The State of Design Journalism in the Internet Age

Hosted by Duo Dickinson and Martin C. Pedersen

Welcome to Our Buildings, Our Selves: Humanity in Architecture, a monthly podcast produced by Common Edge, the Connecticut Architecture Foundation, the Connecticut AIA, and Bridgeport community radio station WPKN 89.5 FM.    

In many ways, design journalism in the 21st century is in uncharted territory. Digital technology has changed everything, eroding the business models of the previous century and catapulting everyone onto the infinitely fractured world of the internet. Architectural exposure—who’s covered, what’s covered, how its covered—is an entirely different beast today. Our guests this month, Pulitzer Prize–winning architecture critic Paul Goldberger and Chicago-based design writer and critic Zach Mortice, have unique perspectives on this media transformation, both past and present.  

Paul Goldberger is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. He began his career at the New York Times, where in 1984 his work was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Criticism. He later served as architecture critic for the New Yorker.  He lectures widely around the country on the subject of architecture, design, historic preservation, and cities. He has also served as a special consultant and advisor on architecture and planning matters to several major cultural and educational institutions.

Zach Mortice is a Chicago-based design journalist and critic that focuses on how architecture and landscape architecture intersect with public policy. His work has appeared in Architect, Architectural Record, Metropolis, Landscape Architecture Magazine, Curbed, Dezeen, The Atlantic’s CityLab, and Places Journal. He’s currently a contributing writer at Bloomberg CityLab. His social media handles can be found at @zachmortice. 

Join our guests New York Times architecture critic, Michael Kimmelman, and critic and creator of McMansion Hell, Kate Wagner. 

All specializations create their own language, rules, and personalities that reinforce the values of those engaged in it. Architecture is no different. For a century "Modernism" was the base clef of frozen music, defining what was, in fact music, and not noise. Now that orthodoxy, that Canon, is completely destabilized by the Internet. So architecture's "Great Chef's" are no longer evident: like music there seem to be few standards of approval: fewer cults. So fewer Cults of Personality. Frank Lloyd Wright, Michael Graves, Zaha Hadid all personified architecture: What changed?

"What Is Ugly?" Author, architect and educator Witold Rybczynski,  and writer and founder of Studio 360, Kurt Andersen, address the exquisite diversity in our universality without the obsession with "style."