The Death of Criticism

In 1997, my friend Martin Pawley wrote a column for The Architect's Journal titled "The Strange Death of Architectural Criticism." The leading architectural critic of his generation, Martin died in 2008, but I wonder what he would have to say about the latest demise of his craft? The New York Times has a "chief architecture critic" who hardly ever writes about architecture. Paul Goldberger, our leading critic, has not appeared in the New Yorker since May 2011, and that was a piece about New York taxis. I always check to see what Sarah Williams Goldhagen, the interesting critic of The New Republic, has to say, and she hasn't posted anything since November 2011. The Huffington Post has a crowded architecture page, although it is hard to find a clear critical voice among all the snippets of information. Slate decided it could do without an architecture critic—me—last December. I don't know whether it's the recession and dearth of new buildings, or whether after the boom years, when architecture became faddish, the fad has simply faded. Popularity has its costs.