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Old Posted Mar 17, 2011, 6:21 PM
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A Conversation With Paul Goldberger, Architecture Critic

A Conversation With Paul Goldberger, Architecture Critic


Mar 15 2011

By Daniel Fromson

Read More: http://www.theatlantic.com/life/arch...-critic/72501/

Quote:
"Architecture," writes Paul Goldberger in his latest book, "begins to matter when it goes beyond protecting us from the elements, when it begins to say something about the world—when it begins to take on the qualities of art." Aptly, the book is titled Why Architecture Matters. You could say that Goldberger's career has been nothing more than a series of restatements of why architecture matters, but he appears to have done a pretty good job: the architecture critic for The New Yorker since 1997, he is also the former dean of the Parsons School of Design at The New School in New York City, the author of numerous books, and the recipient, in 1984, of the Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Criticism.

What new idea or innovation is having the most significant impact on the design world?

I think the truly transformative development in the world of design over the last generation has been its evolution into the mainstream. We are a much more visual culture than we once were; people care more about design and architecture, and it has become more accessible to them. That doesn't mean everything is suddenly great, and that we're in some kind of design nirvana. A lot of what we do now is lousy, as it always has been. But if you look at the difference between, say, an iPhone and a Princess phone, or a flat-screen television and the faux-French Provincial TV cabinets we grew up seeing, or the difference between IKEA and the furniture stores our parents shopped in, you see how much more sophisticated as works of design the objects people live with today are.

.....

What's something that most people just don't understand about your field?

People often don't understand that critics need not—and should not—write from a particular ideological or stylistic bias. An architecture critic's job isn't to push for a particular style of architecture, but to advocate for the best work across the board, and to be candid in pointing out what fails to achieve its potential.

What's an emerging trend that you think will shake up the architecture world?

We've lived with computer-assisted design for a long time now, but it's having a greater impact in more profound ways. Frank Gehry's new apartment tower in lower Manhattan is sheathed in 10,500 stainless steel panels, nine thousand of which are uniquely shaped, and which were created using digital software. It's a new type of handmade building, you could say, created by technology, which can now be used not to make everything standardized, but to enhance architecture's potential, and make buildings again more elaborate, more special, more emotionally engaging.

What's an architecture or design trend that you wish would go away?

Within all of the rich possibilities digital technology brings to architecture, it also holds forth the false promise that you can forget about drawing. There is nothing like an image created by the human hand, and the greatest mistake is in believing that our increasing reliance on technology means that drawing doesn't matter. I worry about students who think they can become architects without ever touching pencil to paper.

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