Literary critic Harold Bloom’s concept of misprision, although difficult to translate into architectural terms, offers valuable insights into one way that architects critically engage with other designers’ works through a process of creative misreading. Bloom stakes out a theory that governs both criticism and production. Misprision offers critics and historians another tool with which to explain the influence of one architect on another. The concept’s pedagogical value includes a broadened understanding of the roles that precedent studies play in the design studio.
2011-2012 Journal of Architectural Education, Best Scholarship of Design Article Award