The current way architecture is critiqued and presented at biennials and exhibitions is ugly, but it doesn't need to be, argues Aaron Betsky.

Does critical architecture have to be ugly" Must it forego form and image altogether to be effective" That would certainly seem to be the message of many recent books, exhibitions and biennial events, most notably the third Chicago Architecture Biennial and the kinds of exhibitions the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum has been staging in the last few years.
Instead of models and drawings, we get diagrams and declarations. Instead of being able to explore experimentation by architects, we are told what to think through manifestoes printed on walls or people lecturing us via voice-overs or didactic wall texts. What models or installations we do see are often purposefully badly crafted or, according to most standards of aesthetics, just plain ugly. That ugliness is, I think, exactly the point. Form is taboo to people who believe that architecture is a perpetuation of power in built form. Aesthetics, they seem to think, is the opiate the global elite uses to veil their intentions and seduce us into accepting their appropriation of space and resources. Standards, whether they are aesthetic or of presentation (like frames and pedestals) reflect the values and beliefs, not to mention the economic and political power, of western white males who developed and control them. I would have a hard time arguing against that positio...