ARCHITECTS AS CRITICS/CRITICS AS ARCHITECTS

Roundtable with Peter Eisenman and Kenneth Frampton Organized and Moderated by Daniel Sherer, Visiting Assistant Professor, Cornell AAP April 8, 2008 CORNELL CENTER IN MANHATTAN at 6:30-8:00 50 W. 17th Street, 2nd Floor To raise the question of architectural criticism today is to confront a divergence between internal and external perspectives, distinct viewpoints which emerge when architects on the one hand, and critics, theorists, historians on the other, write about architecture. To explore the implications of this contrast, architectural historian and critic Daniel Sherer, Visiting Assistant Professor at Cornell AAP, will moderate a roundtable at Cornell’s Manhattan Center with two of the most prominent contemporary critics, architects, and architect/theorists, Peter Eisenman and Kenneth Frampton. Among the questions to be addressed are the following: Is there a fundamental difference between the discursive strategies of the architect and those adopted by the critic, the theorist, and the historian? What tensions arise within critical discourse when the architect writes criticism, and when the theorist who is not an architect does the same? Does criticism enter into practice, and how does architecture position itself in relation to other fields of knowledge, each of which has its own critical methods? Can one speak of norms of criticism internal to architecture as opposed to extrinsic codes that constrain both architecture and criticism? Is it still possible to contrast the partisan character of operative criticism to the epistemological objectives of theory, or have such distinctions, so prominent a feature of architectural discourse from the 1960’s to the 1990’s, lost their critical point? Have relations of continuity and rupture between present-day theory and criticism on the one hand, and Modernist discourse on the other, put into crisis the traditional concerns of the critic, the historian and the architect? How has the function of criticism changed with the rise of new media, the dissemination of architecture as an index of contemporaneity, the articulation of new subjects and objects of representation in architecture and outside of it? Finally, is the primary theoretical subtext of the discussion provided by the nexus between architecture and language and the relations that this connection presupposes—always complex, multiple, and overdetermined--with other cultural and theoretical domains? The roundtable is free and open to the public 6:30 PM Location AAP Center in NYC, 50 W. 17th Street, 2nd Floor admission info The roundtable is free and open to the public, but seating is limited and reservations are required. Please contact Emily Bronson to make your reservation. contact Emily Bronson [email protected] Cornell AAP NYC Center 50 W. 17th Street, 2nd Floor New York, NY