Organizing the past 71expression of historical consciousness intimately tied to the
work of architects.
Whatever the larger conceptual implications of this choice
might be, the architectural history of planning as conceived
above describes the kind of approach to historical research
and working that overcomes the historical specifi cities of
architecture’s status as an art, craft, trade or profession, and
thus positions continuities where other forms of history
(framed by style, geography, architectural theory, society or
culture) would recognize the historicity and the limitations
of a general theory of architecture of which architectural
historians could write histories. In this sense, the technique
of planning sits alongside other techniques that have been
treated historically. Each offers new fi lters for the subject of
architecture while overcoming the limitations imposed by
what we might understand as ‘classic’ historiographical tools
and perspectives.
Theme and analogy
This sixth and fi nal grouping of approaches to architectural
historiography runs against the grain of the preceding head-
ings. Whereas architectural history as the history of architec-
tural style, type or technique relies on a historical continuity
that can be constructed as internal to architecture, an archi-
tectural history organized along thematic or analogical lines
references the relationships, concrete and abstract, between
architecture and its ‘exterior’. A history of architecture orga-
nized thematically concerns coincidences between architec-
tural activity and other kinds of historical activity, between
buildings and the uses to which they are put or the signifi -
cance they accrue, and it also engages the realm of architec-
tural ideas and themes, such as inhabitation and representation,
which themselves have repercussions well beyond architec-
ture. Conversely, an analogous architectural history explores
the conceptual devices available to architectural historians
that allow that fi eld to contribute new perspectives on
issues beyond architecture, which once seemed beyond the
architectural historian’s remit. How, such histories ask, is