Successful architecture publishers, like any other, are now in the business of constantly coaxing readers away from what they're reading in order to click on something more intriguing, funny or salacious. Dezeen’s website design is a masterpiece in curated visual distraction. The Architects' Journal’s most-read articles are not their thoughtful building studies but Buzzfeed-style top-tens. The sheer number of stories Archdailypublishes is astonishing but with such a vast output the site has little time for critique, turning instead to reworking press releases and biased descriptions from the architects.

In this climate architecture jargon can thrive as only the shallowest level of engagement is expected from the thoroughly patronised reader. In June, in her uncube article “International Architecture English” Elvia Wilk examined the trend of increasingly nonsensical press releases emerging from PR companies, anxious to cement their client’s intellectual credibility, appealing to rushed publishers keen to increase their web traffic. The result is a vicious circle of gibberish that weakens our critical capacity as a profession and alienates the wider public from our discourse.

Paradoxically, there are perhaps more compelling architecture critics in the world than ever before. The explosion of blogs, self-publishing and podcasts has invigorated a fierce interest in architectural writing and cultivated a generation of amateur and semi-professional writers. Never has it been easier to disseminate our thoughts – and yet this very aspect of globalized communications means we have become over-saturated, unable to collectively consider big issues outside of a few stage-managed political narratives. Some argue that Twitter and similar digital platforms allow crowds to kick-start collective debates through trends, yet with so many voices clamoring to be heard, only the simplest of messages can sustain a broad following. 

In 1715 Colen Campbell published the first volume of Vitruvius Britannicus, and in doing so started a debate that swiftly evolved into the Georgian era producing some of the most loved British architecture of all time. Le Corbusier and CIAM’s 1935 Athens Charter initiated a comparable sea-change in planning, which dramatically altered the post-war urban landscape of Europe. In 1977, Charles Jencks’ The Language of Post-Modern Architecture articulated a vision of an architecture responding to context, body and psychology that underpins the architectures of megastars such as of Gehry and Koolhaas as well as small-scale practices worldwide. Today, without the capacity of a publishing house to push radical ideas, and without the capacity of the public to consider those ideas collectively, such a seismic shift in thinking seems impossible.

Peter Buchanan’s The Big Rethink, published as a series of essays in The AR, may be one of the most important – and damning – critiques of architectural production and modernity written for some time. It is comprehensive, eloquent and propositional, offering a coherent intellectual framework for architects in an age of environmental and economic crisis. For subscribers each essay is an intrepid highlight, but for others it is merely another complex idea they’ll never have time to put their minds to.

To test my hypothesis I1 wrote the light-hearted 11 Things to Know Before Starting Architecture School – fun advice, but of little architectural value compared to the canon of superb features on the AR website. But sure enough, within two weeks of publication my little story had climbed to be our most-read online article of all time – an impressive, if terrifying result for something bashed out in less than an hour.

  • 1. Phineas Harper is Editorial Co-ordinator of The Architectural Review. He studied architecture at the The Welsh School of Architecture and lives in a narrowboat on the River Thames.