Organizing the past 57Other architectural histories openly seek to strike a balance
between intrinsic and external forces acting on the architect’s
work, even if this results in a more ‘realistic’ (or compro-
mised) portrait. The volumes organized and introduced by
Marco De Michelis on Heinrich Tessenow, 1876– 1950
(1993) and Johan Lagae on Claude Laurens (2001) tread this
line to great effect.^30 Each follows the rules of an œuvre
complète, refl ecting on the various meanings that one might
impose on the biographical subject, between free agent and
index. Like the books on Mies van der Rohe introduced
earlier, they nevertheless treat their respective architects criti-
cally as well as historically, testing their work against themes
and comparative cases that hold their subject accountable to
the broader histories in which they take part, all the while
retaining the clear limits imposed by life’s boundaries and
trajectories.
Geography and culture
The characteristics of an architectural history shaped by
biographical factors parallel those borrowing limits from
national, imperial, regional, municipal and other geo-politi-
cal borders, or those that map onto cultural and/or linguistic
territories, extra-territorial groupings and geographies, or
diasporas. The architectural history of a nation can be studied
as a discrete fi eld of knowledge, despite the obvious compli-
cations and compromises that inevitably arise from modern
nations sharing borders that have been subject to varying
degrees of permeability, or that are introduced by immigra-
tion and emigration. The architectural history of a contem-
porary nation, for example, might include formerly discrete
territories, or discernible linguistic regions whose architec-
tural history has developed coherently within a larger nation-
alist grouping. A twentieth-century nation might be subject
to the mechanisms of colonization, connecting one territory
and its history with that of the colonial party, and ultimately
to its other colonies. The architectural histories of South
Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Canada are distinct on
any number of terms while sharing the colonial experience