Andrew Leach 
What is Architectural History? [EPUB ebook] 

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.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

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

Über den Autor

Andrew Leach is an Australian Postdoctoral Fellow and Senior
Lecturer in Architecture at Griffith University