Chris Kelly Pulitzer Prize winning architecture critic Blair Kamin, a former Fair Haven resident, came home to visit and participate in the first round of judging in this year’s Pulitzer Prize competition.

The willingness to challenge, inform and nurture public views about architecture were there from the outset. But not everyone got Blair Kamin’s style of activist criticism at first.

"The first building I wrote about was by Richard Meier. He’s a great architect, and he had done an addition to the Des Moines Museum," recalled Kamin, then on staff at the Des Moines Register. "I was right out of graduate school, and I panned the addition."

"He came to town, and he was at the opening and was holding a copy of my review," recounted Kamin, acclaimed architecture critic for the Chicago Tribune. "He said, ‘Who is this guy?’ and the associate director of the museum said, ‘He’s nobody, he’s nobody.’ "

The incident was picked up by a wire service and reported widely.

"It was on the wires, so it’s really funny," said Kamin, enjoying a laugh at his own expense. "I still have a coffee cup on my desk in Chicago, and taped on it is the word ‘nobody.’ "

Kamin, who hails from Fair Haven, was in New York last week to participate in the first round of judging for the Pulitzer Prize, an honor he received in 1999 for criticism.

The nominating jury he sat on culled the entries down to three finalists in two days, leaving him time to study the city’s disfigured profile.

"I spent three days looking at buildings — unfortunately, destroyed buildings, the World Trade Center site," he said. "And I went to the Empire State Building because I thought it would be really interesting to write about the Empire State Building, a kind of de facto icon now for New York — the new tallest building."

The visit reinforced the human dimension of what happened, he said, and revealed new features of the cityscape.

"What struck me was how strange the site seems, because lower Manhattan consists of canyons where you see very thin slices of sky, and usually in New York, it’s a relief and a joy to see the sky," Kamin said. "Here, the sky is as broad as Kansas, but it’s a sky of tremendous sadness. It’s sort of surreal to see all that light pouring in, and you look up at the sky and you realize this is an abnormal sky, not a sky of joy. I found that haunting."

Kamin returned to his hometown Saturday to attend a book signing in Fair Haven for Why Architecture Matters, Lessons From Chicago, a collection of his columns for the Chicago Tribune, where he became architecture critic in 1992.

His roots in journalism go back to this area, where he grew up and worked summers during high school on The Daily Register where his father was editor.

Architecture became his focus at Amherst College, Mass., where a friend from home convinced Kamin to take a class that would shape his professional life.

"I ran into Corky Ellis on the quadrangle, and he said there was this great professor of art history whose class I had to take," Kamin said. "I took the class in Gothic architecture with Joel Upton in sophomore year.

"That class really changed my life, no kidding," he said. "This teacher really was inspiring. He made buildings come alive, and that’s what really got me interested in architecture."

Kamin went on to Yale University School of Architecture, Conn., where he graduated in 1984 with a master of environmental design degree.

"By the time I went there, I knew I wanted to specialize in writing about architecture," he explained. "So I did it to get a background so that I would know what I was talking about."

After Yale, came a position as a reporter with the Des Moines Register, where he worked from 1984 to 1987.

"There really were buildings in Des Moines to write about," Kamin quipped. "Everyone thinks it’s just barns and farmhouses."

He joined the Chicago Tribune in 1987, initially reporting on suburban and cultural news. Since becoming the Tribune’s architecture critic in 1992, his columns have fostered a public dialogue about the architecture and societal impact of projects as diverse as Chicago’s skyscrapers to its lakefront.

"My role is to get people to notice and care about and think critically about the buildings and the other structures that shape their lives," he said. "Every decision that we make to build things is a conscious choice, and it can affect us for good or ill."

Kamin used his arrival at the redesigned Red Bank train station to illustrate his point.

"I noticed that the train station has changed. There was a big parking lot along Monmouth Street, a no-man’s-land kind of space," he said. "It looks like NJ Transit tried to make a little plaza there with flagpoles and a nice bus shelter. It’s an area now more for pedestrians than cars and a more pleasant place to be. That’s a small example of the kind of difference design can make."

Kamin’s writing calls readers to become engaged in a process that shapes their world and their everyday lives.

"People think design is a given and it has to be a certain way, and it doesn’t," he said. "The thing is, it can be better, and people can make a difference if they want to by becoming part of the process. They can write city hall or go to a meeting and they can say, ‘We don’t want this highway cutting through our neighborhood.’

"The whole thing is to try to help people know how to see and what to see," he added. "Because it isn’t just museums and skyscrapers; it’s a little plaza at the train station, too. "

On his recent swing through his birthplace, Kamin celebrated the signs that point to the continued vitality of Red Bank’s revitalization.

"I’m thrilled I couldn’t find a parking space this morning; it means things are good," he observed. "Seriously, that’s just a sign that it’s vital.

"Red Bank reinvented itself for a new time and that’s great," he continued. "Red Bank really has something special to contribute to a world of strip malls and megamalls.

"Most important, it has a sense of place. It’s a place where you walk along a street with buildings on both sides. It’s rooted in Victorian architecture and tied to the river, and you can’t get that at Monmouth Mall or The Grove."

Growing up at the Jersey Shore, Kamin said, has influenced his writing about development along the Chicago lakefront, the series for which he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize.

"I have great memories of going to Sandy Hook and running around the beach with my friends," he recalled. "The great thing is that it’s public space and the beaches will always be open.

"Waterfronts, oceanfront, lakefronts are often where we drink up the best of life. I just have a really strong feeling for them because I experienced them here," he said. "It really made me pay attention very closely to the decisions affecting the waterfront."

What does architecture say about us?

"We are what we build," Kamin paraphrased. "Architecture is sort of a clear record of who we are, what we really care about, what we don’t care about — what our priorities, visions and dreams are. It’s an indelible record. It’s the way we paint a portrait of ourselves. You can see the good, the bad and the ugly.

"I feel fortunate to have lived in this area," Kamin commented. "It really is a beautiful area. The shore and rivers are wonderful. They make the area special."