Abstract: This paper discusses how my research into site-writing, influenced by debates around art-writing, can inform architectural criticism. The paper first situates the term art-writing in relation to contemporary debates in art criticism. It then outlines a theoretical framing for the spatialization of art-writing as site-writing, identifying the potential of particular concepts in feminist, art and literary criticism for developing understandings of positionality and subjectivity in critical writing in terms of stand-point, relation, encounter and voice. The paper then demonstrates how these spatial possibilities can be played out in art criticism with reference to four essays. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of this work for architectural criticism, exploring how the hybrid term architecture-writing demands us to rethink the objects, subjects, sites, methods and materials of architectural criticism.

This paper was published as ‘Architecture-Writing’, in Jane Rendell (ed.) ‘Critical Architecture’, special issue of the Journal of Architecture, (June 2005), v. 10. n. 3, pp. 255-64.