Reading Architectural History

ISBN-13: 9780415250498 / Angielski / Twarda / 2002 / 256 str.

Dana Arnold

Opis

Architectural history is more than just the study of buildings. Architecture of the past and present remains an essential emblem of a distinctive social system and set of cultural values and as a result it has been the subject of study of a variety of disciplines. But what is architectural history and how should we read it? Reading Architectural History examines the historiographic and socio/cultural implications of the mapping of British architectural history with particular reference to 18th - and 19th-century Britain. Discursive essays consider a range of writings from biographical and social histories to visual surveys and guidebooks to examine the narrative structures of histories of architecture of the past. Alongside this, each chapter cites canonical histories juxtaposed with a range of social and cultural theorists, to reveal that these writings are richer than we have perhaps recognized and that architectural production in this period can in interrogated in the same way as the from more recent past - and can be read in a variety of ways.

Recenzje

'The book sets out to prove that architecture, its production values and its histories are emblematic of contested social systems and cultural values. In the many-faceted themes it represents, it undoubtedly succeeds.' - Stephen Kite, Landscape Research

Spis treści

1. Reading the Past: What is Architectural History?  2. The Authority of the Author: Biography and the Reconstruction of the Canon  3. On Classical Grounds. Histories of Style  4. A Class Performance: Social Histories of Architecture  5. The Illusions of Inclusion: The Guidebook and Historic Architecture  6. Reading Architectural Herstories: The Discourses of Gender

O autorze

Dana Arnold