2. Organizing the past
Given the diverse intellectual and institutional origins of
modern academic architectural history, it is hardly surprising
that contemporary architectural historians would approach
the task of analysing the past from any of a number of dif-
ferent perspectives. This chapter surveys some common strat-
egies for considering architecture historically. Each evidences
a form of (usually benign) historicism, a conception of the
past’s relation to the present, and thus of the present’s histo-
ricity. Herder invoked this consciousness when he wrote, ‘A
slender thread connects the human race, which is at every
moment breaking, to be tied anew.’^1 The division of archi-
tectural history by a chronology governed by style and period
is one of the earliest, more traditional and most persistent
approaches to this problem. The problems of defi ning specifi c
styles and understanding the transitions that occur between
one style and another (gothic to Renaissance; Renaissance to
baroque) constitute the fi rst disciplinary problems of archi-
tectural history. For these reasons we will consider it fi rst,
and in slightly greater length than other approaches.
During the nineteenth century, the confl uence of stylistic,
cultural, social and historical factors in the composition of
contemporary buildings prompted architects and historians
alike to align architectural styles, including proportional and
ornamental systems, with their historical origins, which in
turn bore a set of values. When a building could be designed