How useful? 105conversely, seem less so. As we will briefl y see below, this
has over the last half-century been a subject of intense discus-
sion, which has centred in turn on a basic point of disagree-
ment: whether or not architectural history is written fi rst for
architects. The fundamental position taken by a historian of
architecture on this issue will inform, for example, the
responsibility he or she feels towards contemporary archi-
tecture as something that can be shaped by historical
knowledge.
Architectural history thus shares the question of instru-
mentality or operativity with many branches of history.
Histories of politics, warfare, economics, religion or the
environment likewise regularly encounter the tendency to
accept some responsibility to discover ‘lessons’ for an invested
contemporary readership: politicians, military tacticians,
economists, theologians and environmentalists. Authors
might see parallels between the past and the present that
become noticeable in their abstraction, or that lend new
importance to old topics. This abstraction might, however,
forcibly shape history so that it can inform a specifi c path of
contemporary action on the basis of what other historians
might regard as a shaky historical authority. Around this
possibility circled an important post-war debate on history’s
usefulness to architecture.
Architecture in its history
We can approach this theme through the case of Bruno Zevi,
who came to stand for, and indeed vehemently defended, a
kind of instrumentalized architectural historiography. Many
historians share his impassioned approach to writing on
architecture and the whole-hearted enthusiasm with which
he endorsed his historical ‘heroes’ – most famously Michel-
angelo, Borromini and Frank Lloyd Wright. The degree to
which younger historians of architecture found his positions
to be problematic becomes understandable when they are put
into relief, in this case by way of a gentle reprimand by Henry
A. Millon.^13 Millon would go on to become a major fi gure
in American architectural historiography, but in 1960 he was
still a doctoral student. Reacting to an editorial of Zevi’s that