Editorial: the sites, forms and practice of criticism

While most buildings can’t be visited safely or are not fully functioning, we think about the place of architectural criticism and the AR in a fast-changing media landscape. This issue examines the ways in which architecture is presented and represented, communicated, disseminated and consumed. Sebastian Junger once said that as a journalist ‘you’re not supposed to tell people what to think, you’re supposed to tell people what to think about’.

Here we lay it all out in the open. Criticism is about curiosity, a cloud of references, frictional questioning. It can be the product of words, but also of images, cut-outs, films and sketches. It is about collecting, negotiating between the local and the global, paying our debts. The editing process itself is critical – cutting to create continuity. In the explosion of platforms for conversation, there is also a plurality of discourse rather than a singular Western narrative. Dayanita Singh’s montages subvert the persistence of Modernism, while Hyungmin Pai draws our attention to the importance of ‘empty spaces’ and the ‘particular reality’ they reveal.

We also lift the lid on the backstage of magazine production, questions of image ownership and PR, in an attempt to advocate more transparency. Criticism isn’t in crisis, but the business models that sustain it certainly are.

If for many, the outside world is still relayed mainly in pixels, the AR’s new podcast returns us to the solidity of the pages beneath our fingertips. For the first three chapters of the AR Bookshelf, Flores & Prats, Lesley Lokko and Owen Hatherley place books on an imaginary bookshelf and tell us their stories – all released this month here.