‘Rethink’ is quickly becoming one of the architecture world’s more nauseating verbs. In the Guardian, Alejandro Aravena, the director of the 2016 Venice Biennale, was presented as calling for a ‘rethink’ of the ‘entire role and language of architecture.’ This was mostly headline trickery; Aravena’s piece offered little deeper than a vague call for ‘open systems’ and ‘collective effort’ with an incongruous reliance on military terminology. If the upcoming Biennale - Reporting From the Front - is to succeed in its desire to expand architecture’s scope it should drop the esoteric veil.
‘The battle for a better built environment’, Aravena concluded, ‘is neither a tantrum nor a romantic crusade’, a phase which can be read in new light following the bickering seen in the architectural press this month. Writing in the AJ, veteran hack Paul Finch slammed Guardian critic Rowan Moore’s review of the New London Architecture housing competition as an attack on architectural invention (and imagination as a whole). Central Saint Martins head Jeremy Till called it ‘bar-room bullying passed off as journalism’ and the brawl overflowed to Twitter dragging in many familiar names from the pages of glossy design magazines.
