“… let us never confuse “content” with critique or content production with democratization.”—Fahad Zuberi

In a recent social media post, Rajesh Advani, the Editor of this platform, raised a very pertinent issue. He posted:

“There’s a noticeable surge in the number of architectural influencers, and PR/Communication agencies.
On the positive side, one can observe the democratisation of information, and making architecture accessible to people at large. However, some important questions to ask;
are architects prioritizing viral appeal over authenticity or functionality?
Is social media turning architecture into a popularity contest?

Feel free to add more questions, and/or share your views.”

The Editor is correct in stating a fact – there is a (disturbingly) noticeable surge in the number of architectural influencers and Public Relations (PR) firms in India. I don’t think, however, that it reflects any democratization of information whatsoever. Democratization is a phenomenon where knowledge emerges through critical discourse, where people with no direct conflicts of interest debate and criticize contemporary phenomena and judge its vices and virtues.

Contrary to this, firstly, PR firms, by definition, are compromised entities that are bound to write and publish exclusively good things about an architect or their firm. They are paid to do so and should not be expected to do otherwise. To address the first necessary condition of democratization, therefore, PR firms do not have free opinions. At best, they can present their clients with multiple options of praise, but they will be praises, nevertheless. Secondly, PR firms and architects compete (very often even bid) for the right quality and quantity of space in popular platforms. A small firm, despite doing good work, cannot hire a top-quality PR firm to get it the right space in magazines or on social media. The code of conduct laid out by the COA does not allow for advertisement for architects to prevent this disparity. While I would not be so naïve as to lean onto a defunct and outdated code of conduct to make my argument, the principle, however, holds true.

For these two reasons – that PR firms are compromised entities, and that they manipulate access to discourse – the emergence of PR firms points to the undemocratization of information, rather than its democratization.
To add insult to injury, the rise of the PR firms in architecture in India has coincided, by design, with a downfall in critical journalism in architecture and design. While some very important critics like Prof. A. Srivathsan and Prof. Kaiwan Mehta have continued contributing to various platforms, dedicated and independent architectural journals and critical spaces are largely dead. Architects no longer care about how strong editorial magazines will cover their next buildings. Some of the last spaces of critical discourse, such as Domus India or MARG, have either shut down or have lost whatever shrinking space they had. To its credit, ArchitectureLive! is a small glimmer of hope.

Lack of critical media is a larger problem. The downfall in the value of text and a steep rise in the consumerist craze of attractive images has hollowed the discourse out and replaced it with a veneer of spectacle and awe. This is a problem of the Indian media in general, and there are valuable lessons to learn from the emergence of alternative models of journalism such as News Laundry, Scroll, The Red Mike, etc.

The answers to the next two questions raised by Rajesh are yes, and yes. Yes, architects are prioritizing “viral appeal” over “authenticity” or “functionality,” and YES, it is a popularity contest. Enough has been written about the perils of algorithms and social media’s impact on our truth claims, so let us keep those things aside. I would like to ask a slightly different and more damning question: Do architects, in order to build or judge a project, even know what “authentic” (or for that matter “functional”) means? I argue: No, they do not.

Architects are trained to use words that they do not understand. Go to any college jury or read an article or a caption written by any of the PR firms and you will find students and professionals use words like “vernacular” interchangeably with “critical regionalist” or “constructivist” with “structuralist” or “gentrification” with “displacement” without knowing what any of those words mean. The problem with this casual use of words is that there are no synonyms in theory. If the word is different, the meaning is different. Sadly, then, we will have to concede that words have meanings and every word that is casually thrown around in studios and offices actually has enormous theoretical literature on its etymological and epistemological constitution.

Theory, however, needs years of training. Most practicing architects are neither trained nor have the mental space or time to be trained in theory. Theory is a specialized field, and while some institutions are beginning to offer master’s degrees in theory and history, the specialization is in its nascent stage and with virtually no employment options for those holding these degrees, the graduates often end up joining PR firms, confusing advertisement writing with theoretical learning. For us to be able to judge if something is “authentic” or “functional,” we need theorists who can observe practice from outside, place it in the context of larger socio-political questions and in the zeitgeist of practice, and then provide a critique – terms by which one can judge something, to borrow from Kant. Critic and historian Manfredo Tafuri has brilliantly articulated this necessity of the outsider critic in his criticism of Kenneth Frampton.

We have borne the costs of the missing theorist. Many of our recent public projects have suffered from our deficiency in discourse. Almost all such projects have received praise from PR firms and criticism from solely electoral-political opposition or mainstream journalists, none of whom were trained to diagnose the disease and therefore, could not articulate, let alone constructively criticize it.

Let us conclude with a cliché about journalism. George Orwell famously said: “Journalism is printing something that someone does not want printed. Everything else is public relations.”