#292 - PAUL GOLDBERGER, Architectural Critic and Author
SUMMARY
This week Pulitzer Prize-winning Architectural Critic and Author Paul Goldberger joins David and Marina of FAME Architecture & Design to discuss his journey to becoming an architectural critic; the importance of critics, their role in society and the challenges of being one; adapting to the digital age; his critiquing process; the state of architecture today; and more. Enjoy!
ABOUT PAUL
Paul Goldberger, who The Huffington Post has called “the leading figure in architecture criticism,” is now a Contributing Editor at Vanity Fair. From 1997 through 2011 he served as the Architecture Critic for The New Yorker, where he wrote the magazine’s celebrated “Sky Line” column. He is the author of numerous books, including BALLPARK: Baseball in the American City, published in 2019 by Alfred A. Knopf; Building Art: The Life and Work of Frank Gehry, published in 2015 by Knopf, and also of Building with History, published by Prestel; Why Architecture Matters, published by Yale University Press; Building Up and Tearing Down, a collection of his articles from The New Yorker published by Monacelli; and Christo and Jeanne-Claude, published by Taschen. His latest book, DUMBO: The Making of a Neighborhood and the Rebirth of Brooklyn, was published in 2021 by Rizzoli, and Yale University Press will bring out a new edition of Why Architecture Matters in late 2022. He also holds the Joseph Urban Chair in Design and Architecture at The New School in New York City and was formerly Dean of the Parsons School of Design at The New School.
He began his career at The New York Times, where in 1984 his architecture criticism was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Criticism, the highest award in journalism. In 2012 he received the Vincent Scully Prize from the National Building Museum in recognition of the influence his writing has had on the public’s understanding of architecture. In 2017, he received the Award in Architecture of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, which called him “the doyen of American architectural critics.” He lectures widely around the country on architecture, design, historic preservation, and cities, and has appeared in numerous films and television programs as a commentator on architecture. He served as an advisor on architect selection and project design for numerous non-profit institutions including The Obama Presidential Center, The New York Public Library, The Morgan Library, Harvard University, Lincoln Center, Cornell University, the Carnegie Science Center, The Corcoran Gallery of Art and the Glenstone Museum; for public agencies such as the Empire State Development Corporation, where he advised on the design for the Moynihan Train Hall project in New York City, as well as for corporate clients including Google, Sothebys Inc., Tiffany, and the New York Islanders.
He is chairman of the Advisory Council of The Glass House, a property of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and is a member of the Board of Trustees of Kenyon College, where he chairs the Buildings and Grounds Committee. He is also a member of the boards of the Gund Gallery at Kenyon College, the Urban Design Forum, and the New York Stem Cell Foundation, and is an emeritus trustee of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. He and his wife, Susan Solomon, are the parents of three sons and five grandchildren, and reside in New York City and Amagansett, New York.
HIGHLIGHTS
TIMESTAMPS
(00:00) Paul’s background
(21:48) Critiquing architecture & being a critic
“It's wonderful when architects are articulate, not enough of them are… It’s great when they are but I'm a little bit suspicious of an architect who speaks so well, that the words almost overshadow the architecture. At the end of the day, there’s a design idea that should be more powerful than anything said about it but that does not mean that design speaks for itself. It doesn't always. And there's a lot to be said about interpretation and context and judgment and evaluation and so forth. And a critic’s job is to combine taste and judgment with a basis of knowledge. So to bring knowledge to the table, which allows informed judgment and hopefully, against the background or on a foundation of good taste, as well as the foundation of knowledge, to explain things that an architect or designer may not, and perhaps even should not, say themselves.” (22:54)
(40:35) How the digital age has impacted architectural critiques
“I think it's a problem that is maybe more severe in architecture because there are so many different factors that go into evaluating architecture. It's really, really hard to do it adequately without enough space and time and so forth.You're not just judging it as a piece of form. You're judging in so many other ways as well. You’re judging at the end of the day in terms of its impact on society, which is always a complicated issue. But this is a problem in our culture in general right now because as attention spans get shorter and shorter, and the notion of a sort of quick-hit about everything, everything is reduced to a slogan or a phrase or a soundbite.” (41:08)
(01:05:34) The problems with architectural education
(01:18:01) Mending the gap between architecture and the public as a critic
“I firmly believe that a big part of the critic’s role is to be a kind of bridge between the public and the architecture community, which doesn't mean necessarily that the critic is fronting for either of those, or part of either of those but can help interpret each to the other since they often speak very different languages altogether.” (01:18:10)
(01:24:37) Paul’s critiquing process
“I usually take notes that are very much connected to immediate impressions physically standing there. I don't waste time writing that it's so many stories high and this and that because I can always look that stuff up later or get it from looking at pictures anyway. It's more about what happens inside your gut and your brain, and all that as you're looking at it and what do you feel.” (01:26:33)
(01:34:01) Separating the architect from their architecture?
(01:45:08) Controversial architecture of New York
