Space Versus Time: Flattening History. An Architectural History Perspective

Abstract

From its very beginning, architectural historiography tended to ‘flatten’ historicity in favor of a ‘spatialized’ discourse. This process was triggered by gradually emphasizing space over time, as becomes clear in examining this longue durée, from the ‘barbarian’ architectures of Quatremère de Quincy and Seroux d’Agincourt to the ‘non-historical styles’ of Banister Fletcher, and from turning peripheries into productive territories of architectural resistance in the theories on critical regionalism to shaping a global history of architecture. The focus on space changed the dynamics of the narrative from a vertical construction to an increasingly horizontal perception of architectural production through the ages. During its evolution, the historiographic discourse grew 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 a geographical expansion. Several threads wove the historiographical narratives in the succeeding works of architectural history; unraveling these begins with an analysis of the foundations of architectural historicity, questioning the role and place of conceptual models, such as the ‘primitive hut’, and schemes like 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. An indirect goal of looking at this flattening of history from an architectural history perspective is tackling the meaning of writing history today.