What do we mean when we talk about “history” in an architectural context? Or, to ask the question in a slightly different way, what can “history” do for architects? This question has been answered differently across various cultures and times, but for the time being I will limit myself to considering four ways that history can operate with respect to architecture. First, history can be posited as a collection of objects: buildings can be deployed as precedents, and used to constitute a canon. Second, history can be a lens through which to survey the broader characteristics of a culture and society: buildings can be studied to shed light on the social conditions they depend upon and foster, or the values they promote or betray. Third, history can be understood as unveiling a set of abstract principles, or axioms, and used to generate theory. And fourth, history can be construed as a practice, a form of architectural thought, not unlike sketching and modeling.

It is the first definition—history as a collection of objects—that is both the most widespread, and the most problematic in terms of design education. When asked about the form and content of their history courses, almost all architecture students (particularly in the United States) will mention the survey: a wide-ranging, chronologically organized, stylistically-categorized overview of buildings and projects that the discipline has deemed worthy of attention. For as long as the classical tradition held sway, the use of such knowledge seemed clear: the “great buildings” of the past contained lessons that were fundamental to the perpetuation of architecture as a discipline. Aspiring architects were required to be well versed in this form of history because their creativity was understood to be intimately bound up with the pursuit of architectural questions that were constitutive of the discipline itself.

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