On the Current State of Architectural Criticism

Some good news after swinging by the Architects Newspaper. This article really digs into the current state of Architectural criticism, is worth the read for all you aspiring writers out there. From the article...

If this state of affairs is lamentable, it’s necessary to acknowledge that architecture journalism for the mass public has long been a rarity in this country, with notable exceptions like Montgomery Schuyler at the New York World in the late 19th century and Lewis Mumford at The New Yorker during the middle decades of the twentieth. It was Ada Louise Huxtable, beginning her tenure at The New York Times in 1963 amid that decade’s urban upheavals and preservation battles, who coalesced a wide audience for engaged and outspoken architectural criticism. Today, while the issues affecting the built environment are no less contentious or ripe for debate, architecture criticism in its various local venues inevitably finds itself inflected, and distracted, by a far more advanced and globalized culture industry.

... In a semi-related observation, it looks like the AN is slowly making more and more of it's content available every month to us online readers. Kudos to that, as its becoming more and more clear that print-based business models don't have exact analogies to web-based print business models. Time, The New York Times, and countless other publications have already gone down that road, and come back. Thanks to the Architects Newspaper for the extra content.