After 10 years. In tribute to Herbert Muschamp, architecture critic for The New York Times
03/10/2017.
10th anniversary
metalocus, JOSÉ JUAN BARBA
metalocus, JOSÉ JUAN BARBA
In tribute to Herbert Muschamp, the architecture critic for The New York Times, one of the most outspoken and influential voices in architectural criticism, we replay clips in which Muschamp talks about architecture, design, and Frank Lloyd Wright.
Fotograma, Herbert Muschamp entrevistado en el programa de Charlie Rose.
Herbert Muschamp in October 2006 in New York. Credit Robert Maxwell for The New York Times
the Seagram Building is my choice as the millennium's most important building. Por Herbert Muschamp. The New York Times, 18 de Abril de 1999
...the most exciting new building it has been my honor to review in more than 30 years of writing about architecture.” Herbert Muschamp, New York Times
Cover. Hearts of the City / The Selected Writings of Herbert Muschamp
Back cover. Hearts of the City / The Selected Writings of Herbert Muschamp
Cover. Hearts of the City / The Selected Writings of Herbert Muschamp
Herbert Muschamp, a writer for The New York Times whose wildly original and often deeply personal reviews made him one of the most influential architecture critics of his generation, died October 2nd, 2007, in Manhattan. He was 59 and lived in Manhattan. The cause was lung cancer, according Michael Wa rd Stout, his lawyer. Muschamp's views were both ahead of their time.
He was the former architecture critic for the New Republic (1987-1992). As the architecture critic for The Times from 1992 to 2004. Herbert Muschamp made architecture a subject accessible to everyone and he seized on a moment when the repetitive battles and the heated debate between Modernists and Post-Modernists had given way to a surge of new architects and works that put architecture back in the public spotlight.
One of the most courageous and engaged voices in his field, he devoted many columns at the Times to the lack of serious new architecture in this country, and particularly in New York, even spoking out against the agenda of developers.
Muschamp often wrote about how the good architecture could be inspiring and uplifting, and he based his writing on unusual references, at the time, as film, literature, and popular culture to write pieces that were passionate and often personal, changing the landscape of architectural criticism. His openness to new talent was reflected in the architects and he championed early on the work of Frank Gehry, Rem Koolhaas, Zaha Hadid and Jean Nouvel, among others, now major figures on the world stage, to younger architects like Greg Lynn, Lindy Roy and Jesse Reiser and Nanako Umemoto.
...If the owners take my advice, they will redo the base with a stylized version of Calvin Klein billboards. A folded photomural. Black and white pictures of pouty young people. Some slashes of color for accent, perhaps. An homage to the street's unsanitized, John Rechy, Russ Meyer past. (The graphic designer Tibor Kalman would have known how to do it.)...
A Latin Jolt to the Skyline. By HERBERT MUSCHAMP OCT. 20, 2002
He also paid close attention to architects who were recognized for their theoretical writings. Muschamp seemed as interested in the ideas that pushed architecture forward as he was in the successes and failures of buildings themselves. Herbert Muschamp is the author of File Under Architecture and Man About Town: Frank Lloyd Wright in New York City.
More information
HERBERT MITCHELL MUSCHAMP
Herbert Mitchell Muschamp (November 28, 1947 – October 2, 2007) was an American architecture critic. Born in Philadelphia, Muschamp attended the University of Pennsylvania but dropped out after two years to move to New York City, where he was a regular at Andy Warhol's Factory. He later attended Parsons School of Design, where he studied architecture, and returned to teach after spending some time studying at the Architectural Association in London.
During this period, he began writing architectural criticism for various magazines, including Vogue, House & Garden, and Art Forum. He was appointed the architecture critic for The New Republic in 1987.
Muschamp became the architecture critic for The New York Times in 1992, succeeding Paul Goldberger. During his controversial tenure at the Times, Muschamp rose, according to Nicolai Ouroussoff, to preeminence as the nation's foremost judge of the architecture world. His writing championed now-famous architects such as Frank Gehry, Rem Koolhaas, Zaha Hadid and Jean Nouvel, as well as architects that he regarded as rising talents, including Greg Lynn, Lindy Roy, Jesse Reiser, Nanako Umemoto and Casagrande & Rintala.
Muschamp was a lover of cities. One of his most often quoted lines came from a 2004 review: "A city is never more fully human than when expertise – our own or someone else's – allows us access to ebullience, lightness and delight." He spent a number of columns criticizing the new master plan for the World Trade Center site, calling the plan produced by Daniel Libeskind an embodiment of the "Orwellian condition America's detractors accuse us of embracing: perpetual war for perpetual peace."
He stepped down as the architecture critic of The New York Times in 2004 to write the "Icons" column for the Times' T Style Magazine, among other features. He was replaced by his protégé, Nicolai Ouroussoff. Muschamp was openly gay, and the centrality of gay men in the cultural life of New York City was central to his writing. He continued to write until his death from lung cancer in Manhattan in 2007.
A book collection of Muschamp's writings, Hearts of the City: The Selected Writings of Herbert Muschamp, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 2010.
JOSÉ JUAN BARBA
José Juan Barba (1964) architect from ETSA Madrid in 1991. Special Mention in the National Finishing University Education Awards 1991. PhD in Architecture ETSAM, 2004. He founded his professional practice in Madrid in 1992 (www.josejuanbarba.com). He is an architecture critic and editor-in-chief of METALOCUS magazine since 1999, and he was advising different NGOs until 1997. He has been a lecturer (in Design, Theory and Criticism, and Urban planning) and guest lecturer at different national and international universities (Roma TRE, Polytechnic Milan, ETSA Madrid, ETSA Barcelona, UNAM Mexico, Univ. Iberoamericana Mexico, University of Thessaly Volos, FA de Montevideo, Washington, Medellin, IE School, U.Alicante, Univ. Europea Madrid, UCJC Madrid, ESARQ-U.I.C. Barcelona,...).
Maître de Conférences IUG-UPMF Grenoble 2013-14. Full assistant Professor, since 2003 up to now at the University of Alcalá School of Architecture, Madrid, Spain. And Jury in competitions as Quaderns editorial magazine (2011), Mies van der Rohe Awards, (2010-2022), Europan13 (2015). He has been invited to participate in the Biennale di Venezia 2016 as part "Spaces of Exception / Spazi d'Eccezione".
He has published several books, the last in 2016, "#positions" and in 2015 "Inventions: New York vs. Rem Koolhaas, Bernard Tschumi, Piranesi " and collaborations on "Spaces of Exception / Spazi d'Eccezione", "La Mansana de la discordia" (2015), "Arquitectura Contemporánea de Japón: Nuevos territorios" (2015)...
Awards.-
- Award. RENOVATION OF SEGURA RIVER ENVIRONMENT, Murcia, Sapin, 2010.
- First Prize, RENOVATION GRAN VÍA, “Delirious Gran Vía”, Madrid, Spain, 2010.
- First Prize, “PANAYIOTI MIXELI Award”. SADAS-PEA, for the Spreading of Knowledge of Architecture Athens, 2005.
- First Prize, “SANTIAGO AMÓN Award," for the Spreading of Knowledge of Architecture. 2000.
- Award, “PIERRE VAGO Award." ICAC -International committee of Art Critics. London, 2005.
- First Prize, C.O.A.M. Madrid, 2000. Shortlisted, World Architecture Festival. Centro de Investigación e Interpretación de los Ríos. Tera, Esla y Orbigo, Barcelona, 2008.
- First Prize. FAD AWARD 07 Ephemeral Interventions. “M.C.ESCHER”. Arquin-Fad. Barcelona, Sapin 2007.
