File Under Architecture

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Herbert Muschamp

The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1974, English

Nonfiction, Architecture

ISBN: 9780262630672

On the back cover of this (out-of-print) book, Muschamp states: “I am an architect who has neither designed nor built any buildings nor has the inclination to do so. I call myself an architect purely out of the comic conceit which is all that remains of the Western architectural tradition. Buildings have such short lifespans nowadays, and few bother to look at them, anyway. Planning schemes must be revised each year, and still can’t keep up. Last winter’s cosmic-comical conceptual designs are forgotten with the appearance of the new spring line. Books last longer,take up less space, are easier to take care of, make better gifts than do most buildings. In the last analysis, architecture is not a very highly evolved state of mind. This is neither sour-grapes bitterness nor casual frivolity. It is the opening of a passionate, informed, witty, and intensely serious critique of the idea of architecture and an exposure of architectural pretense in all ages, but especially in the modern age—the years following the Industrial Revolution, which have been characterized by visual and ideological chaos and a wholesale dipping into the aesthetic and conceptual capital accumulated by ages past.”

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Véronique Vienne

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Herbert Muschamp, who eventually became the architecture critic for the New York Times between 1992 and 2004, was only 27 years old when he wrote this quirky manifesto. Printed on craft paper and bundled like a small parcel between two corrugated cardboard covers, it weighs only nine ounces, no heavier than a couple of twigs. . . . The layout is so unassuming and legible it soothes your eyeballs—which is a good thing, considering the audacious, contentious, and insolent nature of Mr. Muschamp’s prose. . . . View the complete text

Herbert Muschamp, who eventually became the architecture critic for the New York Times between 1992 and 2004, was only 27 years old when he wrote this quirky manifesto. Printed on craft paper and bundled like a small parcel between two corrugated cardboard covers, it weighs only nine ounces, no heavier than a couple of twigs. Since 1975, when I bought it, the book got even drier and lighter, as the wood fibers in the paper pulp lost all their humidity. Today, the little volume resonates like a sound box. Instinctively, you drum your fingers on its cover. You riffle through its pages to hear them flutter. You hold its spine cradled in the palm of your hand as if it were the bow of a musical instrument.

The sensuality of the book is reinforced by its design. The text is set in a friendly typewriter font, the lines are generously leaded, and the columns are just the right width. Short notes in the margins, printed in rich chocolate brown, provide a welcome distraction. The layout is so unassuming and legible it soothes your eyeballs—which is a good thing, considering the audacious, contentious, and insolent nature of Mr. Muschamp’s prose.

An iconoclast, the author of File Under Architecture intended to deliver a series of scathing comments on modern architects, their arrogance and posturing. His tirades would have been wearisome if they weren’t studded with gems like “In the morning, all of Rome smells of coffee, which isn’t something that was cleverly planned,” or “New York is a cultural capital not because the best artists live there, but because the quickest critics do.”

Muschamp was the quickest of them all, the first and the most fearless when it came to debunking the hypocrisy of the architecture establishment. Toward the end of his tenure at the Times, people at dinner parties in Manhattan loved to trash his brilliant reviews. While defending him, I got into a number of ugly fights with individuals whose taste I otherwise held in high regard.

File Under Architecture revealed Muschamp’s uncanny ability to package his thoughts in a manner both seductive and provocative. As an object, the book is hard to put down. You want to caress it, pat it, fondle it. While its content might challenge your ability to sit still, its visual appeal will lull you into a gentle daze. You’ll read on, skipping paragraphs here and there yet unable to interrupt the movement of your eyes as they skim over the surface of the soft brown pages.

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