This piece from Design Observer takes a pointed and critical look at the work of New York Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff and finds much to be desired in his work.
Author Alexandra Lange is a journalist who teaches architecture criticism at the School of Visual Arts in New York. She takes issue with many aspects of Ouroussoff's writing, and highlight what seems to be a lack of neighborhood context in any of his articles.
She highlights a 2005 piece he wrote about Brooklyn's Atlantic Yards project, in which he writes about it being an important project for the city.
"Here Ouroussoff performs a neat trick, (mis)characterizing the opposition as a bunch of Jacobsian sentimentalists, and informing us that Gehry's new architecture would be the borough's best representative. Those brownstones are apparently so retrograde that they and the rest of the project's existing context warrant only a three-sentence paragraph. Ouroussoff never bothered to orient his readers to the importance of the site, the windy, well-trafficked corner of Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues. Naturally the Brooklyn bloggers had a field day with this piece, for reasons valid and conspiratorial."
Read the full story: Why Nicolai Ouroussoff Is Not Good Enough
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