On the edge of extinction. Architectural criticism can be a productive and a creative literary practice. Its best practitioners challenge architects to examine their work while, at the same time, help them evolve their profession. Architecture and architectural criticism can be bound together in a mutually constructive association, each contributing to the other in reactive and proactive ways. Established as an ambassador of the built environment, the architectural critic began life as an exalted figure, revered by most practitioners and read by a relatively minor segment of society. With the advent of the more wide reaching design journals, architects breathlessly anticipated the next issue of their favorite magazine, looking forward to biting criticisms of other architects’ projects. Then came the Internet, and an even wider public had access to national newspapers, websites, and blogs. On a parallel but inverse evolutionary track, some would argue that the architecture community has become too specific, self-contained, and defined internally by specialty practices: architect, urban designer, interior architect, planner, community developer, design builder, academic, graphic designer.

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