In 2018 the fictional WhATA architectural awards announced ‘the citizen from social media’ as winner of their Person of the Year Award – this untiring commentator who types indignant posts, makes collages and uses videos and editing techniques to ridicule any half-baked ideas taking shape in our urban environment. In the same year when Facebook took its biggest blows and saw its most shocking revelations, precisely these people who vent their indignation within the Bulgarian Facebook realm successfully demonstrated the power of civil society. This power led to public servants’ resignations, scrapped competitions and a stronger scrutiny from the people over refurbishment works and public tenders. But it also revealed something else. 

At times of social bubbles and dying authorities we have developed a serious issue with trusting expert advice. This leads to constant petty information storms and scandals, but little actual change. Elected people in power become hostages to public opinions and more often then not feel paralysed to make bold and visionary decisions.

How can we write and speak about architecture today? Where is the place of architecture criticism in a world where content is short-lived and people become more and more divided. What is the responsibility of the media?

In this lecture series the New Architectural Heritage Foundation and Goethe-Institut Bulgarien will discuss key contemporary issues and points of conflict through the lens of architecture – the so-called ‘crisis of criticism’, the deficient trust in expert advice, phenomena like populism in architecture, the new architectural conservatism, traditionalism and the divided society that we live in today.