Blog Crits

Background Background

In an attempt to stay current with architecture, I've taken to reading some blogs online detailing some of the worlds' best and most intriguing projects. I've been reading two blogs, one called BLDG BLOG and the other called A Daily Dose of Architecture. 

In a somewhat different story, the other day my brother played for me an audio reading of an article from The Economist. If you aren't familiar, its a publication which is based out of london. The magazine reports on world affairs. Its known for its brilliant journalism, unwavering integrity, and international acceptance. I, moreover, was pleasantly surprised when David explained to me that the weekly publication offers its subscribers a single zip file which can be downloaded from its website. The file contains, each week, about 8 hours of the entire publication, spoken out and compressed into MP3 audio.        

What do these two thoughts have in common? I realized yesterday exactly why I've never been satisfied with BLDG BLOG blog.  When their articles are thin, which happens frequently, this blog takes the liberty of appending elaborate hypothetical science fiction type hypotheses, onto their articles. The blog is also teeming with academic jargon. 

Take this article for example. 

http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2009/05/hills-have-eyes.html

First we have this passage with some "clever" made up words and phrasing. 

mountain subcity

fragmentary glimpses

shard-like pieces of larger works 

guerrilla exhibition strategies now increase one's chances of canonization 

And the dumb hypothetical portion,

"Could you paint, or glue a poster of, all 200,000+ frames from a new film onto the surfaces of distant buildings? And treat the city as a kind of cinematic installation, a cubist filmography in which walking around is a form of experiential editing?"

I do understand the sentiment here, but finally, I've decided to unsubscribe from this blog. There is probably much better journalism just waiting. These blogs, as well as the economist both have very lengthy articles and if you want to spend some serious time with your reading, it is probably worth paying a small amount, or at least, a very critical review.