Architectural Criticism and Journalism: Global Perspectives

ARCHITECTURAL CRITICISM AND JOURNALISM: GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES Proceedings of an International Seminar organised by the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in association with the Kuwait Society of Engineers 6–7 December 2005, Kuwait EDITED BY MOHAMMAD AL-ASAD WITH MAJD MUSA UMBERTO ALLEMANDI & C. for Aga Khan Award for Architecture Foreword SUHA ÖZKAN, CHAIRMAN, WORLD ARCHITECTURE COMMUNITY FORMER SECRETARY GENERAL, AGA KHAN AWARD FOR ARCHITECTURE he most important aim of the theories of arts and sciences is to guide practice and validate implementation. With the rise of positivism, scientists almost unanimously accepted the process of experimentation in order to validate what would be the ‘truth’, even though Aga Khan Award for Architecture T eminent philosophers like Sir Karl Popper (d. 1994) challenged the existence of any ‘absolute truth’ and preferred to use the concept of ‘verisimilitude’ (or truth-likeliness) for validating scientific knowledge. In contrast, the world of arts bases the validity of contributions on ‘originality’. Al- though originality as a criterion may be very easy to define in the abstract, it is not so easy to agree on what is original and what is not. Architecture is neither a pure art that may benefit from the theoretical premises of the arts nor a sheer applied science that may benefit from the assertions of the sciences. It uses the applied physical sciences to allow us to build safely and comfortably. Its major preoccupation, however, is to mould space and create forms. This preoccupation lends itself to the ‘softer’ aspects of knowledge, which are the theories of arts and the forces of the psychological and social realm. CICA - Comité International des Critiques d'Architecture When architectural form develops through traditional processes, the situation is different. The val International Committee of Architectural Critics ues that generate form, and the climatic, material and technological forces that enable builders to Comité Internacional de Críticos de Arquitectura accomplish that form have been determined through a long historical process. Function, symbolic values, materials and technology all act together to generate form. The process of determination of validity therefore lies within the communities that create that architecture. As architecture has become a professional activity, the mastery and creativity of the individual architect have become important. During the periods that preceded the Renaissance in the West, such as the Romanesque and the Gothic, the knowledge of architecture was maintained in the hands of the few who protected the profession. These were, as Joseph Rykwert has asserted in this volume, the guilds of masons and master-builders. It was during the Renaissance that architectural knowledge became accessible to the individual rather than belonging exclusively to the guild member, Front cover Kuwait City on a foggy morning, photo by Kamran Adle. and this development obviously owes a great deal to the invention of printing. Back cover Kuwait Water Towers, recipient of the 1980 In addition to making the rapid and widespread dissemination of documents possible, the printing Aga Khan Award for Architecture, photo by Kamran Adle. press also produced the manuals that functioned as documents for valid building systems. These, of course, were mainly in line with the prevalent values of the Renaissance, which favoured the per- Architectural criticism and awards are two processes that validate architecture. But what are the petuation of the Classical vocabularies of the Greeks and Romans. mechanisms that validate criticism or journalism? One mechanism is recognition by bodies from outside the architectural profession. For example, the prestigious American journalism award, the Criticism is perhaps the only process that validates the product of architecture. It is not surprising Pulitzer Prize, established a criticism category in 1970. Since then, this criticism prize has been that the first-century BC building manual De architectura (also known as The Ten Books on Architec- awarded to half a dozen newspaper architectural critics, including Ada Louise Huxtable (1970), ture) by Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, revived after more than fourteen centuries of oblivion, became a Paul Goldberger (1984) and Robert Campbell (1996). Such a prize sets a new target at least for basic document of architectural theory with multiples of editions. The first theoretical work in terms American architectural critics to validate the quality of their contributions. of a critical discourse, however, came again under the title of the Ten Books on Architecture (original- ly De re aedificatoria; On the Art of Building) by Leon Battista Alberti during the fifteenth century. New developments show that we have reason to be optimistic regarding the recognition of the im- Alberti, being a practising architect and a man of arts and letters, did not produce solely a didactic portance of architectural journalism. For example, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Stud- book to guide practice, but added substantial depth to the discourse on architecture, which remains ies in the Fine Arts recently established the Richard Solomon Award for Architectural Journal- unrivalled even today. ism in commemoration of its highly respected director, who passed away in 2005. This award aims to recognise and support excellence in architectural journalism as well as in related professional Eventually, regular architectural journals appeared. If there were any direct relationship between practices and disciplines. the quality of architecture and the architectural journal, the first example of this occurred in Eng- land. The coverage of architecture in national newspapers and on radio and television, though re- The Aga Khan Award for Architecture established a most sophisticated and fair process of selec- cently increased in quantity and improved in quality, remains limited and unoriginal. Within the tion for nominated projects. At the same time, it has recognised the lack of critical thinking on ar- specialist press, however, the subject is generously provided for, at least in comparison to other cre- chitecture and the scarcity of architectural journalism in the Islamic world. It began addressing this ative endeavors. The weekly publication now called Building, but known for most of its life as The problem as early as 1986, when it organised a seminar in Malta entitled Criticism in Architecture. The Builder, can claim a pedigree going back to the origins of professional journalism in the early Vic- main mission of the seminar was to bring together notable international editors and critics working torian period. After a slightly shaky start in 1842-1843, it hit its stride in 1844 and has been pub- in the field of architecture in order to interact with their colleagues from the Muslim world. Since lished weekly ever since. We owe the appearance of this journal to its founding editor George God- then, plenty of journals addressing architecture have appeared in this part of the world. These not win, who published the journal until 1872, for almost forty years, completely by himself. only aim at documenting the accomplishments of our times, but also at cultivating an arena of criticism. In cultures where only declarations of adoration have been accepted, introducing criticism is Critical discourse on architecture cannot be fresh and vivid unless it is communicated through mag- a hard task to undertake. Nevertheless, critical thinking is developing. This monograph, resulting azines and journals. In recent history, Gio Ponti with Domus, Vittorio Gregotti with Casabella, Pierre from the Kuwait seminar Architectural Criticism and Journalism, shows how much the field has de- Vago with L’Architecture d’Aujourdhui and Kenneth Frampton with Oppositions are just a few among veloped. The Award is proud to give priority to the subject of architectural criticism in the Islam- those who have left very strong marks on the critical discourse of architecture. In fact, almost every ar- ic world, and we sincerely hope that it will be further enhanced by the repercussions of this publi- chitectural movement starts with a manifesto that is almost immediately associated with a journal. The cation and seminar. movement then creates its own constituency, and the critical discourse is propagated. The influential group Archigram began in the early 1960s with a limited edition and home-made magazine voicing *** the ideas of the group, which the rest of the world of architectural journalism then picked up on. The Aga Khan Award for Architecture and the Kuwait Society of Engineers are grateful to the The Aga Khan’s mission in architecture started with a very meticulously developed Award. Im- International Committee of Architectural Critics (CICA) for its participation through its most re- mediately after that, the establishment of a journal in order to disseminate the ideas cultivated and spected and senior members in this venture. the explorations made under the Aga Khan’s leadership became a necessity. That is how Mimar originated, and it filled an enormous vacuum regarding ‘architecture in development’ that no in- stitution would address with the depth, breadth and quality given to it by the Aga Khan development network. Preface JASSIM M. QABAZARD, DEPUTY CHAIRMAN, KUWAIT SOCIETY OF ENGINEERS he Kuwait Society of Engineers (KSE) is honoured to have co-hosted in Kuwait with the Aga Khan Award for Architecture the seminar Architectural Criticism and Journalism,

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