For only the sixth time ever, a writer on architecture has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for criticism. Inga Saffron of the Philadelphia Enquirer hereby ensured her place alongside Ada Louise Huxtable, Paul Goldberger and Blair Kamin.
Saffron has been with the Inquirer since 1999. An article in the Architectural Review describes her work as‘trench criticism’. She is regarded as an example of the architecture critics at newspapers who are intensely involved with their immediate surroundings and have a significant influence on the cities in which they work. Saffron says she is as interested in the street life of Philadelphia as in the quality of the city’s architecture. She is of the opinion that mass development with rows of garage doors as the primary street front is the single greatest danger to the character of Philadelphia’s streets.
Click here for a selection of her work as presented in the official Pulitzer Prize magazine.
Another architecture writer, Michael Sorkin (himself an architect) writes, in Architectural Review on the value that criticism on architecture carries. He warns that architecture criticism, just like architecture, must in the first instance be serviceable.
