New Chicago Review of Architecture to feature younger critics

In architecture circles, there’s a commonly used phrase: The built environment. That sounds straightforward enough on the surface, but it also suggests a concept that’s far more opaque and complicated than simply, well, buildings.

“It means the world we live in, in a spatial sense,” says architecture critic Kate Wagner. “So it can include everything from gentrification to the ICE raids that are happening right now, where, in a very basic sense, the question is: What is the street and who can be there?

“I was at a conference recently where someone made the comment that they hate the phrase ‘the built environment’ because it has this arrogance of architecture as a totality of everyday life, and I kind of agree with that, actually,” Wagner says. “But colloquially speaking, we use it as a ca