Whither Architectural Criticism?

John Hill

13. October 2020

Image courtesy of FIU

The Wolfsonian Public Humanities Lab at Florida International University is in the midst of its six-part series titled Whither Criticism?, which features live conversations with architecture critics on Wednesdays in September and October.

The conversations, hosted by FIU's David Rifkind (Architecture) and Dan Evans (Journalism + Media), aim to address the questions: "What is the state of architectural criticism today? How should criticism change to respond to the major crises of our time?" The half-dozen US critics they invited to speak via Zoom are a diverse group:

Kate Wagner, founder of McMansion Hell and critic for the New Republic
Lee Bey, author, photographer, and former Chicago Sun-Times architectural critic
Christopher Hawthorne, Chief Design Officer for the City of Los Angeles and former critic for the Los Angeles Times
Mimi Zeiger, Los Angeles-based critic, educator, and curator
Inga Saffron, Philadelphia Inquirer architectural critic and winner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for criticism
Alastair Gordon, former Miami Herald architectural critic

The available archived talks are embedded below, but they can also be found on FIU's website.