From Crisis to Crisis

From Crisis to Crisis: Debates on Why Architecture Criticism Matters Today

Nasrin Seraji, Sony Devabhaktuni, Xiaoxuan Lu (Editors)
Actar Publishers and the University of Hong Kong Department of Architecture, August 2019

Paperback | 6 x 9 inches | 280 pages | English | ISBN: 978-1948765053 | $34.95

Publisher's Description:

From Crisis to Crisis examines how reading, writing and criticism can address the urgent issues faced by architecture today, including: the role of the architect in the era of specialization; the function of criticism in diverse political, economic and cultural contexts; and, the possibility of architectural education to take on history, theory, civic engagement and political participation. Drawn from an international public symposium organized in the spring of 2017 by the University of Hong Kong (HKU) Department of Architecture, the book is comprised in equal parts of focused essays and transcripts of the wide-ranging discussions.

From Crisis to Crisis reflects Hong Kong’s ongoing transformation from a gateway between China and the world, to a regional hub opening up a new milieu for the cultural, economic, and intellectual resources of Asia. The HKU Department of Architecture is part of this ongoing transformation, attracting thinkers from Asia, North America, Australia and Europe to engage in critical, relevant dialogues. The publication reflects this diversity and is characterized by its flexibility, contingency, vitality, and open-endedness.

dDAB Commentary:

The title of this book — more accurately, the book's subtitle, Debates on why architecture criticism matters today — has a general air to it, as if the book is arguing for the continued importance of architectural criticism, a field one could safely label "in crisis." But the book is a specific document of a specific event held in a specific place. It collects, as the book's description spells out, essays and dialogues from a symposium at the Hong Kong University Department of Architecture: From Crisis to Crisis – Reading, writing and criticism in architecture, held in April 2017. Paralleling the two-day symposium's structure, the book has four chapters: "Criticism Today," "History's Role in Contemporary Criticism," "Criticism in China," and "Reading, Writing and Architectural Education." Each chapter then comprises the essays by the participants and a debate amongst them and a moderator from HKU. A closing debate with the fifteen participants in the symposium ends the book, where readers learn the source of the book's title: In response to the question, "And Madame, what are you doing in criticism?" Ada Louise Huxtable replied, "I am going from crisis to crisis."

Like exhibition catalogs, books that document a symposium are most valuable for me only if I attended the event. That said, most conferences I've attended, academic or otherwise, have never been given a book treatment, much less one as well done as From Crisis to Crisis. While this detachment makes it more difficult for me to get into the proceedings gathered in the book, I did find some highlights, one per chapter it turns out: Graham Brenton McKay's elucidation of the Misfits' Architecture blog, which he created as a research tool rather than an outlet for critical writing; Anthony Acciavatti's argument for discrimination and description in architectural writing, framed through the Manifest journal he co-founded in 2009; Chris Brisbin's discussion of the copy culture in China as a form of criticism, something that resonates three years later with China's recent ban on "copycat architecture"; and educator Jonathan Massey's clear argument for more diversity in architectural history and architecture education, a position enabled by the Aggregate writing group. Skimming the debates also yielded many interesting takes on criticism, but more than that it made me wish I would have been there for the symposium.

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Author Bio:

Founded in 1912, The University of Hong Kong is the leading and oldest tertiary institute in Hong Kong. ... The HKU Department of Architecture was first introduced into the University in 1950, under the Deanship of Professor R. Gordon Brown.

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