What is Architectural History?

What is Architectural History? considers the questions and problems posed by architectural historians since the rise of the discipline in the late nineteenth century. How do historians of architecture organise past time and relate it to the present? How does historical evidence translate into historical narrative? Should architectural history be useful for practicing architects? If so, how? Leach treats the disciplinarity of architectural history as an open question, moving between three key approaches to historical knowledge of architecture: within art history, as an historical specialisation and, most prominently, within architecture. He suggests that the confusions around this question have been productive, ensuring a rich variety of approaches to the project of exploring architecture historically. Read alongside introductory surveys of western and global architectural history, this book will open up questions of perspective, frame, and intent for students of architecture, art history, and history. Graduate students and established architectural historians will find much in this book to fuel discussions over the current state of the field in which they work.

List of illustrations vii Acknowledgements x How to use this book xii Introduction 1 1 Foundations of a modern discipline 9 Architectural history as the architect’s patrimony 13 The architect as artist 19 Architecture and empirical knowledge 25 Architecture and culture 31 A modern discipline? 36 2 Organizing the past 41 Approach 43 Style and period 44 Biography 52 Geography and culture 57 Type 61 Technique 66 Theme and analogy 71 3 Evidence 76 4 How useful? 97 5 History and theory 115 Notes 134 Further reading 156 Index of names 164