3. Evidence
It seems straightforward to observe that the content of archi-
tectural history is architecture, historically considered. We
can expand this observation, though, to say that architectural
history is also the history of architecture’s relations with
artefacts, settings and historical problems that are neither
architecture, as it might be defi ned in any given moment, nor
architectural in nature. But what, then, is architecture for it
to have a history? Or an ‘outside’? These questions suppose
a conceptual coherence to the term ‘architecture’ over a
period of time, which is not at all a given. We could therefore
rephrase to ask, what has architecture been, insofar as its
defi nition is, for us, something of a moving target? How is
architecture made, or how has it been made or, post-factum,
defi ned and appropriated? Why does the category or term
‘architecture’ suit some kinds of creative, cultural and techni-
cal activity better than others that likewise result in buildings
- or in cities, landscapes or works of art? These are clearly
theoretical questions as much as they are historical and they
concern the disciplinary knowledge of architecture as well as
its history. To the extent that these questions can be found
in architecture and asked of its past, however, their answers
rely on the bodies of evidence available to historians of archi-
tecture and the conceptual premises that limit the extent of
that evidence. We have considered some aspects of the latter
in the previous chapter; now we turn to the way that evidence