Space Versus Time: Flattening History. An Architectural History Perspective

Abstract

The paper explores how architectural historiography, during the several stages of its building, managed to flatten historicity through the spatialization of its discourse. It does so by following this process in the longue durée, from taking in account ‘barbarian’ architectures (Quatremère, Seroux d’Agincourt) and distinguishing ‘non-historical styles’ (Banister Fletcher), to turning peripheries into productive territories of architectural resistance (the theories on critical regionalism) or to shaping a global histories of architecture. I argue that this process was triggered by gradually emphasizing space over time. The focus on space changed the dynamics of the narrative from a vertical construction to an increasingly horizontal perception of the architectural production through the ages. During its evolution, the historiographic discourse got complexified through a twofold understanding of space, both in terms of doctrinal conceptualization (space being presented as the very essence of architecture) and in terms of geographical expansion. The paper follows several threads which concurred to weave the historiographical narratives in the succeeding works of architectural history. It starts by analyzing the foundations of the architectural historicity, questioning the role and place of conceptual models (such as the ‘primitive hut’) and schemes (the ‘tree of architecture’), moving to a gradual dismantling of its temporality through the shaping of a modernist historiography and, eventually, through the emergence of marginal historiographic territories. Though indirectly, by looking at the flattening of history from an architectural history perspective, I am interested to tackle what means writing history today.