I would like to thank NYRA and Douglas Spencer for taking the time to review 5 percent of my book On the Appearance of the World: A Future for Aesthetics in Architecture. Reviewing books is difficult, so one can hardly fault Mr. Spencer for not doing it and instead using casual remarks, mostly from my preface, as a setup for his own random observations that meander from prairie grass to animal feed. Even more unusual was his denialism of the existence of any historic “Critical Project” in architecture. For more on this project that he argues never existed, he could, ironically, read a book that he actually contributed to: Architecture Against the Post-Political: Essays in Reclaiming the Critical Project. (Emphasis on the last two words.) He also, as if on cue, rehearses tired ideas about aesthetics, notably that considering aesthetics in architecture is only something oppressors do. Let us rid the world of all beauty in the name of virtuous equality! Perhaps that is why he moved to Iowa.
Relax. It’s okay. I’m expected to take digs at Iowa—I’m from Nebraska! As such I particularly enjoyed his explaining of the American Midwest to me. As someone who is, I am told, British, he naturally would know much more about the Midwest than I do—as I am merely from a family that has owned the same pig farm in Bennington, Nebraska, since 1879. I spent part of my young life there doing everything from walking through soybean fields with a machete to cut down invasive sunflowers to giving rhinitis shots to baby pigs right before I castrated them using hand tools. Clearly with such an elite upbringing I must be the silver-spooned snob that both Mr. Spencer and NYRA suggest, in particular with their newsletter title “Highway Snobbery,” implying that I am not only a snob but a thief. It is curious that Mr. Spencer would also so insult me (and Peter Zumthor for some reason) for not doing projects—specifically strip malls and office blocks—in the Midwest. My office has actually been involved in several Midwest projects, including an office block for the University of Nebraska Medical Center (unbuilt) and the ongoing renovation of Crossroads Mall in Omaha and its adjacent strip malls, since 2020, all in collaboration with Holland Basham Architects. My Nebraska-based client for both, Lockwood Development, will be surprised to learn that I am too much of a snob to accept projects in the Midwest. I would have expected better actual research from Mr. Spencer, particularly given that he describes his own writing as “a standard point of reference in the analysis of contemporary architecture.” (Highway Snobbery check in aisle four, please?)
Given the astounding number of falsehoods in Mr. Spencer’s “book review,” I thought I might give a brief explanation of what the book is actually about. It is nearly entirely dedicated to developing a list of the types of relationships found between architecture and aesthetics today. That’s it. I reviewed many of the ideas in the book with actual philosophers, all in person and face-to-face, including Jacques Rancière, David Chalmers, Graham Harman, and Elaine Scarry. I would have thought Mr. Spencer would respect such input from philosophers given his multiple references to Hegel, who, if I may remind everyone, was famous for writing in his Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) that “There exists no better way to remove truth, beauty, and optimism from this world than to read book reviews from self-righteous critical theorists.” Okay, maybe Hegel said that, and maybe he didn’t. I guess it doesn’t matter anyways when one can publish whatever they want in New York Review of Architecture these days, true or not.