Parlour is delighted to partner with the Melbourne School of Design to present The Limits of Architectural Criticism, a conversation between Paul Walker and Naomi Stead.
Presented within the space of the exhibition John Andrews: Architect of uncommon sense, this Salon-style conversation will explore the edges, challenges and possibilities of architectural criticism.
The discussion springs from an observation about the critical reception of one of Andrews’s late projects, the Intelsat headquarters building in Washington DC. This building included sophisticated systems, both passive and active, to modify environmental and energy performance. It was widely discussed in the architectural press, and yet the critique of it did not examine its environmental credentials at all. Criticism had met a kind of limit.
The conversation will delve into what criticism can and can’t do in relation to technology, environmental impact, function, aesthetics, and social implications. It will explore the obligations of architectural criticism in terms of the pressing issues bearing on built environment disciplines. It will ask, Who writes criticism and who is criticism written for? How can we broaden the scope of projects criticism attends to? What are the venues for architectural criticism?
Speakers
Naomi Stead is a co-founder and director of Parlour. She is Professor and Director of the Enabling Capability Platform (Design and Creative Practice) at RMIT and architecture critic of The Saturday Paper. Paul Walker is professor of architecture at the University of Melbourne, editor and lead author of the book John Andrews: Architect of Uncommon Sense (Havard Design Press, 2023) and co-curator, with Kevin Liu, of the exhibition of the same name. His experience as a critic spans three decades and two countries. In addition to being active critics, Naomi and Paul have both also written extensively about criticism itself.
