106 TALKING POINTS


IN 11 YEARS I have written 50 articles for FX. Articles are not criticism, but I have to admit that there has been some criticism in there. I have always been most interested in a strong argument, not necessarily a polemic – the kind of argument that can blaze through a subject with a scorched- earth approach – so much as an unusual and convincing thread that runs through it all. Te problem with so much writing about architecture and design is the lack of criticism. As Rebecca West wrote over a century ago, ‘it is our duty to practice harsh criticism’. Like book reviews, once a designer gets noticed they go on being noticed by magazines and journals. Early promise frequently means that later projects receive favourable reviews even when they are not up to scratch. And those creative spirits that are missed, and ignored, continue to be ignored. Writers fail to ask the right questions to get the right answers and too often they are just too lazy to follow the money and other details that get in the way of an imaginative idea.


And then there is personality. Te obsession with individuals means that the idea of the lone creative spirit pervades journalism to the extent that members of the team rarely get a look in, let alone a mention. Speaking to Milton Glazer over 30 years ago when he was working on redesigning Esquire magazine, he bemoaned the editors who always demanded heroic images of men on the cover. As he pointed out, you can run out of those images all too quickly. So you end up with the second division, and then the third, and pretty soon you are into the Z-listers. As Dorothy Parker once


wrote of George Kaufman: ‘So much kudos for so little talent.’ So many of the larger design and architectural practices focus on the supposed abilities of the big name that to write about the unknown personality really responsible for the creative spark in a project is viewed as somehow an indecent intrusion on the public face of the firm. Tey frequently do not want you to know. Te big name who may well win the project and front its progress, is not always the same as the person who does the work. Building and maintaining a firm is difficult enough, and sufficiently tough to be recognised more often than it is. Winning business is hard, specialised work. Presentations are a skill. But the name above the door is not always the most creative. Te Wizard of Oz, dazzling clients, investors and the media, is often not the one behind the curtain working the machinery. And some of those eminent names are best avoided like beads on the devil’s rosary. Architects believe that not only do they sit at the right hand of god, but that if god ever gets up, they take the chair. It is a well-worn aphorism that all too frequently hits the mark. Whereas for many of us, art is the highest form of hope, for many in the profession, architecture is the highest form of art. And then there is the question of age. If you reach 80 in the UK and can still go to the bathroom on your own you are somehow considered worthy of praise, despite whatever crimes you committed in an earlier life. Artists and writers and architects have praise heaped upon them for accomplishing the remarkable feat of growing old. A profile here, an honour there, a lifetime achievement award


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