Theory in architecture has always been a highly contentious area of concern. From Vitruvius' theorising of the inherent conceptual basis of ancient Roman Architecture in his conception of firmitas, utilitas and venustas, architects have tried to understand the world and their relation with it through an ongoing interrogation of its meaning and purpose. Architecture, thus, becomes an edifice for this ongoing search; it is the built ‘stuff’ in-the-world that brings into being the strange, uncanny and abstract postulations of generations of architectural thinkers. More recently, architectural theory has itself come under considerable attack from both within the profession of Architecture, but also from without—from the very public it serves. The esoteric and self-indulgent polemical whims of the 70s and 80s led to a ground-swell of dissatisfaction and unease towards theory's value. 
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At the same time theory began its fall from grace, so too architectural criticism became more and more marginalised as a practice of the few, with little room in the space between the reductive and simplistic contemporary concerns for practice and pragmatics. The advent of online forms of discussion and debate (blogs, wikis and chat rooms) has provided a more effective platform upon which to mount acts of accessible ‘criticism’ of every imaginable aspect of contemporary culture; including artwork and architecturally designed buildings and the resulting urban spaces in our cities. They provide a broad public appeal and an effective mode of directly disseminating critical writing to an audience than the written words that are privatized within the covers of elitist academic journals. Relative to traditional print-media forms of disseminating criticism (newspapers, magazines and academic journals) the Internet provides a virtual environment in which the impact of ‘voice’ is limitless.