If art criticism has been the subject of numerous research, architectural criticism remains largely overlooked. The collective led by Agnès Deboulet, Rainier Hoddé and André Sauvage makes it possible to better understand the aesthetic and political issues of a discipline which participates, not without ambiguity, in the structuring and the dissemination of representations of contemporary architecture.
Why take an interest in architectural criticism ? First of all, because, in the professional press, she actively participates in the structuring of the values shared in the architecture and city world as well as their dissemination. Then, because these processes of recognition and legitimation are still amplified when, addressing a wider audience, on the occasion of the handing over a Grand Prix or Debates linked to major works, it focuses attention to the most symbolic segment of the production of the built frame. But perhaps it is above all because beyond the identification of these singular buildings, it can also take the form of a didactic tool aimed at acculturation to architectural issues, for a better understanding of the contemporary city. However, with regard to these issues, the reasons used by criticism often seem uncertain and moving, which can combine aesthetic subjectivism, technical analysis or even, pell-mell, political, economic, social and environmental arguments.
Coming from a seminar organized in 1999 at the Nantes school of architecture, this collective work aims to better understand the mechanisms of architectural criticism, by identifying the different practices it covers, according to the authors, the recipients and the objects it aims at. Architects, historians and sociologists explore the definitions, the problematic framework and the disciplinary anchors of architectural criticism as it is exercised or could practice.
Requirements and concerns: a “ crisis “Criticism
The publication of seminar communications is usefully increased by a set of reissues of articles written by major actors of architectural, French or foreign criticism, from the 1960s to today. These present their own conceptions of critical exercise but also their requirements and their concerns in the face of the way it is practiced. These testimonies put into perspective the idea frequently resumed of a “ crisis Currently criticism, compared to the richness of the debate of ideas in architectural journals of the 1970s.
This impoverishment is correlated first of all to the theoretical uncertainties which cross the architectural scene. Indeed, if well identifiable doctrinal currents still structured it in the early 1980s, we are witnessing their crumbling today in a constellation of expressions of individuals. But does this crumbling necessarily reduce criticism to “ widespread intersubjectivity », In the words of François Chaslin ? This crisis of critical discourse is often reported to the disengagement, in the last two decades, of the architectural environment compared to political and social debates. THE “ Critic positions »Gathered in the first part of the book agree to denounce the complacent superficiality of reports too often dependent on a professional and media system. Faced with these shortcomings, the authors sketch motivating methodological orientations, for example when they question the specificity of the tools of architectural criticism in relation to art criticism. This is the case of Marcel Cornu, former collaborator of the review Town planning Evoking, in 1968, the need to reconstruct the methods of understanding architecture by the general public, according to criteria now less artistic, more social and more urban. He thus invites us to refound criticism on renewed knowledge and methods, capable of appreciating both the intrinsic qualities of the built frame and its complex relationships with “ the whole of social life ». In 1990, the architect Bernard Huet, former editor -in -chief of Today’s architecturestill questions the critical instruments capable of adjusting to the constitutive heterogeneity of architectural production, shared between image, technique and uses.
Exercise modes and issues
These testimonies draw a first cartography of criticism, distinguishing a didactic vocation oriented towards a large audience and a more specialized side fueling doctrinal debates within professional circles. The second part “ Dissemination and appropriation of criticism »Explores more diverse but no less efficient exercise modes that have emerged since the end of XVIIIe century. To practice “ popular “, Centered on the spectacular interest of an architecture with strong symbolic potential, could today be linked to the award of the Grands Prix and other logic of distinctions, the blurring of criteria is evokes. This journalistic criticism does not only shape professional legitimities, it also serves territorial identities, in a context of increased competition between cities. Less media, criticism “ profane Exercised against current projects in reports or commissions is particularly influential on urban landscapes. It is embodied today by the practice “ daily »Territorial agents during public competition judgments or when the building permits are allocated. One of the articles denounces its conceptual indigence: when, dominated by the application of regulations and the search for a certain compliance with the existing, it leads, in the absence of more stimulating referents, to an impoverishment and a trivialization of the building. Significantly more fruitful appears criticism “ professional Exercised by and for architects during the design process, comparing and discussing the relevance of different sketches with regard to the context or the program. This mode of criticism is at the origin of the modern teaching of architecture, of the “ Emulation competition From the School of Fine Arts to the exchange argued between student and teacher as we know him today. But outside the recognition, censorship or learning processes can also invent more independent evaluation methods, especially in the university framework. It remains for example to imagine the protocol of a criticism “ ordinary ” And “ interdisciplinary Who would explore the qualities of a more common production than that usually put to the debate in the media, to the prism of criteria that is both more explicit and more diverse, going beyond the logic of consecration to which the press remains subservient.
Justification and genealogies of critical traditions
The third part, “ Disciplinary points of view », Adopts a more distant look, reconsidering the« crisis »Often observed in the prism of sociological or historical analyzes. The former highlight the justification regimes to which the speeches of architectural criticism are. Thus, the too smooth descriptive processes of the “ pseudo-criticism “, Chroniclers of the news of professional journals, in reports which often only aim to confirm” architecturality »From the building, without examining its historical or social relevance. About these same publications are also underlined the “ media drifts »Of a statement turned into promotional speech of too small a circle of owners. Because the ideal of a rich intellectual debate on the act of building confronts the professional challenges of these magazines, when these, become of the windows of built production, become compulsory passages for access to the order of architects.
Some critical speeches, however, testify, in architectural circles, of more learned ambitions. This is the case across the Atlantic where the theoretical criticism produced by the academics model the current thought on architecture, by incorporating socio-cultural questions and various disciplinary contributions. In the European field, the historical analysis makes it possible to trace different lines of thought of which contemporary positions are indebted. In particular, the heritage of two often opposite cultural traditions are distinguished. On the one hand, the said criticism “ operative “, Prominated by historians of Italian architecture in the 1970s, defends an active commitment to project processes, guided by strong ideological lines. To this type orientation “ prescriptive »Opposes the explanatory aim of an approach called« intrinsic ” Or “ formalistic ». Inspired by literary criticism, she first endeavors to reveal the internal coherences of an architectural proposal with regard to her genealogy.
By revealing all these facets, the collection inscribes these practices of architectural criticism in a wider horizon than that supposed to initially, linked to the logic of consecration. In short, it refers to the issues that cross the architecture itself ; Shared between mediatization strategies and its status as a demanding intellectual discipline, aware of its political and social implications. Beyond an observation of crisis, it relaunches the debate for a more virtuous and responsible vision of architectural and urban criticism.