ABSTRACT
This chapter moves beyond dealing with theoretical concerns one by one, and explores how intersectional approaches to criticism add further value. This multiplicity of approaches illustrates the potential dexterity and nimbleness of critique, and how it can adapt to a range of demands and reveal all manner of latent qualities in a design. It also emphasises how critique is not simply negative, but is in itself a form of creative practice. Making multiple critiques of the same site is used to demonstrate how a shift in theoretical position can generate a different critique, as revealed through a study of Andy Goldsworthy’s Garden of Stones. This chapter suggests some strategies for combining and contrasting critiques, including quattro stagioni plots and role playing, as with DIY Criticism. Further models for using a comparative to critique are introduced, including the “who wore it best?” approach, and examining multiple critics’ analysis of the same site in the approach of “one site, eight ways,” as explored through a collection of critiques on Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
