselves] up alive in a mausoleum”43. For the enthusiasm, the will (as legitimate pleasure) to conceive the forms as a way of posing the problem, as suggestions, should be purified of their escórias, so as to better liberate this “immanent teleology from the form” that orders the built complex independently of the creator. This “wanting architecture” compromises, without being submerged or inhibited, with a methodical and critical doubt, to deliberate in the dynamic of the conception in progress.
But, to return to Jean-Luc Nancy, the open work should be able to be generous and dialogue with those that receive it. One can, once again, commit to modern architecture: the public will submit, will be conquered by the pertinence of the built architectural installation. Admittedly, the work constitutes in itself another world – a self-sufficient, endocentric and obligatorily problematic one – but the wager of the final conquest of the public is also the transformation of the built object/user duality in the work. Thus, this intermediate time of appropriation is resented as violence fed by a strong feeling of prejudice, of loss, of a lack of respect and of deference in relation to those who established a patrimonial mode that follows the surrounding context.
The place of architectural criticism in teaching44
The exercise of judging, concretised in the correction, is regarded as a difficult procedure for the teacher, because it is a moment that manifests his axiological distance and the significance of criticism in the relationship with the student. This breaks with a not-so-distant past in which the teaching of architecture often consisted in accelerating inventiveness without critical assessment of the project. This critical activity proves once more to be difficult because the contemporary trend is is more towards licence and authorisation than on abstinence and reticence. However, the exercise of our ethical/moral dimension should be a demanding preparation leading to a tough cycle of conception, criticism and new beginnings with a view to polishing the work in the making. This appears sometimes in the proposals of teachers as a trace of malaise, of culpability as if “correction” assumed the appearance of a “pedagogically incorrect” action. It is worthwhile re-affirming the obligatory passage through critique, through that challenging path, as to the work to be done to purify and qualify the project, for a better understanding of what is introduced into the work in the author’s ignorance, in this step forward towards architecture.
Media gaps
Take a look at Wettbewerbe Aktuell45, a monthly publication, and you will see the presentation of all architectural competitions that are launched from Saxony to Schleswig-Holstein and from Brandenburg to Bavaria. None is left out! Under the authority and signature of the chairman of the jury, and a report justifying the choice, proposals for members of the jury are made to the readers and the first prizewinner and other competitors are presented, with images of their designs and evaluative arguments. Architecture professionals and students read it all. Such clarifications present three essential virtues. Firstly, they expose the jury to observation by the readers and professionals. How could a jury chairman get involved in obscure observations when he is subject to his authority being questioned? In addition to this transparency, how can one not perceive the stimulus to critical attention inherent in a publication of this kind? And finally, how can one not think that such an instrument contributes to qualificational competition, which the Germans call ranking (or the top sixteen of the best architects)?
The time has come, as far as architectural criticism is concerned, where it is imperative that we put an end to the French vice that does not prepare future generations of architects, that encourages society neither to preserve the heritage in a sustainable way nor to be receptive to essential architectural audacities. It is necessary to put an end to certain conditions enjoyed by the critics and to feudal “states”46. We need to adapt our competitions and their subsequent criticisms to European perspectives. We need to conjugate the conceptual (and creative) capacities and the speculative thought systems in order to render criticism possible and pertinent. And finally, we need to overcome this shameful attitude of criticism; the architect judging his colleagues, particularly in competitions, has an ambiguous status that is insufficiently clear for performing an act of authority. The Germans, the Anglo-Saxon world – Peter Collins calls attention to the fact that “criticism has the same right as the architect responsible for the design” – present a more serene path for criticism and, better still, a way of strengthening the student of architecture and enlightening the public as well as those creator. |
____________
* JA would like to thank Editions de la Villette and the author, André Sauvage, for their kind permission to publish this text. It consitutes the “Conclusion” to the anthology: Agnès Deboulet; Rainier Hodé; André Sauvage (dirs.). La Critique architecturale: questions, frontières, desseins. Paris: La Villette, 2008. The book is a collection of texts on architectural criticism containing 23 authors and texts of reference and critical analysis. (E.N.)
Translator’s Note: Quotations from published works were translated solely for the purpose of this article.
1 We are by no means of the opinion that we have produced an exhaustive work. Above all one should not forget Jean-Pierre Epron for his recent worik and publications on this question, in particular: Jean-Pierre Epron. Le Jugement en architecture. Paris : BRA/MELT, 1983.
2 For Example: M. Nicolas; Richard Quincerot. Concours d’architecture 1920-1940, une qualité un projet. Genève : Université de Genève, CRAAL, 1980, p. 119.
3 In relation to this question, cf. the article by Frédéric Edelman in La Critique architecturale: “Le Monde et la critique architecturale”, p. 63-71.
4 In the perspective in which he invites us to take in “Autocritique du critique” one of the articles in La Critique architecturale, p. 37-51.
5 Hence Bernard Huet clearly asserts that this is not exactly criticism. See his text in La Critique architecturale, “Les Enjeux de la critique”, p. 76-86.
6 Henri Rapin. La Construction moderne. (Août 1927), p. 537
7 André Comte-Sponville in Une Education philosophique. Apropos the sciences, Gaston Bachelard argued that they are inalterably subjected to criticism: “Indeed, it is about exposing a action of history that should distinguish error and the truth, the inert and the active, the pernicious and the fecund [...] In history of the sciences one does not necessarily have to understand, but evaluate.” Gaston Bachelard. in L’Activité racionaliste de la physique contemporaine. Paris : PUF, 1954, p. 24-26
8 Luc Boltanski; Ève Chiapello. Le Nouvel esprit du capitalisme. Paris : Gallimard, 1999, p. 544.
9 In another field, this time literature, a critic on television known as Bernard Pivot also advocates a twofold political and moral approach of of menosprezo in relation to the medium that requires virtue and a strong and daily renunciation of solicitations and temptations of all kinds. “It would be enough for me to even once be suspected of using my role to my benefit to immediately forfeit my authority […]. I have adopted a way of life that corresponds to that choice: I don’t pal around with writers or publishers; I reject all “mixtures” [payments made to television presents for private and commercial activities].” Bernard Pivot. La confession do roi Lire. Le Nouvel Observateur. (7-13 juin 2001), p. 110.
10 Simeoforidis Allégret et Violeau (critics should be partners and not allies); Valérie Devilard. Architecture et communication: les médiations architecturales dans les années quatre-vingt. Paris : Université Pantheon-Assas, 2000. 440 p.
11 Cf.article in La Critique architecturale. “La critique architecturale: entre carcan et utilité”, p. 28-36
12 Cf. above article as well as Valérie Devilard. “Dérives médiatiques d’un système de publication professionelle 1981-1995”, que integra in La Critique architecturale.
13 For example, the seminar “Programme ‘risques collectifs et situations de crise’.”, CNRS, École des mines de Paris, cinquièmme session, Février de 1996, 163 p. P. 16-20.
14 Luc Boltanski; Ève Chiapello. Op. cit., p. 563.
15 Translator’s note: untranslatable wordplay in the original: “vaurien (vaut rien)”.
16 Luc Boltanski; Ève Chiapello. Op. cit., p. 567.
17 Jürgen Joedicke. L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui. Nº 117. (1964), p. 26.
18 Luigi Pareyson. Conversations sur esthétique. Paris : Gallimard, 1992.
19 Philippe Boudon. Pessac de Le Corbusier. Paris : Dunod, 1969.
20 Translator’s note: English translation: Paul Valéry, “Eupalinos, or The Architect,” trans. William McCausland Stewart, in The Collected Works of Paul Valéry, vol. 4, ed. Jackson Mathews (New York: Pantheon Books, 1956).
21 Does the following passage from the writings of Adolf Loos not present a similar hypothesis? “Every piece of furniture, every thing, every object had a story to tell, the story of our family. Our home was never finished, it developed with us, and we with it. It was certainly without ‘style’; that is, it had no alien, no old ‘style’. But it did have a style, the style of its occupants, the style of our family.” Adolf Loos. Ornament and Crime, 1908. Original German title: Ornament und Verbrechen. [Adolf Loos. Paroles dans le vide (1897-1900). Paris : Ivrea, 1979]
24 John Dewey. Art as Experience. New York : Minton, Balch & Company, 1934.
25 Ibid., p. 251.
26 We could attribute to this expectation a sense of search for amenity, for the charm offered by a place. In this sense, see J. M. Montaner in La Critique architecturale, “Manière et technique de la critique”, p. 123-136.
27 In further examining this question, the exegesis of the notion of “esthematopée” initiated by Philippe Bruneau; Pierre-Yves Balut. Artistique et archéologie. Paris : PUF, 1997.
28 And from the Kantian postulate, according to which the aesthetic experience is purely subjective, that “does not designate anything that belongs to the object”. (Immanuel Kant. Critique of Judgement, paragraph 1.)
29 And while this difference, which once gave rise to heroic attitude – acceptance of the condition of non-payment for the artist – has since been rendered invalid by the recent widespread phenomenon of “commercialisation”, then can criticism in our time still have a sócio-critical meaning? One should point out that “commercialisation” in Boltanski and Chiapello’s acception designates precisely the capitalist appropriation of difference.
30 Henri Lefebvre. Le Droit à la ville. Paris : Anthropos, 1968, p. 53.
32 Which begins thus: “À Paris sur un cheval gris, À Issoire sur un cheval noir, À Nevers sur un cheval vert [...] (In the translation to English, which follows, one loses the melody of the rhyme: “In Paris on a grey horse / In Issoire on a black horse / In Nevers on a green horse […]”)
33 Martin Heidegger. Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes. Frankfurt: [s.n.], 1949. A lecture given in 1935, translated to French in 1960. English Translation: Origin of the Work of Art.
37 Which I have endeavoured to study and concretise, for example, in André Sauvage. Fête la ville! Urbanisme (La Ville en fête). Nº 331, p. 39-42, or in C. Moreau; A. Sauvage. La Fête et les jeunes: espaces publics incertains. [S. l.] : Apogée, 2007.
38 This sublime is not that in the classic sense as defined by Burke; for Burke: “whatever is in any sort terrible […] is a source of the sublime”. In short, he attributes a primarily psychological tone to it. Francis D. Klingender. Le Sublime et le pittoresque. in SUR L’ART. ACTES DE LA RECHERCHE EN SCIENCES SOCIALES, Novembre 1988. Actes. Nº 75, p. 2.
39 One should not forget the interest represented by Dewey’s pragmatic point of view. On the question of definition of the work, see also, in other registers, Daniel Guibert. L’Accès à une théorie de l’œuvre. Paris : BRA-Villemin, 1985. Arnoldo Rivkin; Pierre Caye; Jean-Marie Dancy. Constance de l’architecture (dimension esthétique de l’œuvre architecturale. Nancy : BRA-Ecole d’architecture de Nancy, 1986. Also: Jacques Fol. Qu’est-ce qu’une œuvre d’art? in Dominique Château. Arts visuels et architecture: propos à l’œuvre. Paris : L’Harmattan, 1998. In C. Grout. L’Œuvre comme événement prépolitique. Espaces Temps – Les Cahiers. Nº 78-79 (2002), p. 86-98, interestingly postulastes that, more barbaric than social, art that transforms itself into an experience of plurality can constitute a founding moment (without foundation) of a collective life experience.
40 The “Glorious Thirty Years”, the 30-year period of economic growth and prosperity in France and other parts of the world, 1945-1975. (T.N.)
41 Doctrine from docere: to lead, to guide.
42 One does not have to go as far as postulating that the architectural conception is the work of the work… because, according to Jean-Luc Nancy, “the work is an action, a movement, an open-end challenge, more than a finished work”. Parpaings, op. cit.
43 “When a wholly modern man intends, for example, to build a house, he has a feeling as if he were walling himself up alive in a mausoleum.” Fredrich Nietzsche. Humain, trop humain. Paris : Gallimard, 2000, p. 49 (Folio). English Translation: Human, All Too Human. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995.
44 On this question, see Peter Collins, above and Bernard Huet above.
45 My thanks to Nicolas Michelin for this tip.
46 In the sense in which Ulrich Beck. La Société du risque: sur la voie d’une autre modernité. Paris : Aubier, 2001. [English edition: Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. New Delhi, 1992), evokes the decline of criticism in the contemporary period (dislocation of large stable groups, social states and classes).