What is critical practice?

It often argued within the architecture fraternity about the role of critics or who is the architectural critic?, and very often such position that enacts the role of critics are treated to be outside the sphere of practice. Such assumption is slightly problematic and it attempts to indemnifies the role of architect or architecture to be subservient or limited to “enterprise of global aesthetics / innovation into glittering forms” or “enterprise for self serving biases” or “self serving response based on perception”. If one looks at closely and ask the simple questions about which practice in the city is a critical practice or which practices falls under the garb of self service enterprise, perhaps the question related to the role of architecture in the society may become clear to us.

The construction of interpreter is a not just a intercessor between the architecture and the society, rather the role of practice is to translate the concern matters into an approachable dialogue or a literature, if we agree with the statement then it means that architecture and architect service has didactic end.

Having argued that, lets sharpen the debate further, if architecture and architect are galvanizing force that informs the prevailing current economic, social issues environmental inequity or climate change then the role of practice is not just limited to act of making but also act of disseminating or propositional act that informs the society at large. Hence the argument is that critic or criticism is not outside the practice, rather they form a singular entity.

In addition to that architects practice and critic writings often succumb to reaction and not response. We often checks architectural production with pre-prepared reaction and not allow the experiential and intellectually crafted response to manifest. The critical practice identifies the core value of freedom, far away from self service biases & mend the way as the social enterprise that weaving the way to non-hegemonic change.

Image Credit: Manoj Parmar Architects