The Historiography of Modern Architecture

Writing, according to Panayotis Tournikiotis, has always exerted a powerful influenceon architecture. Indeed, the study of modern architecture cannot be separated from a fascinationwith the texts that have tried to explain the idea of a new architecture in a new society. Duringthe last forty years, the question of the relationship of architecture to its history -- ofbuildings to books -- has been one of the most important themes in debates about the course ofmodern architecture.Tournikiotis argues that the history of modern architecture tends to be writtenfrom the present, projecting back onto the past our current concerns, so that the "beginning" of thestory really functions as a "representation" of its end. In this book the buildings are thequotations, while the texts are the structure.Tournikiotis focuses on a group of books by majorhistorians of the twentieth century: Nikolaus Pevsner, Emil Kaufmann, Sigfried Giedion, Bruno Zevi,Leonardo Benevolo, Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Reyner Banham, Peter Collins, and Manfredo Tafuri. Inexamining these writers' thoughts, he draws on concepts from critical theory, relating architectureto broader historical models.