Bingler and Pedersen critique the profession in "How to Rebuild Architecture."

The New York Times is as close as we come to having a newspaper of record, and is certainly the leading thought-influencer for this country’s cultural, if not its political, elite. That makes its recent descent into know-nothing, cliché-ridden reviews of architecture and its products all the more troubling. With an “architecture critic” who has basically given up on reviewing the designed environment in favor of bizarre forays into fields such as so-called “evidence-based design,” the Times has now for the second time in several months given its editorial page over to a piece on architecture that is so pointless and riddled with clichés as to beggar comprehension.

This one, entitled "How to Rebuild Architecture," was penned by Steven Bingler, AIA, and Martin C. Pedersen. It starts with that hoary trope of “anti-elitist” architecture criticism: the lovable, aged mother who sees a misbegotten piece of modern architecture and says: ”It looks like somebody piled a couple of boxcars on top of each other, then covered them up with cheap metal and whatever else they could find at the junkyard!”

Fine, perhaps the structure is, but so what? Perhaps another mom (like mine, who loved rough-hewn, modern architecture) might like the structure. The authors use this opening salvo by a lay-person to claim that such non-experts have it right, and architects should be listening to them. They add a soupçon of moral outrage by noting that some architects participating in the rebuilding of New Orleans were ignorant enough of local conditions to propose buildings with flat roofs. Oh, horrors. Ed. note: Bingler’s firm also produced one of the Make It Right houses, albeit without a flat roof.

So we have three of the standard criticisms of buildings designed by architects: first, they are ugly according to what the piece’s authors perceive as some sort of widely-held community standard (or at least according to some 88-year old ladies); second, they are built without consultation; third they don’t work.

All those critiques might be true. Good architecture can be startling, or least might not look like what we are used to. It sometimes stretches the technology of building to the point that it creates problems. And, it is usually designed on commission from a client—not by and for the actual users (unless it is a house for a rich person)—which is why there is so little collaboration, not because architects are so ego-driven that they wouldn’t engage in it.