ABSTRACT
The urban economist David Perry former director of the Great Cities Initiative in Chicago, once offered a distinction between architects and planners: When architects put something physical into the world, they think of their job as done. When planners put something into the world, they think of their job as just beginning. This chapter demonstrates that building performance evaluation is an ideal, integrative framework for architectural criticism. An integrative intellectual framework would extend the typical compositional and historical assessments of architecture to include its life in time and use, which would in turn expand the ethical compass of criticism. The 2013 repositioning initiative of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) testifies to the influence of this orientation, and helps account for AIA's identification of four strategic priorities for the coming decade: resilience, materials, energy, and health. All four of these categories suggest a greater emphasis on research, data, empirical analysis, and building performance.
