Architectural criticism: A review of types and context

Abstract

Given its wide scope, architectural criticism as a discipline has had a long history of discussions and debates over its uses, contexts, methods, and even boundaries. Authors have alluded to its complex and virtually indefinable nature. The term architectural criticism itself is diverse in its usage, as it is used to describe the activities of critics, academic architectural treatises, and the architectural design decision-making process. Beyond its architectural origins, architectural criticism itself also approaches architecture from an interdisciplinary standpoint, often blending and adapting the methods and ideas of other disciplines to architecture. Despite its long history, not too many review papers approach the subject from a broad and general perspective. The majority of previous works have tended to focus on gaps or more specialized matters within the subject area. This thematic review therefore focuses on the amalgamation of existing literature on the nature of architectural criticism. A keyword search, followed by a filter using inclusion criteria from the Google Scholar Database, identified 52 articles. After a review of these articles, only 26 were found useful. This paper synthesizes and discusses the works of different authors in the areas of types and contexts of architectural criticism. The discussions will benefit future studies on the general nature or characteristics of architectural criticism and can be used as a guideline for highlighting and understanding the key issues in architectural criticism. Keywords: Architectural Criticism, Criticism Context, Criticism Types