ABSTRACT
In this chapter, architecture is read for its ability to critique its context. We can understand the opposing forms of criticality in architecture as a debate between contextualism (responsiveness to site, culture, or contingencies) and autonomy (emphasis on formal inventiveness and design method). It explores three modalities of criticality: critical contextualism, institutional critique, and critical architecture. Deconstructivism is briefly considered. Likewise, the concepts of autonomy and contingency are also discussed. This chapter posits that architecture’s situatedness requires examining it as a product of its cultural, socio-political, and temporal contexts, the response to which produces a critical response to a site.
