Reception and Exposure in Architecture, Film and Television

Abstract

As architecture becomes more concerned with how to better understand, accommodate, and use the public's increasing exposure to and engagement with architecture in its practice, it increasingly encounters the sorts of issues film and television have long grappled with. In this article, I ask what, if anything, can architecture learn from film and television's apparatus of reception and its use of the idea of exposure? I will answer this question with reference to the continuities and discontinuities among reception and production systems in architecture, film, and television. The article ends by speculating on what a ratings-like system of measuring and giving the public a voice in architecture might do to how it is discussed and performed.