(Design Book Review, Fall 2000)
Review of Theories and Manifestoes of Contemporary Architecture, edited by Charles Jencks and Karl Kropf; Theorizing a New Agenda for Architecture: an Anthology of Architectural Theory, 1965-1995, edited by Kate Nesbitt; and Architecture Theory since 1968,edited by K. Michael Hays (Design Book Review, Fall 2000)
“As I was pondering the years these books cover, the invitation for my twenty-fifth high school reunion arrived in the mail, prompting, as such coincidences will in midlife, questions: Is this my architectural life? Can I claim the familiar but at times uncongenial legacy described in these anthologies as my own? Must I? One does, after all, want to belong, to have been part of the memorable movements of one’s time. To have been present at the beginning of something—the first days of the Fillmore, or CBGB, or postmodernism. Perhaps this is one reason we write theory: to certify our place amidst the contingencies of our time. Remember that day? What a time that was. I was there. The flip side, of course, is that people are already starting to talk about deconstruction the way people talk about Woodstock.”
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