How useful? 107subject: architecture in its history, acting on the problems of
man in forging its modernity’.^15
From our present-day perspective, Zevi’s proposal seems
quaint and naïve. Indeed, many professional architectural
programmes have since moved about as far from Zevi’s
model as possible without abandoning the teaching of archi-
tectural history altogether. Yet it is precisely the naïvety of
this pedagogical scheme that Millon addresses in his article.
Zevi’s idea, in abstraction, is simple and was widely endorsed
in the post-war decades. There is much that history has
to offer to the present, much more than can be understood
by a rehearsal of the canon (against which he balked) or a
relegation of history to a useless past. He takes a stance
15 Interior of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York,
by Frank Lloyd Wright, opened 1959.