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U.S. Design Publications :: GSD
News pp. 21-22 Design
Publishing Harvard
University Graduate School of Design 48
Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 Summer
1996 Cultured
Weakness U.S.
Design Publications By
Alan Balfour From
my perspective as an editorial advisor to Academy Editions, a London publisher,
and until recently, the main voice on the editorial board of AA Files, from the Architecture
Association in London, the state of design publishing in the United States
looks extremely weak. At
their best, design publications stimulate the pleasures and possibilities of
architecture, and, through commentary and reproduction, cultivate the desire
for new realities. At their worst,
they are shaped by advertising.
The economic arrangements that support magazine publication vary
widely. Even magazine funded
mainly by membership, such as AA Files, must be concerned with maintaining the
interest of its readership. The
success of such journals as a+u depends on cultivating a worldwide audience by
producing issues of consistently high quality. Production runs for even the most successful international
magazines, however, are still small in contrast to those of more mainstream
publications. In this regard Architectural
Digest is
at once the exception and the rule, for its influence seems simple enough: in
illustrating the lifestyles of the rich and famous, it plays to architecture's
most reliable audience. There
is perhaps more subsidized promotional and vanity publishing in the U.S. than
in Europe; yet the proliferation of magazines across the world, particularly in
Asia, seems to exist without any obvious source of support \0x2013 until one reads
the fine print. Nothing, it seems,
can be done to reduce the amount of useless publication. Saddest of all are those publications
of schools that believe they must validate their existence by producing a
magazine; these arrive through the mail looking vaguely familiar, but either
through timidity of content or self-consciousness of form, they are mostly
worthless. Still more troublesome
are those publications that deliberately deceived. Thousands of copies of Celebration Journal, the magazine of the
Celebration Foundation, were mailed across the U.S. recently, presenting what
the Foundation firmly believes is the vision for a "new" America \0x2013 a nation of
small and highly conservative towns \0x2013 whose major elements have been formed by
some very significant current practitioners. The only clue that this is not some benign attempt to articulate
a vision for the public realm is the tiny word "Disney" at the foot of the rear
page. U.S.
design publishing, particularly in architecture, may be among the weakest in
the developed world. This is not,
in my view, the fault of the publishers, but a result of a dramatic decline in
interest in architecture as a significant element in the broader culture. No amount of money, no brilliant
editorial invention, will change that.
In a nation of very gifted architects and some of the most insightful
intellects in the discipline, it is a paradox that is seems impossible to
construct an audience for a journal that would possess even some of the energy
of Australia's Transitions or Japan's Telescope, or the sensual pleasures
of Spain's El Croquis. Asia has no
tradition of critical discourse but revels in spectacular picture
presentations. Europe assesses its
many architectures with lively, honest, and scholarly journalism. In contrast, the U.S. has almost no
effective environment to develop critical journalism; even the best such
journalism in the States is tentative.
Unlike the U.S., Europe has many different magazines for many different
audiences, interweaving design, architecture, urbanism, and construction, and
thus giving rise to many forms of illustration and commentary. Within such an environment,
architecture and design become a vital part of popular culture. The best architectural journals
world-wide have strong editorial boards that decide what should be published
based on their values and convictions, and their reputation stems from such consistent
editorial positions. Internationally,
design publishing is alive and healthy.
Never before has architecture been so lavishly published as it is in the
magazine of Spain, or Japan, or the Netherlands. The success of weekly newspapers such as the United
Kingdom's Building Design in reaching broad audiences with a range of issues
from design to public policy suggests that there might be a large untapped
market in the U.S. So too does the
success of a magazine like Blueprint, which represents a wide range of activities from
furniture to product design to architecture, creating a unity among design
professions which is much clearer in London than it is in New York. It is significant that despite the weakness
of U.S. publications, many European and Asian publishers depend on American
sales. There are sufficient
similarities between the production of architecture here and in Europe to
believe that the States could sustain an equally large number of distinct
design and architectural publications. There
appear to be two major reasons why this does not happen. First, architectural culture in the
U.S. is not so diffuse that there is no nationwide audience for architecture
outside the profession. The
diffusion reflects the loss of the public realm to private interests, whether
these interests be arrogant "new urbanists" or the not unrelated corporations
that increasingly interfere in the ordering of cities and towns. Those without vested interests don't
seem to care. In addition, the
architectural stars mostly achieve celebrity through the construction of their
private fantasies, and the audience for their work is satisfied by monographs
(although even those dealing with American architects are better produced in
Asia and Europe than here).
Second, design criticism is a precarious activity in the U.S. Only a handful of architectural critics
currently serve on the staff of major newspapers. One gifted writer friend of mine, who for years has given
wise advice through the pages of a major northeastern newspaper, told me
recently that if or when he leaves, he doubts the paper will replace him. As
is true for all the arts, a strong critical environment is important not only
for the refinement and development of issues within the discipline, but also
for the stimulation of public interest in the values and intentions of the
medium. This should be
particularly true for so public an art as architecture. However, apart from a few newspapers
and two or three arcane theoretical journals \0x2013 whose discourse is becoming
increasingly marginal \0x2013 there are no contexts within the U.S. in which design
criticisms can develop. Unlike
Europe, the U.S. provides too few career opportunities for critics to attract
sufficient numbers of people of sufficient quality to have an impact. Finding good writers who could
insightfully and entertainingly place the uneven inventions of architects
within the larger culture was a continuing problem at AA Files, but nothing compared to
the current problem in the U.S. In
London writers on architecture come from fields as diverse as art history,
psychoanalysis, and literature, and find employment in the many publications
that London sustains. In recent
years there have even been several television series on architecture and design
that made much of personalities (which didn't really hurt the cause) and
advanced public understanding of the built environment. In the years I was in London, three or
four new design magazines have been able to find both an audience and
advertisers, despite the fragile British economy. Unlike
in the U.S., even in New York, journalism in London is a tough, cut-throat
activity in which people are continually hustling way of finding work and
having a say. Design publishing in
Britain is much more journalistic than academic, more concerned with the bitchy
political maneuvering necessary to get a building approved that with its
political correctness. On
reflection, a larger difference between New York and London is the willingness
of English editors and writers to be actively involved in the formative forces
of culture production and to view the journal as an instrument in this
struggle. Witness the fierce
debate over Zaha Hadid's Cardiff Opera project. U.S. magazines have never seen \0x2013 would never publish \0x2013 such
fierce commentary. Robust
and influential design criticism can exist only when there is a broad public
interest in architecture. That
seems not sufficiently present in the States; at the least, that is the
assumption of editors and publishers.
If a public art ceases to be of interest to the public \0x2013 except to some
marginal subset of the fashion industry \0x2013 then there is no effective context
for critical exchange outside the increasingly precious theorizing from the
academy. The low level of popular
concern with architecture in the U.S. may reflect complex changes in the social
and cultural uses
of architecture. Undoubtedly,
Asia's enthusiasm for architecture is due to its ability to serve as a
recognizable symbol of progress and wealth. Europe's preoccupation with architecture continues to
reflect the heavy burden that comes from and architecturally rich history. But perhaps, in the U.S., architecture
has attained a mediocre level appropriate to this resilient and fungible
democracy \0x2013 or perhaps the culture at large is simply disinterested in the
high-art elitism of the profession's most influential figures and bored by the
others. Or perhaps the public
feels excluded from a culture increasingly shaped by private interest. A more tempting explanation may be that
architecture as currently formed is too constraining an imposition on the
future and must bend to the formation of new realities being shaped in the
pages of magazines such as Mondo 2000, and Leonardo, and in proliferating internet products
such as FEED. The writers those publications attract
draw from a much wider sea of experience and scholarship than has emerged from
the narrows of architecture theory.
However, at this time, the New York Times remains the single most
influential journal for the discussion of architecture, and its is disturbing
that the perceptions of a nation should be constrained by the modest ambitions
of the newspaper's critics. Alan
Balfour is dean of the School of Architecture at Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute and author of Berlin: The Politics of Order, and Cities of Artificial
Excavation: The work of Peter Eisenman, plus other books. » back to top | ||