Does anyone still believe, as those of us who grew up watching the Jetsons on TV did, that the future holds promise for humankind? Let’s not kid ourselves: the future is looking shittier all the time. The planet is rapidly overheating, politicians and big business are more corrupt than ever, salaries have stagnated in the face of rampant inflation, the filthy rich are getting filthier and richer, and a genocide is being perpetuated by a rogue state that claims to be “the only democracy in the Middle East.”
A recent meeting of the Comité International des Critiques d’Architecture (CICA) during the UIA Congress of this year has me worried about the future. The topic of discussion was “the future of architecture and architectural criticism,” which got me thinking: which future: the likely one, or a desirable one? The two are highly polarized, and likely to become even more polarized judging by the way things are going.
It’s easy to dream up an ideal future. Mine is one where despots such as Trump, Netanyahu, and Putin (to name but a few), are all removed from the face of the Earth by friendly aliens (I’m thinking of the kind from outer space, not the global south, but then again anybody will do). In their place, a bunch of kind, empathic peaceniks decide to stop driving ideological wedges between people and instead terminate all wars, end fossil fuel consumption, plant trees, tax the rich, feed the poor, and build beautiful social housing, schools, hospitals, libraries, and bike lanes. Yes: eco-socialism. Only problem is it’s not looking like that’s going to happen on a global scale anytime soon. Au contraire.
What to do? The first thing we need to do is be realistic and recognize that the future is likely to be even worse than the present unless we do something about it. The second thing we need to do is to direct the rage that this recognition hopefully ignites toward a collective struggle for a better future.
The likely future of architecture?
- AI Data centers in the exurbs of sprawling North-American cities that are the size of Manhattan and that consume incessant quantities of water and energy.
- Glass-covered, air-conditioned football stadiums in the Arabian peninsula in which every seat is in a VIP box, and priced accordingly.
- Luxury tourist resorts on private islands in the Adriatic Sea developed by the Racist-in-chief’s family business for a ruler who collects architectural trophies.
- Luxury “residential” buildings designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architects that are “inspired by nature,” the “dwelling” units of which are sold to speculators, narco-bosses, dictators, and money-launderers, among others.
- AI slop resembling the work of Zaha Hadid or Antoni Gaudí created by social media influencers with no understanding of architecture other than style.
- Exhibitions of laborious temporary installations by architectural theorists that raise social and ecological concerns among an audience of mostly like-minded architects at architectural biennials and conferences.
- Yet more bureaucracy, red tape, and regulations that will constribute to a further rise in the cost of construction (and therefore housing) and a decline in architects’ earnings.
- Yet taller skyscrapers and condo towers in which all elevators suddenly break down at the same time, leaving people stranded way up high with great views but not much else.
- A yet greater dependency on unpaid interns to financially enable ambitious projects to be designed by ambitious architects, thereby perpetuating the quaint idea of the second-oldest profession as a “gentleman’s profession.”
The likely future of architectural criticism?
- Press releases written by archispeak-specialized communications agencies that can be read for free in online architecture media.
- Historic print magazines that can only survive economically because the architects whose work they have decided to publish are providing the entire photographic report free of charge.
- The same photographs of the same building published over and over, ad-nauseam, by all architectural media (print and online) because the architects permit only the photographs that they have commissioned to be circulated.
- Underground ‘zines and personal substacks published by architecture critics frustrated by the decline in paid writing assignments as well as out-of-control image-control.
- AI-written articles full of fascinating bytes of information but completely devoid of humor, irony, wordplay, satire, subtlety or sarcasm.
- Peer-reviewed “architectural criticism” that is brilliant but can only be read in ridiculously expensive academic journals, placing it out of reach of most readers, and only if it is not censored by the larger academic organization that controls it.
Pretty bleak, eh? And not even very futuristic: much of this has already been happening for quite a while.
But don’t despair! There are also good things happening, albeit in small quantities. In the metropolitan area of Barcelona, which is to say that city’s suburbs (!), some of the most innovative architecture on the planet is being built, and it’s –get this— social housing! The public agency IMPSOL-AMB is now building a bioclimatic rental housing block by Flexo Arquitectura that has no heating or air conditioning. Instead, the building is architecturally designed so that the seven stories of stacked dwellings are either heated or cooled using passive systems. The building features a central atrium with a big-ass reversible ceiling fan and operable clerestory windows so that the space captures solar heat in winter (atrium windows closed and fan pushing solar-heated air downward into dwellings) but in summer becomes a solar chimney that expels hot air (atrium windows open, fan pulling hot air upwards and out). The balconies of every dwelling have an operable glass facade that similarly captures heat in winter (when closed) and permits cross-ventilation in summer (when open). Why blow the budget on expensive mechanical systems when that money can instead be spent on architecture that does the job? The building even looks cool to boot! This is a desirable “future of architecture.”
There are also signs of a desirable “future of architectural criticism.” The New York Review of Architecture is a somewhat new (since 2019) magazine of architectural criticism (not to be confused with a magazine of architecture). It is unpretentious, funny, insightful and a genuine pleasure to read. You can really tell the texts have been written by intelligent humans and not AI. It’s a cooperative, so it’s independent. No greenwashing, no pretentious archi-speak, and most radically of all: no photos of buildings! Just witty and incisive writing accompanied by cartoons. I recently subscribed and am very excited to receive my first print issue.
So, there is hope. But if we want the future that is desirable to triumph over the future that otherwise looks likely, then we need to actively resist one and struggle in favor of the other.
Criticalista 
good piece. Thank you for writing about Flexo’s IMPSOL-AMB project. As always I trust your eye, both in the writing and the images. This is how I want to see buildings: not as images, or brands, or carefully curated views, but as construction and occupation as it happens. I want to be where you are standing with your phone, not where a professional architectural photographer is in his studio with all his corrective lenses, his air-brushing and colour balancing.
I would say that the architectural press — magazines, journals and architectural critics, has abrogated any sense of debate, or even revelation, and transferred responsibility for finding such things to us, as individuals, to seek out and to pay for with clicks and shares, and dozens of subscriptions to individual producers’ substacks. or feeds. or old-school websites. We, as consumers, have to work harder to read about what other people think about architecture, or even what other architecture is out there. The critic is researcher, commissioning editor, webmaster and publisher all at once. Research perhaps falls by the wayside.
NYRA: from the contributors, the headings, the jokiness, the New York Review of Architecture seems as clubby as architectural magazines used to be in their heyday; this time a different, younger club without due reverence to the rich and famous, Although, there is Paul Goldberger, again, being his bete-noirish self. This alone makes me cautiious. New York is a big club, the US is a huge club, again we are in the position of looking in at it and envying its traditional ‘vitality’.
And what is this vitality in the critical sphere? As with art criticism, the role of the critic was to promote and demote artists and architects for the critical journals and magazines, supported, if not outright owned by corporate publishers, invested in by trade interests: gallerists for artists, industrial systems for architects, from both of which come commissions.
There is the art market, and I would say there is the architecture market. Why are the same names always written about so much so that even a small Canadian city such as Calgary felt it had to commission its Snoehetta library, its Calatrava bridge, its Foster office tower, its BIG residential tower.
Why is Hal Foster still writing, in 2026, about Barnett Newman? Why is Norman Foster proposing solutions for Gaza? In whose interest are such topics? MAGA doesn’t only refer to a socio-political movement in the US. It would dearly love to make architecture great again: the great architects and architecture of the modern movement. It would love to make art great again: the great era of the NY abstract expressionists who still sell as investments, as stock, not as art.
And for the CICA at UIA on the future of architecture and architectural criticism, well, the future is coming whether we think about it or not. The question might be, how nimble are our architectural brains, knowledge bases and schools that let us be responsive, rather than reactive. In all things we need diversity, fluidity and a kind of altruism that doesn’t measure money.
Congrats on writing the lengthiest comment on my humble blog! Glad you enjoyed the piece. I guess all magazines and indeed exhibition spaces are “clubs” of sorts. In the wisecrack words of Marx (Groucho, of course): “I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.”
well yes, it was long, but so was your post, and there was lots to talk about. On Site isn’t and has never been a club. Purposely so, having through circumstance, geography and gender never been in any club. And for all that, we are read.
stephanie white on site review .. http://www.onsitereview.ca onsitereview.substack.com
>