Abstract

This paper begins with a simple proposition: theory is an image animated by history. By exploring the notion of image in the work of architect and historian Robin Evans, the nature of this animation is elucidated. The paper discusses Evans’s infatuation with the “powers of the image” from a threefold perspective: what is a theory-image; how is it constructed in and through Evans’s writings; and why is it relevant for the discipline of architecture. Evans’s project is therefore the recovery of the image and its space of projection as a site of theoretical inquiry, one that is crucially distinct from language. Through the analysis of Evans’s work, I would argue, it is possible to sustain a radical conceptualization of theory not merely as specular history – a Doppelgänger of sorts – but as a productive field of inquiry fundamentally decoupled from, yet forever linked to, history. It is necessary in this radical conceptualization to embrace the conjecture of productive theory in lieu of the disciplinarity of history.

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