Editorial

Abstract

The papers in this open issue of ATR reflect on the history of ideas concerning architecture and its status, on the conditions of those who have been admitted to the fraternity of archi-tects, on the architect ’ s imagination (modernist, postmodern, and ancient), and on the settings in which that imagination can be put to work. Each of the contributions that follow one way or another return to the question of what architecture is and has been, how it is thought — now and in specific pasts — and what it makes possible. As such, it is welcome recollection of this journal ’ s scope, built up over the course of the last year and without the guiding hand of the clearly defined themes of the special issues that flank it in the present volume. The issue ’ s first paper, by historian Caroline Ford, returns to her lecture at the joint meeting of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand, and the European Architectural Network, held in Sydney in 2019. Taking the parallel cases of Margarete Sch € utte-Lihotzky in Vienna (and elsewhere) and Juliette Tr (cid:2) eant-Math (cid:2) e in Paris (and elsewhere), she considers the terms on which these two women engaged with prob-lems of social housing, and through it, with the progressive edges of architectural practice and discourse. Ford ’ s paper plays one case — more familiar, but on limited terms — against another, to show the work yet to be done in understanding the moment and legacies of modern architecture in the round. This,