Rixt Hoekstra
Architecture....What's Criticism Got To Do With It?
An investigation into the state of architectural criticism today
Rixt Hoekstra’s work at Künstlerhaus Büchsenhausen analyzed the precarious position of the architectural critic in the context of wider theoretical and historical development. This development started at the end of the 1960s, when the Italian architect Manfredo Tafuri declared that modern architecture should be the object of the critique of ideology. Could the present ambivalence and even antipathy towards criticism be a consequence of the very notions that supported the idea of critique and judgment? Can we maintain a space for critique, or should we—as Dutch theorist Mieke Bal has stated—all become curators now?
Rixt HOEKSTRA (*1975) is a Dutch architectural historian who studies the place and position of the historian, theoretician or critic in this field. In her work she attempts to (re-)construct a history not of the objects of architectural history—buildings, architects, cities—but of its subjects. An intellectual history exposing the author who spends long hours behind the computer in order to construct narratives of art and architecture.