MIRIAM GUSEVICH ‘THE ARCHITECTURE OF CRITICISM: A QUESTION OF AUTONOMY ‘The architect is a builder who has learned Latin.—Adolf Loos ARCHITECTURE AND BUILDING The term “architecture” is of Greek and Latin provenance; “build- ing,” on the other hand, has Anglo-Saxon roots. In common par- lance both have the same referent (structure, construction, edifice); they are synonyms. Nevertheless, they have different connotations, architecture meaning something superior to building." We confront the paradox of a binary structure that is simul- taneously equivalent and hierarchical, where the two terms are identical yet opposite, with one (architecture) dominating the other (building)? This paradox can be resolved if we recognize that “architecture” refers to two different and incommensurable condi- tions. Architecture equals building when referring to the artifact, the object for human habitation, or the craft of construction; it is unequal to building when referring to the canon, meaning “an enduring exemplary collection of books, buildings, and paintings authorized (by criticism) for contemplation, admiration, interpreta- tion, and the determination of value.”* The architectural canon is an effect of criticism, which institution alizes the difference between architecture and building. Historically, the difference was clearly established: architecture referred to monu- ments and building to “common” structures. Monuments (i.e. chur- ches and palaces) were constructed through the exercise of powerTHE ARCHITECTURE OF CRITICISM and represented, celebrated, and glorified that power. Architecture, then, represented the elite; it spoke Latin, the language of the Church and of the court. Thus the claim of superiority of architec- ture as monument was supported implicitly by the claim of social superiority that it housed and represented. The canon constituted an aristocracy or meritocracy of built form paralleling the social aristocracy of blood! Any traditional architectural history book such as Bannister Fletcher’s History of Architecture reveals how the architec- tural canon was defined exclusively in elite terms.? Any book on modern architecture presents a different spectacle.® Churches and palaces are rare. Instead, one discovers factories (e.g. Peter Behrens's AEG Factory, Walter Gropius's Fagus Factory) schools, hospitals, museums, and private houses, by Le Corbusier, by Richard Neutra, by Alvar Aalto, etc. In light of the previous distinction between architecture and building, this selection of “ordinary” build- ingsis really quite remarkable and, on reflection, even bafiling. Only familiarity encourages us to take it for granted. In modern, secular, bourgeois culture buildings continue to represent elite institutions. Instead of churches and palaces there are banks, insurance companies, stock exchanges, museums, univer- sities, schools, and hospitals. The canon still exists, but specific buildings are not included because of type or institutional status, but because they have received critical acclaim. To cite an example: Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye at Poissy (1929- 31) looms very large in the architectural landscape, out of propor- tion to its actual size or urbanistic importance. In contrast, the Chrysler Building by William Van Allen (1928-30) and the Empire State Building by Shreve, Lamb and Harmon, (1931) were not included in the canon until quite recently despite their size, urban impact, sophisticated use of modern technology, and popularity as modern landmarks.” Villa Savoye shines in the virtual space established by criticism; a space achieved by decontexwualizing the object—removing it from the specificity of its social, political, cultural, and sometimes even physical context—and recontextualizing it as a*representation” to be judged on different, specifically “aesthetic” terms. This distinctive operation has informed modern aesthetics at least since the time of Emmanuel Kant, who, in The Critique of Judgment, explicitly de- scribed its purpose and modus operandi: “If anyone asks me whether I consider that the palace I see before me is beautiful, I may perhaps reply that I do not care for things of that sort which are merely made to be gaped at. Or I may reply in the same strain as the Iroquois sachem who said that nothing in Paris pleased him better than the eating 9GUSEVICH houses. I may even go a step further and inveigh with the vigour of a Rousseau against the vanity of the great who spend the sweat of the people on such superfluous things . . . All this may be admitted and approved, only it is not the point now at issue. All one wants to know is whether the mere repre- sentation of the object is to my liking.”® ‘This virtual space created by criticism is nonetheless real since it has a definite effect: the buildings included in the canon function as paradigms for subsequent practice. How does criticism establish the dominant canon? In other words, what are the criteria by which particular buildings ascend to the status of architecture? A primary criterion for inclusion in the architectural canon is aesthetic merit. The most orthodox statement of architectural aesthetic is Vitruvius's trilogy: firmness, commodity, and delight. Yet aesthetic merit is not the only criterion at work. Many buildings receive critical attention despite—maybe even because of-their questionable aesthetic merit, because they are paradig- matic, exemplary of a particular position or intellectual claim. An instructive historical example is William Butterfield’s All Saints, Margaret Street, Westminster, London (1850-59). To Butterfield’s contemporaries All Saints was a controversial building: “There is here to be observed the germ of the same dread of beauty, not to say the same deliberate preference of ugliness, which so charac- terizes in fuller development the later paintings of Mr. Millais and his followers,”"! an admiring critic wrote in The Eelesiologist, the magazine of the Cambridge Camden Society. He praised neither the church’s beauty nor its elegance and refinement, but the cultural values represented by its ugliness—the values of the Camden Society that commissioned the church. An analogous rationale applies to current projects. Robert Venturi’s Guild House and Stanley Tigerman’s Daisy House are instructive in this regard. Both are relatively modest structures built with standard methods of construction and resembling convention- al housing. They are significant for their intellectual claims: Guild House represents Venturi's endorsement of the ordinary a la Pop Art, and Daisy House represents Tigerman’s call for humor and irony in architecture. The Guild House is purposefully banal and ordinary; its rear facade is barely distinguishable from that of many Iow income housing projects of the late 1960s. Daisy House, with its phallic plan, makes explicit reference to Claude-Nicolas Ledoux’s House of Pleasure, and aggressively flaunts “good taste.” The merit of these examples does not reside in their beauty, craftsmanship, or other conventional criteria of aesthetic judgment. On the contrary, 10