Evidence 79are different kinds of questions, and their ‘answers’ rely upon
different kinds of material – and by extension upon different
analytical tools. The form and content of architectural
history, its method and evidence, thus assume a dialectical
relationship. One tests the other and vice versa. The extent
to which a document is useful depends on the questions asked
of it. And the pertinence of the question will be judged by
what is known or knowable of the subject to hand.
The juridical allusion is apt, because the idea of ‘evidence’
invokes the courtroom setting and the question of ‘proof’. It
concerns analytical weight and judgement; cause, measurable
effect and plausibility. The architectural historian sometimes
acts as an advocate, presenting the available evidence in order
to represent and reconstruct, on the basis of ‘proof’, past
events, decisions, procedures and relationships. He or she
employs the rhetorical arts and narrative structures. As a
judge, the architectural historian then weighs the balance of
what we might reasonably deduce from the material and
circumstances of any given historical case or problem. The
insistence of the historian’s conclusions will depend on the
strength and weight of the evidence he or she can advance as
a defensible case. All of this happens within any given history
of architecture, and the historian plays both these roles, of
advocate and judge, out of necessity. History can only ever
represent the past, though, and only a foolhardy historian
would position their conclusions as defi nitive for time imme-
morial. New evidence comes to light, new conceptual per-
spectives and analytical tools alter the signifi cance of existing
evidence. While these issues are hardly particular to architec-
tural history, in reading and writing the history of architec-
ture we can fi nd a number of evidentiary issues to which
architecture, as a subject of historical study, lends specifi c
form.
Evidence and architectural history
When the subject of an architectural history is a building or
monumental sculpture, we can learn how it was commis-
sioned, designed and realized. We can rely on various forms
of evidence to understand how the design changed over the