ARCHITECTURAL

CRITICISM
DEFINITION, SOURCES, ROLE, FUNCTION AND
UNDERSTANDING

Presented By- Ar. Pallavi Saxena

Assistant Professor
DEFINITION

• Evaluating and placing a work in its historic context and contemporary issues,
encouraging discourse
• Assessing the building
• Positive and negative
• Circulation of ideas in the professional world, public and the architectural community

Presented By- Ar. Pallavi Saxena

Assistant Professor
ROLE OF CRITICISM

• ‘Basically to inform, educate, clarify, compare and define quality based on

the knowledge of a project from the initial conceptual design phase to
completion and into active use, as well as to examine the project’s social
use and context’

• To teach and initiate

• To interrelate, animate and structure intellectual debate within the

profession

• Apart from commenting, must explain and bring into contact opinions,
viewpoints and cultures

• Share tastes, dispense the emotion or thought to those who cannot

Presented By- Ar. Pallavi Saxena

Assistant Professor
FUNCTION OF CRITICISM

• Often proposes to accompany or channel the evolution of architectural trends

• Identify historical roots of the trends
• Elaborate their imaginary or mythical sagas
• Needs to make the trend legible and instrumental with the risk of simplification, amnesiac
and perhaps one voiced

Presented By- Ar. Pallavi Saxena

Assistant Professor
RELATION TO VARIOUS SPHERES

• Technical and functional thought

• Aesthetics
• History
• Concern for urban issues
• Philosophical or political commitment
• Social Sciences

Presented By- Ar. Pallavi Saxena

Assistant Professor
SOURCES OF CRITICISM

• Environmental

• Economic

• Functional

• Constructional

• Political

• Cultural

• Aesthetic Presented By- Ar. Pallavi Saxena

Assistant Professor
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN JUDGEMENT AND
CRITICISM

Judgement requires :
• Analytical thinking
• Representation of Facts with methodology
• Deciphering and assessment
• Reporting of results

Presented By- Ar. Pallavi Saxena

Assistant Professor
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN JUDGEMENT AND CRITICISM

Criticism or a critique requires:

• Analysis with turgid writing which may border on ridiculous

• Expose the subject to irony

• The capacity to transcribe, through words, the equivalents for uncertain spatial experiences that are
difficult to talk about

• Helping the reader visualize, feel and empathize with the subject rather than realize a result

Presented By- Ar. Pallavi Saxena

Assistant Professor
TYPES OF CRITICISM BY WAYNE ATTOE

• Normative
• Interpretive
• Descriptive

Presented By- Ar. Pallavi Saxena

Assistant Professor
NORMATIVE CRITICISM

• Based on a fixed standard, a fixed method

• System of rules or doctrines that are part of the contemporary paradigm
• e.g. The ancient Greek ideals of proportion, form follows function

Presented By- Ar. Pallavi Saxena

Assistant Professor
INTERPRETIVE CRITICISM

• Can be defensive, associate or impressionistic

• Highly personal, Attempt to convince one’s point to others

• External standards are less important

• Defensive more aggressive in approach

• Associate usually involves eliciting feelings through suggestive visual aids etc

• Impressionistic is the spontaneous viewpoint of the critic

Presented By- Ar. Pallavi Saxena

Assistant Professor
 DESCRIPTIVE CRITICISM

• Figurative, biographical and contextual

• Simply a report of plain descriptions, no judgement

• Figurative - Static aspects like form, material, finish or dynamic aspects like use of a building changing
over time, influence of a structure on its surroundings

• Biographical - Connects stories of building and environments to the designer’s life

• Contextual - Widen the understanding of the architectural issue through social, economic or political
context

Presented By- Ar. Pallavi Saxena

Assistant Professor
SO WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU USE IN A JURY?

• Normative?
• Interpretive?
• Descriptive?

Presented By- Ar. Pallavi Saxena

Assistant Professor
THEORY BY JON LANG

• Positive Theory
• Normative Theory

Presented By- Ar. Pallavi Saxena

Assistant Professor
POSITIVE THEORY

• Descriptive and Explanatory systems

• Identify causal links which helps predict future behaviour of the object in question
• Comparatively a more logical approach
• Scientific theory follows this approach
• Answers the question: 'What is?’
• I can tell you it is raining outside.Yes or no?

Presented By- Ar. Pallavi Saxena

Assistant Professor
 NORMATIVE THEORY
• Wide range of ‘Rules of thumb’

• Actions always taken on ‘trial and error’ results

• Describe, explaining predict

• Can lead to a lot of empirical outcomes

• Mainly what motivates actions taken in design practice

• Answers the question - ‘What should be?’

• I think green is better than yellow? Prove me right or wrong.

Presented By- Ar. Pallavi Saxena

Assistant Professor
COMPARISONS

• Normative theory has come out of tried and tested methods, have withstood the test of
time
• According to Lang, this theory is always applied in design
• A normative theory may gradually become a positive theory

Presented By- Ar. Pallavi Saxena

Assistant Professor