Organizing the past 53like emperors, popes and presidents. Architectural histories
that plot the origins, intentions, infl uences and impact of a
government or institution can likewise assume some of the
characteristics of a biographical architectural history. Indeed,
a building, or a city, can be said to have its own life, and the
terms and structures of biography can infl ect its histories:
foundations, rise to prominence, height of infl uence or impor-
tance, and dénouement – literary strategies, indeed, dramatic
even, but shared with biography nevertheless. The kind of
architectural history with which this section is concerned is,
therefore, an architectural history organized in relation to an
entity that either is biological or sustains a biological analogy.
Because the history of architecture has enjoyed a long and
close association with the fi gure of the architect, we will focus
our attention on the organization of historical time according
to the life of the individual architect: the biographical archi-
tectural monograph as a genre of architectural history.
This kind of history treats architecture as evidence of the
architect’s actions and intentions. From this perspective, one
architect’s lifework connects to another’s by means of his or
her formation, motives, infl uences (exerted by or on the
subject), settings, opportunities and, more loosely, profes-
sional and artistic genealogies. This approach has in recent
decades also allowed for the psycho-biographical interpreta-
tion of historical subjects. However a life is constituted his-
torically, and however the historian might deal with the
content of that life, a subject’s birth and death lend fi rm start-
ing and fi nishing points to any given subject. (Against this
observation one might substitute a partnership’s establish-
ment and dissolution; or a government’s rise and demise.)
These often determine the most immediate associations of a
lifework to a period, style, type, geography and so on. They
can also inform the way that one individual subject relates to
another, or that subjects relate to the numerous contexts that
shape or colour historical events. The facts and conditions of
an architect’s birth and death lend architectural history an
order determined by biographical progression – of the stages
of life, and of the relationship of the architect as an individual
and the external forces acting upon him or her.^28
It is important to recognize that biography is inevitably,
to a greater or lesser extent, a construction of its author. The