What do you think of the new ARCHITECTURE magazine?

What do you all think of the new ARCHITECTURE magazine since the format changed 2 years ago?

I'll wait to give my opinion until after the discussion begins to avoid initial bias (but it's not going to be a good one).

Chris Hasek, RA

i love the change. i especially enjoyed the cover content changes that they made. for years, the cover was usually yet another photo of a building, similiar to the hundreds of other photos just like it inside. with their new emphasis on the people of the profession (i think the first cover had a portrait of thom mayne), instead of merely the product that we produce, it reminds me, at least, that our profession is mainly about people and their needs, and not only the materials and styles that we use.

Yes Robert, I agree, the graphics are fresh and trendy. They remind me of Wired magazine, THE MOST heady read I've come across. Hands down, Wired is the 500 pound gorilla of forward-thinking techno-political periodicals. But ARCHITECTURE is a boring, intellectual dogmatic spew month after month. It talks about the same firms doing the same stuff every month. The photography is excellent albeit of the same disorderly deconstructivist...... trash....that looks so unsympathetic of human scale and interaction. The buildings are always the same crap: lacking in human scale, lacking in order... or should I say, revelling in DISORDER, interjecting textures, materials and detailing that play one-upmanship in outrageousness and nonconstructability, cold starkness that I don't see how anyone would want to spend more than 5 minutes in... I could go on and on. But this magazine seems to have it's favorite firms... the Frank Gehry's, the KPF's, the Billie Tsien's, the Eisenmans. Whatever happened to the firms that do just good old attractive, normal stuff?? Why does everything they publish have to have some duality game, or a slash-and-dive competion of elements?

If this rag could spare some of the intellectual profundity and try to connect with some plausible, common-man's feelings about how architecture is experienced, I'll change my nasty attitude. But, nonetheless, I still read it monthly hoping to find something that will jazz me.

Chris Hasek, R.A.

well, you've put your finger on a good debate, i'll say that. i'll also say that i take exception to some of the issues that you bring up.

first, i don't agree with the comparison between Architecture and Wired. what Wired is notorious for, and has received much criticism for, is their use of short attention span coverage of major news issues, even if the news issues are usually technology based. most of Wired's articles are short (usually one page)

and only skim the surface of an issue... i don't think that is the case with Architecture at all. As far as the fresh and trendy graphics, it's just a matter of personal taste. keep in mind that most of the great classical artists

throughout time where accused of being either 'way out there' or 'trendy'. it really just depends where you place yourself in comparison to what you see.

regarding the content, i don't understand why a magazine would really want to publish 'good old attractive projects'. you don't need to a magazine to see cookie cutter buildings that reflect tired nostalgic styles of the past or dated

modernist ideas from the 1930's, you can just drive around any city or suburb and see those that.

the projects that they cover are ones that will hopefully continue to refresh architecture and perhaps question ideas that people, in time, begin to just assume as givens. How many more brick federal style libraries, or steel and glass Mies boxes do we need? while i agree that i get tired of seeing the same group of people getting all the coverage, i also don't want to look at projects that i saw thirty years ago in a different place with a different program, but same building.

i don't know if you have been to see it, but gehry's museum in bilbao is perhaps

the most amazing project of this century. not because gehry did it, but because

of the things you mentioned in your own criticism. the scale, the order, the use of texture, everything is just amazing. it is the first buiding that i have

ever been in that gave me a sense of warmth. the color of titanium skin in the evening, and the shapes and curves of the soft walls inside bring a very large building into a magnificent human scale once you are there.