ABSTRACT
There is a new energy and excitement among the younger generation of architectural critics. Architecture—the “chained and fettered art”—is the last discipline in the humanities to be affected by the crisis of the professional and managerial strata in American society. Architecture—viewed as both rigorous discipline (science) and poetic buildings (art)—is often distinguished from other arts by its direct dependence on social patronage and its obligation to stay in tune with the recent developments in technology. The political legitimacy of architecture is linked to an even deeper issue: the intellectual crisis in architectural criticism. The half-century predominance of the international styles in architecture left critics with little room to maneuver. Architecture is distinct from the other arts in that it associated its own modernist avant-garde movements—its formalism and newness—with the myth of the machine. There was in Modern architecture an overlap between nineteenth-century instrumentalism and modernist formalism which did not occur in any of the other arts.
