For a Historiography of Architectural Criticism

While art historians have succeeded in giving a solid structure to the history of art criticism as a research field, architectural scholars have not developed a history of architectural criticism in the same manner and as deeply. Most of the “histories of architectural criticism”, in fact, consist of histories of architectural theories, where the word “criticism” is associated with large corpuses of texts. This essay advances possible definitions of architectural criticism as a subject for historical research by analyzing different methodological approaches. First it considers the agents of criticism – the critics, the architects, the historians, the book publishers, the photographers, and the institutions dealing with architecture – and the media through which criticism is disseminated – the press, the photographic medium, the circuits of exhibitions; it then looks at the relation that criticism has established and establishes with the public debate; finally, it explores the “territories” of architectural criticism – that is, the various disciplinary fields on which criticism relies – and the potential overlapping with forms of criticism expressed in those “territories”. In an attempt to sketch a vast set of definitions of criticism, the essay suggests what passages might be necessary to build up a cultural history of criticism in architecture.