History and theory 133of government, law, politics, consumption, religion, national-
ism and so forth? Reinhold Martin’s ‘Think Tank’^28 studio
at Columbia University confronts these questions, as did the
working conference ‘Aggregate’^29 organized by John Harwood
at Oberlin College (April 2008), and Eyal Weizman’s analy-
ses of Israel and Palestine.^30 In short, architecture’s present-
day professional and cultural brief is wide-ranging, and we
can fi nd consequences of this in architectural history’s scope.
What is the shape of the present-day situation for archi-
tectural history, historiography, historiology and historians?
In the fi nal analysis this is impossible to say without the pos-
sibility of taking a critical distance from the disciplinary and
institutional situation of the present moment. The fi eld has
undergone dramatic reassessment in recent decades, but will
these changes exceed those introduced at the end of the nine-
teenth century? Will their effects be more acutely felt, or
more strongly defended? In the conclusion to his article
‘Notes on Narrative Method in Historical Interpretation’,
Hays suggests that ‘the practice of writing [architectural
history]... would be a force that thickens the situation,
slows thinking down’.^31 At a time when architecture’s remit
appears to be ever-expanding, and when criticism and criti-
cality in architecture enjoy a greater mobility than ever
before, this persistent disciplinary agenda might well con-
tinue to present the most relevant, if challenging, path for the
present-day fi eld of architectural history.