YOU CALL THIS ARCHITECTURE?!?

Words :: Andrée Iffrig // Illustration Extraordinaire :: Don Lee

Paul Goldberger is passionate about architecture’s place in the cityscape. Pulitzer-prize winning journalist, author and educator, Goldberger was recently in Calgary to speak at the Sustainable Environmental Design ‘Keynote Series’ hosted by the Calgary Chamber of Commerce and the University of Calgary. Goldberger began his career as an architectural critic for The New York Times, where he spent more than 25 years. His most recent book, Up from Zero, has won praise for a revealing analysis of the behind-the-scenes story in the redevelopment of the World Trade Center in New York City – a.k.a. Ground Zero. Currently Goldberger balances his writing for The New Yorker with teaching at the Parsons’ School of Design, community service, and a variety of speaking and writing engagements.
In an interview before his talk in Calgary, Goldberger shared his passion for architecture and reflected on the challenges that cities face as they grow.

Take me through the process of evaluating the building and tell me what you see. Are you a bystander on the sidewalk outside the building? Or do you begin with a much wider context? Where do you start?
Architecture is part of our social and cultural environment. It’s not just an object. I examine a building from all sides, literally by walking around it, and conceptually as an aesthetic object, a cultural object and a functional object. I ask what role it plays in the cityscape. As a critic, I want to balance all of this.
There’s the aesthetic perspective, yet a building is more than just shapes. It fulfills more than just a financial or functional role. These factors come into play with every piece of architecture, but their relevance varies from building to building. For instance, a museum is more of an aesthetic statement than is an office or house. Aesthetic concerns do not dominate in every case; you can be more forgiving with functional shortcomings in a museum than in a hospital. Every building has to be evaluated in terms of the circumstances that created it.
Buildings are meant to be experienced over time and in real space. My job is to help people experience buildings in a variety of ways. I try to put myself in the mind of the typical user. Then I might step back to experience the building in aesthetic terms.
I spend most of my time recording impressions in my notes. I don’t waste my time recording the height of the atrium, or that the building has grey shingles, because I can always get that stuff from pictures later on. Impressions, my own sort of emotional reactions, are something that it’s really important to record. The thing that makes architecture most exciting and engaging and energizing to write about is to capture the experience of being in it.

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