How useful? 109Few architectural historians would today regard it as a bad
idea to teach more architectural history to students of archi-
tecture, even if not to the extent that Zevi suggested in 1957.
Studying architecture is not the same as studying architec-
tural history. With this in mind, Millon closes with an appo-
site observation: ‘the real danger to the student is from the
historian who strips down or soups up his presentation to
get a little more mileage out of the Art Nouveau or the Space
Frame. Denatured or over-vitalised presentations will give
the alert student architectural indigestion, while a spirited,
sincere exposition by a competent scholar may offer sustain-
ing nourishment.’^17
Stripped down, souped up or straight up?
While this virtual discussion between Millon and Zevi is just
one episode in the history of this question, by reading their
articles we can see two basic positions at work, against which
we can consider the broader issue of the utility of knowledge
of the past to the practice of architecture. It is worthwhile to
recall that among the historiographical traditions from which
a modern, academic architectural history emerged at the end
of the nineteenth century, one concerned the knowledge of
the past considered by architects as their professional and
artistic patrimony. To what degree, then, are architectural
historians today obliged to attend to the audience of a con-
temporary professional architectural culture?
Another reaction to Zevi’s ideas on the issue of the histo-
rian’s audience can help us to further probe into this issue.
In a notoriously ungenerous reading, Tafuri observes that
Zevi wanted, through history, to make architecture and the
architect more important to contemporary society than they
had, in his view, proved themselves to be. His conception,
though, of the challenges architecture faced in the post-war
world, the solutions the architect could offer, and the histori-
cal knowledge necessary to build a bridge from post-war
reality to a brighter future was so blinkered as to be of no
use to his cause.^18 Zevi’s architectural history was critically
charged, and his criticism (in L’Architettura) full of historical
cases and allusions. Those cases, though, gave rise to what