Architecture and Its History: Past Futures and Future PastsAuthor(s): John E. HancockReviewed work(s):Source: JAE, Vol. 36, No. 1 (Autumn, 1982), pp. 26-33Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1424605 .Accessed: 07/01/2012 12:48

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ARCHITECTURE AND ITS HISTORY:

PAST FUTURES

AND FUTURE PASTS

0

S Paestum: A century of evolution within accepted tradition.

John E. Hancock is an architectural historian and architect. He has taught at the University of Cincinnati since 1978.

The word "architecture" can only refer to a professional activity, an artistic medium, or a collection of artifacts, when the mind forms images of examples which already exist and ideas which have already been formulated. Both physically and intellectually, it could be said simply that architecture is its history. The mak- ing of architecture has always been fundamen- tally, even if unconsciously, affected by the type of view of earlier work which architects have held, and we might acknowledge its influence by adopting aspects of J. H. Plumb's concept of "The Past."I "History" he defines as a criti- cal inquiry, while "The Past...dictates what men should do or believe." In architecture there is always a "Past" (strongly influencing if not dictating), even when it is also "historical,' and even when it is denied.

Prior to the twentieth century, the most highly developed and predominant viewpoints on extant buildings were those which architects them- selves developed, held, and used continually and often unconsciously as a central feature of their own disciplinary image. Whether in the limited evolution of a "traditional" Past, as in Doric temples (fig. 1)or vernacular villages (fig. 2); in the singular idealization of a "mythical" Past, as in the design and rhetoric of the ren- aissance (fig. 3); or in the adaptable evocation of "romantic" Pasts, as in the archeological eclecticism of the nineteenth century (fig. 4); architecture was its history-or a part of it- in a very direct and self-evident way. This unity between the discipline of architecture and the formulation and application of attitudes about its own past seems to have seriously eroded only in the latter half of the nineteenth century, when the rapid expansion of the fac- tual and epistemological base of historical studies resulted in the transfer of the develop- ment of advanced methods into the hands of specialists outside of architecture itself- notably art-historians.

In order to discuss the situation in which archi- tectural history teaching now finds itself, it seems necessary to first emphasize this dis- tinction- between the long-standing and con- tinuing fact of architects' inevitable influential "Pasts" (of whatever variety) and the compara- tively recent systematic advancement of investi- gations by scholars from outside the subject discipline itself. In the case of art-history, the methods it utilized derived from its triple par- entage in the connoisseurship of painting and sculpture, the development of aesthetics as a branch of philosophy, and the influence of Germanic cultural history? These included an extremely advanced capacity to discern detail, document chronology, and attribute authorship (useful in assessing the authenticity and impor- tance of articles placed on the art market); an interest in elucidating the mechanisms involved in the creation and apprehension of autonomous formal beauty; and the documentary study and creative intellectual speculation needed to regard works of art as products and reflections of unified cultures, with both specific icono- graphic and general stylistic content.3

The prolific advancement and formidable intel- lectual power of this scholarly art-history (and its spread from Germany to England and America in the 1930's), along with architects' now rapidly waning interest in their own history (as seen in Gropius' exclusion of it from the Bauhaus course), meant that as architecture became less directly "historical" in its imagery, the "art-history-of-architecture" became less con- cerned with wholly architectural interpretations of the works-concentrating instead on formal and stylistic issues, such as in the concepts of Riegl, Wolfflin, and Worringer.4 Being writers on art, theirs is an understandable exclusion of architecture's comparatively non-artistic dimensions such as use, place, tradition, and technique. Yet it was this specialized choice of significant issues (such as EinfOhlung, Kunstwollen, and Formgeflhl) which came to occupy the unacknowledged vacuum in archi- tects' disciplinary cognition created by the Modernists' attempt to reject all useful "Pasts." Though radically altered from five thousand years of relatively steady-and always archi- tectural-development, this new "Past" none- theless exerted its influence on the social and aesthetic principles of Modernism.s Thus no longer perceived as an integrated discipline

m responsive to such things as clients' aspira- tions, physical constraints, or institutional or regional traditions, architecture was now a branch of art, a medium of expression by which individual genius-artists were obliged and em- powered to produce formally sophisticated and innovative object-buildings, expressive of the spirit of modern culture and capable of leading society as a whole onwards into the full realiza- tion of the nascent Zeitgeist (fig. 5). The critique of Modernism on these grounds is well-known, yet the role of this historiography in shaping it is still largely undiscussed.

Architectural history remains a divided field, with an art-historical tradition still carrying forward the intellectual content, and an archi- tectural tradition sporadically (and on the whole unconvincingly) trying to make disciplinary con- nections. This division leaves current design activity in a state of largely unacknowledged confusion about just what currently ought to be its inevitably needed "Past," and leaves the discussion of methodology languishing, where it exists at all, in unproductive dualities like "discipline or service" or "geologists and miners.'6

Expanded and pluralistic historical conscious- ness is a fact of the present decade. The allu- sionism of many influential architects, as well as the common misgivings about its superfici- ality and the lingering guilt about its "naughti- ness," are all symptoms of a difficult search for full consciousness and working confidence in a forthrightly influential "Past." Yet where such confidence has seemingly emerged, as in some of the well known rhetoric of historicizing "post-modernism", the methodological under- pinnings betray their problematic source in the eighty-year-old separation of architecture from its own historiography. Mainly, there survives virtually intact the operative notion of the lib- erated yet style-driven artist-architect, wielding his autonomous image-making medium for the advancement of the newest culturally- rooted "period style" (which Charles Jencks has accommodatingly provided for us). In this respect the present condition of architecture does not differ fundamentally from Modernism. There persists a disciplinary cognition rooted in methods which tended to require the disembodi- ment of the subject buildings into archaeological fragments for categorical analysis, or into auton- omous artistic images for formal, aesthetic,

iconological, and stylistic speculation. Thus influential architects can still conceive of their field and its artifacts (including the one they might be currently making) in wholly artistic formal terms, or as autonomous and often frag- mentary image-objects.

Moreover, the image of unified cultural epochs as autonomous entities, though now almost totally discredited in general historiography, still lives in architectural history as the "period styles," symbolizing and helping perpetuate the myth of great ages unfolding under the leadership of genius artist-architects. Again, the Modernist image of the role of the archi- tect still drives our most talented designers to fall over each other in order to be dubbed "Post-Modernist" by the media, thereby assur- ing that the march of "History" will regard them as having had the vision to fulfill the nascent Zeitgeist7

The current design genres betray, among other things, architectural history's failure to re-apply its capacity to propose a broader and more in- clusive disciplinary cognition, both of and within architecture. This failure is probably in large part a cumulative result of the last few decades in architectural education, where the schism in historiography has meant the continual exacer- bation of discrepancies between the methods and priorities of "architects-who-deal-with- history" and "art-historians-who-deal-with- architecture."

The architect-teacher at his best is confident and assertive of the relevance of his methods to the teaching of design, and can offer critical insight into certain kinds of attributes of a work usually with some connection to a topical theo- retical or formal idea. Yet in many cases, left abandoned by a scholarship which he and his colleagues consider to have become irrelevant to their needs, the architect-historian merely substitutes a travellog of slides organized in textbook order with a routine recitation of basic Fletcherian "facts." The art-historically trained teacher at his best is confident of the scholarly authority and intellectual consistency of his interpretations, and presents thoroughly docu- mented insights into the social origins and cultural meaning of individual works, with a visual and verbal eloquence appropriate to con- veying their embodied qualities. Yet often, with little actual knowledge of the overall nature of architecture, he gives merely exercises in dry

SConques: The monument within its fabric.

SL'nnocenti: A creative leap inspired by myth.

2

ILL F" TV e e

40

g Eclecticism: A "Past's" most self-evident manifestation

SModernism:Another "Past's" most subliminal influence.

formal perception, stylistic pigeon-holing, and precedent-hunting, which assume architecture is merely another "medium" within "the Arts." The duality is preserved by the apparent persis- tence of generalized images each holds of the other. The architect is portrayed as biased, as interested only in forms and tricks to apply in the studio, or as prone to allow historically inaccurate emphasis to professional and prag- matic issues; while the art-historian is portrayed as only concerned with memorization of names and dates, or as too intellectually aloof from architecture itself to understand what it is like to design a building. Some of these assump- tions, it will be recognized, seem to be more broadly justified than others. Yet it is my asser- tion that none of them need to be true, and that neither of these generalized positions is satis- factory for approaching the potentials of history in architectural education, or the need for an architectural history which projects a fully inte- grated accurate, and useful "Past."

The field is now far too large and diverse for anyone to suggest that the fundamental schism can be healed, the duality resolved, or any com- prehensive multi-purpose methodology pro- posed. Yet it may be intellectually perceived in such a way as to yield a consciousness of selective methods, while avoiding inappropriate stereotypes. I have made attempts in both lec- ture and studio courses at the University of Cincinnati to benefit from such a view of the field, and have pursued an architectural history which I consider to have the potential to again encourage students to develop a functioning and responsible architectural "Past."

The course methods described are based partly on the following three points. First, I would make the assumption that a full acknowledge- ment of the specificity of an audience of future architects need not undermine scholarly integ- rity in any way, because it affects only the "choice of the question" asked of history,8 not the rigor with which it is pursued. And that choice is inevitably audience-specific regard- less of whose needs and interests are con- sciously or unconsciously being served.

Second, I have observed that some of the most recent scholarly investigations in fact arrive, unlike earlier art-historical stylistic or formal analysis, at quite thorough and well-balanced accounts of the multiplicity of influences and considerations which go into the making of architecture in specific situations? Built as they are on larger accumulations of facts, they become particularly convincing in the image of architectural activity which they portray.

And third, I would propose that the definition of "history" may be expanded to include the often impressionistic but functioning memory of individuals and their views of the past which, generally outside the strict "discipline" of his- tory, are yet crucial to thought and action1? And similarly, I would propose that the defini- tion of architecture be expanded to include the ongoing and autonomous "language" or "medium" of architecture11 and the enduring artifacts themselves,'12 besides the initial activity which produced them and which may be accounted for in historical narrative. With these definitions, the phrase "history of archi- tecture" acquires additional valid meanings.

A survey course entails a special combination of problems and potentials, especially when it is given in the first year of the students' ex- posure to architectural education. Following are a series of techniques I have found important for making its as vital a part of that introductory experience as possible. First, the acknowledge- ment that architectural history is useful may be allowed to exert its effect. Such uses have been compiled on various lists,13 but basically fall into two categories: "historical understanding," a greater intellectual agility and cultural sophis- tication acquired through exposure to many forms of thought and action, and "architectural understanding," a knowledgeable image of what architecture is, what it is for, and how it is made. Yet by viewing their discipline as a wholly intellectual-as opposed to a partly architectural-activity, many important archi- tectural historians fail to acknowledge any but the vaguest "unteachable" channels by which their presentations might affect architectural understanding14 Presumably the values of the enterprise would then be equally well fulfilled by the history of economics, literature, or paint- ing. Because the activity, medium, and artifacts

29

under study all exist in continuity, however, and because the forming of the influential "Past" is inevitably in progress, things become far more specific with or without the architectural stu- dent's awareness or the historian's permission. Audience consciousness on the part of the his- torian will therefore not only help encourage more accurate "architectural" interpretations, but may also illuminate a whole network of connections both philosophical (disciplinary cognition) and formal (artifacts and the medium). This does not need to imply any singular formal or stylistic dogmatism as is often supposed, because the network can be extremely elabor- ate, and history itself is much too diverse in its content. In any case, the student may of course use, sever, or enlarge any strand in this network as his imagination allows, and this process itself will have begun to construct his working theory of architecture-probably the single most important "use" of history.

Second, the historical presentation of architec- ture can project the best disciplinary image if it is grounded predominantly on multi-causal or "situational" interpretations. It should already be clear that this does not imply a merely prag- matic backlash, since the full range of intellec- tual, cultural, and stylistic factors need to be considered as components of any "situation.' What is needed is to acknowledge architecture's multi-functionality and not merely transfer from old singular determinisms ("style" or "artistic expression") to new ones ("institutions," "typol- ogies," or "politics"). A disciplinary cognition inclusive of the situational property of the medi- um's manipulation is best served by accounts of the dynamic range of issues, intentions, aspirations, and constraints, as they have been resolved through architecture itself as a modifier of climate, behavior, culture, and re- sources.' Singular causality of any type is as unnecessary as it is unsatisfactory because, as R. N. Stromberg has said, writing of the diverse constructs currently available in intellectual history, we may "proceed to a more complex historiography which is not necessarily a cha- otic one...(because despite the multiplicity of issues) we must hold them all in some sort of balance to understand cultural and intellectual phenomena fully."6 6

Third, probably the most insidious of the singu- lar determinisms still being wielded today is the "stylistic." I have found it both possible and refreshing to be rid of all posthumous style names such as "Mannerist," "Baroque," and "Rococo" (with capital letters) as the primary classifiers when describing the origins of the works. The advanced "situational" scholarship I described in fact has made these categories virtually extraneous. Verheyen never leans on the concept of "Mannerism" is discussing the Palazzo del Te; Joseph Connors never capital- izes "Baroque," and seldom uses the word at all in his brilliant monograph on Borromini17 The styles which characterize times and places are, like typological traditions and influential precedents, simply factors which existed, often unconsciously, within the overall situation- part of "that which the artist finds at his dis- posal and which constitutes his ground of meaning*8 The reality they do represent is often just a type of artistic motivation such as a "mannerist impulse" (small "m"). Such an impulse, however, is visible in many times and places, and so it is misleading to speak of "Mannerist Architecture" as a coherent class of objects within a single defined period of time. To do so not only confuses discussion of the impulse in other contexts, but hypostatizes the diversity of sixteenth-century work, by implying that such impulses were the dominant determin- ing motivators (that, as Pevsner would have had it in 1946, Giulio Romano was, above all else, trying to be "Mannerist") and thus deserve to become the primary classifiers as well. Despite the fact that many who use them acknowledge that they are merely "conveniences," the cus- tomary stylistic labels create more problems in disciplinary cognition than they solve in methodological clarity.

Fourth, liberation from the stylistic straight- jacket also opens the possibility of a more forthright inclusion of "vernacular" architec- ture, which has types of relevance beyond a merely perfunctory gesture towards its egali- tarian symbolism, and a merely parenthetical fascination with its exotic quaintness. The imagery of the European vernaculars (fig. 2) is an important source of our own architectural- cultural heritage, having influenced architectural theory as well as helped form current public taste. In addition, these settings were through- out the past also the physical reality out of which the more intellectually ambitious monu- ments derived their meaning in relation to the

0 Fontenay: Illustrating funda- mental "articulateness" in architecture.

1

Greek City: Cultural priori- ties arranged on the landscape (Susan Griffith, first year).

SRenaissance City: The subtlety of an intervention on medieval fabric (Richard Beck, first year).

context of the place as a whole. Emphasis on this relationship between monument and fabric in a given place will foster in the student the capacity to discriminate in the program and settings of his own design projects how it is that building types and settings normally sug- gest varying degrees of appropriate modesty or prominence. Moreover, vernacular architecture also illustrates perhaps the clearest and most straightforward reflection in form of such issues as climate and a way of life.

Fifth, it is universally recognized that slides can never do justice to the reality of architec- tural experience, and that even real experience can never do justice to the history of the place visited. These two limitations may nevertheless be addressed once they are acknowledged. The latter is significantly resolved by the linkage already discussed between a well illustrated formal and experiential description and an his- torical account that creatively seeks to estab- lish the modes of its situational propriety. The former, which must establish the vicarious experience itself, is well addressed by technical means-large numbers of high quality original color slides of any building considered im- portant, dual screen projection with frequent matched double images, lap-dissolve, images which convey the regional as well as the imme- diate contexts, images which may even suggest attributes of non-visual reality, and of course motion-picture footage to convey sequence. All useful tools, these still require some accom- panying description to deliberately bridge the gap between two dimensions and four, and between sight and all the other senses- identifying size and scale, and explaining se- quential, thermal, acoustic, and kinesthetic attributes of the work. Even though these are generally difficult or impossible to simulate, mention and description will at least keep these dimensions of the architectural medium alive in the students' minds as integral with those they can see in the slides. Traditional art-history and its reliance on photographs-even as subjects of study-has too long ignored architecture's multi-sensory experiential

reality.9 It is even

plausible that the cool damp draft at the entry to a twelfth-century monastic church, or the quiet shade of its cloister walks (fig. 6) is at least as valid a subject for aesthetic interpre- tation and medium-analysis as the column capitals or plan geometry.

Sixth, for fostering architectural as well as historical understanding, techniques which deal selectively with the former may occasionally be included. Systematic medium-analysis has already been mentioned, but latter-day inter- pretations of any kind, if plausible, useful, or significant, may also be allowed a prominent position alongside the documented facts. Care is only required to distinguish between them, and to refrain from building an entire histori- ography on the former. Such quasi- (or even non-) historical interpretations may be instruc- tive, as when Vincent Scully wrote poetically of Greek temples in their landscapes,2o in which case the presence or absence of factual cor- roboration is not crucial to an enhanced con- sciousness of architecture's expressive range. They may be influential, as when Colin Rowe constructed his analytical speculations upon the works of Le Corbusier21 in such a way as to change a generation of influential architects' notions about their medium; in which case the interpretations themselves thus become histori- cal facts. Or they may be subsequently inter- posed by a large segment of the culture between itself and the artifact's origins; in which case they become irrevocably attached to both as in the case of the veil of romanticism now carried by medieval castles despite the gruesome facts of their origination. In each case, the inter- pretive act and its resulting insights connect strongly with the learning of the medium (as with Scully's and Rowe's) or with disciplinary cognition (as with Rowe's influence, and the romanticized castle, having both become "facts" of the field). They become either desireable or essential to the augmented and directed his- torical enterprise.

Seventh, instead of regarding the knowledge of facts as the prerequisite to any understanding in architectural history survey courses, it is possible to reverse this relationship. As R. V. Daniels has written, one "should never try to memorize a fact if he doesn't know its signifi- cance; and if he understands its significance, it is almost impossible to forget the fact?2 For an audience of future architects, the primary structure should be an understanding of ideas and situations, and an appreciation of plausible interpretations of the effectiveness of the medium; and into this structure should then be placed as few facts as possible to illustrate its reality and specificity. The architectural student need not know precise dates unless

there is a definite connection to another sig- nificant occurence. It seems preferable that students be able to date a design approximately based on intelligent discernment, rather than exactly by memorization alone. Neither is it usually necessary to know any buildings or architects by name and date (i.e. factually) that there is not time to know fairly thoroughly (i.e. significantly). The important diversity within a time or place can be illustrated with additional but unnamed examples, along with a thoroughly "situational" interpretation of one.

Eighth, and finally, assignments and examina- tions in an architects' survey course should above all encourage thought, reflection, inter- pretation, and theory-building, rather than the recitation of accumulated information. The stu- dent may be encouraged to not only learn the historical material but to understand some reasons for learning it if asked (in a short take- home essay, for example) to creatively extend and use the course material to develop part of his or her overall conception of the field, in terms of theory, principles, and images. From knowledge of Doric temples, for example, may be developed an opinion about the relative value of evolutionary refinement as opposed to radical innovation; from Rome, about the values and limitations of a ranging eclecticism; and from medieval fortifications, about the discrepancy between originating intentions and subsequent interpretations. Effective responses to such issues rely on sufficient "historical understand- ing" of the scholarly matter in relation to which each topic is suggested, but also require a development of "architectural understanding" to be in progress. They augment, but need not totally displace, the kind of values derived from also doing pure research.

The inclusion of plausible functioning interpre- tation and medium-analysis in the definition of architectural history suggests the validity of some special forms of historical activity within a studio setting. Mention has already been made of ways the lecture course may suggest a network of connections for the students' emerg- ing cognition of the discipline, and perhaps for a specific studio task. Methods originating in the studio, however, can offer important rein- forcement by structuring these connections from the other side, and by applying the enor- mous motivation which architectural students bring to their design work. I will describe three categories of such activities.

History in the studio may be a tool for intro- ducing the many issues from which architecture is made, and the principles and forms which have so far been developed in connection with them. Such a range of issues is the organizing principle behind the first year design studio at the University of Cincinnati, where a series of projects build up, one by one, the major com- ponents of architecture from basic shelter through construction, function, composition, climate, context, and socio-cultural meaning. The students are introduced to the implications of these issues through doing a project specifi- cally focussed on each. Short thematic presen- tations of historical examples are used to introduce each issue in such a way that the student can begin immediately to think intel- ligently about it; and the extant formal and in- tellectual possibilities concerning each are described so as to accelerate the process of exposure to the accumulated material of the field. There is no sense in which these are im- plied to be "right answers" or handy forms to copy-instead, always simply points of departure for creative conscious extension or inversion. The issue of constructional articula- tion, for example, is introduced by primarily suggesting it is a valid sphere in which to exert creative energy, as is evident in medieval archi- tecture (fig. 6) and in the origins of the orders. Functional typologies, such as the "House" illustrated through time become a reference from which the student can understand the cultural image he or she brings to the first design tasks, and from which may be discovered other major categories of possibilities. The issue of contextual relations is effectively intro- duced with a slide tour down the Grand Canal in Venice, where the various imported styles may be seen transformed and related by the

. The Capitol in Rome: Graphic interpretation of spatial layering and formal dissolution (Fran Monaco, third year).

* *"

M Mistra: Profound subtleties hidden in "accidental" medieval plan (Rick Posey, third year).

io

r- m The Acropolis: Tools toward

a graphic understanding of subtleties (Mark Jones,

fifth year).

E

SResidential College after Hadrian's Villa: Formal accretions hinged across a hilltop site (Yolanda Cole, third year).

Hadrian's Villa: Graphic manipulations of wall articu- lation (Yolanda Cole, third year).

m Residential College after Chantilly: Towards an equiva- lent but non-historical character-richness (Vonda Alberson, third year).

specificity of the genius loci, and the individual buildings may be seen exerting their varying but generally appropriate degrees of prominence.

History in the studio may become a foreign context in which design as a form of investiga- tion offers the most vivid understandings of certain issues best seen in the perspective of historical distance. Such an issue is socio- cultural meaning, and the project fiction we use to address it, near the end of the first year, is that a research institute has obtained a method whereby it can reconstruct clones of the long- deceased and is in need of small community accommodations, one each for groups from several epochs. The student is expected to come to an understanding of how, in a particu- lar time and place, the organization, composi- tion, articulation, and character of building types and open spaces were related to cultural patterns and beliefs; and then to fashion on a given site an original design for a town in which the general ambience will assure the inhab- itant's emotional and spiritual comfort. The results have indicated that both close reproduc- tion of forms and free interpretations of prin- ciples can generate convincing responses to the project fiction (figs. 7 & 8). It is particularly fascinating to see in the renaissance projects various ways of reconciling the known Humanist ideals with what would have been the actual memories the "people" would bring of places.

The educational benefits of the project in fact go beyond its original motivating intention, which was to understand, with a vividness only design activity can stimulate, how architectural form is affected by culture and institutions in a certain way, thereby helping them become more self- conscious and responsible interpreters of those issues in their own time. It also adds to their understanding of history as such, by their hav- ing to actually begin to apply historical stylistic and technological constraints. Thirdly, it has all the analogous benefits of learning a foreign language-most notably perspective on the idiosyncracies of one's own. They're able to discover the ephermeralities and idioms of late twentieth century architectural language, such as pandering contextualism and the search for complexity. Fourthly, it helps release them from the mundane concerns which many, being re-

cently high-school "drafting jocks," bring to their first year of architectural study. And fifthly, it is a good opportunity to expect them to be- come exposed to other cultural fields such as music or literature in their corresponding period, and perhaps in relation to architecture generally This "applied history" project has done more than reinforce history lecture content, or intro- duce potentially relevant formal, typological, or contextual precedents. It has vividly opened thinking about some of architecture's deepest commitments to society.

Precedent analysis, however, is the third and final form which history in the studio may take. History, in this light, is the repository of the medium and its effectiveness in prior applica- tions, and as such may be subjected to many kinds of fruitful interpretation and analysis. Upper year studios at Cincinnati are offered as elective options so that the student can choose to take specialized studios in any of several architectural subjects. We can thus occasionally teach specifically history-related studios, such as one given this past year entitled "Historical Model and Type." In addition to the usual sort of site and program, each student selected an historical model from which to derive as much inspiration or insight as would prove possible. Preliminary research therefore included all the usual programmatic and contextual issues, but more importantly in this particular exercise a detailed organizational, formal, functional, con- structional, and character analysis of the model (figs. 9-11)?3 Indeed the most remarkable methodological result of this exercise was the fruitfulness of the application of the design students' incentive and their wholly architec- tural set of interests to the development and application of both old and new modes of analy- sis of the medium and its effectiveness. Their prior understanding of the breadth of issues in architectural design, and the primary motivation to interpret and adapt aspects of the medium from a certain source and for a certain task, combined to produce a significant range and depth of understanding of the models as objects -as embodiments of useful lessons of both form and principle.

As an experimental structuring of the intuitive processes by which creative designers continu- ally transform precedents, the exercise en- couraged that any mode of analysis which the student sensed might be helpful was worth pursuing. Thus a wide range of original verbal

1

and graphic analytical techniques resulted. The list of aspects for study expanded continually as the projects progressed-as the task at hand provided fresh "questions" for the model- including both purely formal concerns and issues pertaining to use and construction. In the former category were such things as dominant and sub-dominant mass and volume hierarchies; hierarchical distribution of articula- tion; site utilization and its psycho-emotional effects; proportional relations; distribution of frontality, rotation, and recession; and plan details, positional inflections, and their com- positional effectiveness. In the latter category were thermal, acoustic, and sequential aesthe- tics; elevation details and rhetorical gestures, and their experiential effectiveness; the func- tions of ornament; space and movement defining techniques; relation of structure to plan and volumetrics; and principles of materials usage.

The designs produced from this process (figs. 12-15) benefitted from the generally recog- nized practice of using typological spatial or- ganizations, but also from a conscious attempt to create non-allusive equivalents to the visual richness and vivid appropriate characters nor- mally found in ancient, medieval, and renais- sance buildings. Painted stucco pastiches of recognizable historical forms were not nearly as common among the results as efforts to forth- rightly extend currently prevalent building prac- tices into more highly articulate and visually engaging vocabularies tuned to a certain mode of human experience and use.

Whether understanding the issues of the field, addressing through design those issues which require a distanced perspective, or analyzing the attributes of old buildings to suggest equivalent quality in new ones, the conscious structured presence of history in the design studio is a reinforcement (a reciprocation of the linkage) and an augmentation (a motivation of new in- sights) of every virtue that exists in architects studying their own disciplinary history-for both "historical" and "architectural" understanding.

"The Past" has always influenced designers - in small conscious choices about style or fit- ness, but more significantly in large unconscious presuppositions about the nature and priorities of the field. After a trying century in which our disciplinary history has been held in "Babylonian Captivity" by another field, we might now seek to again construct a fully integrated and useful

"Past" out of the most advanced scholarly investigations and the most audience-specific analytical interpretations. The peculiar demands of our own highly self-conscious era seem to demand a responsible and freshly architectural history fully applied within education, and built on disciplinary cognition, not momentary stylistic trends. M

Notes

1. Plumb, John Harold, The Death of the Past (London:1969) p. 16.

2. Notably the work of Morelli and Berenson, Baumgarten and Croce, and Herder and Burckhardt, respectively.

3. Kleinbauer, W. Eugene, Modern Perspectives in Western Art History (New York:1971) pp. 1-105.

4. Die Entstehung der Barockkunst in Rom (Wien:1907), Principles of Architectural History (trans., London: 1932), and Abstraction and Empathy (trans., New York: 1953), respectively.

5. This argument has been pursued by Smith, Norris Kelly, "Millenary Folly: The Failure of an Eschatology" Society of Architectural Historians Annual Meeting,January, 1970; and Gombrich, Ernst, "Hegel and Art History" in Architectural Design Profile "On the Methodology of Architectural History (London: 1981) pp. 3-9.

6. Wiebenson, Dora, "Architectural History: Service or Discipline" Society of Architectural Historians Annual Meeting, New Haven, 1982; and Attoe, Wayne, with Charles W. Moore, "How Not to Teach Architectural History" Journal of Architectural Education Fall 1980.

7. For an example of this process in full operation, see Stephens, S., "Grand Allusions" (on a house by Robert A. M. Stern) Progressive Architecture February 1977, pp. 58-63. The house itself may be style-driven, but even more so the critical essay which asks "whether these principles (and this design) constitute an architecture that is truly 'post-modernist'.''

8. Elton, G. R., The Practice of History (New York: 1967) p. 117. Collingwood, R. G., The Idea of History (London:1970) p. 273.

9. Perhaps the best known in this connection is James Ackerman's work on Michelangelo; and more recently and even more comprehensively, Joseph Connors' Borromini and the Roman Oratory(Cambridge, Mass:1981). For a method- ological discussion, see Verheyen, Egon, The Palazzo del Te in Mantua (Baltimore: 1977) p. 4.

10. Marwick, Arthur, The Nature of History (London: 1970) pp. 142-165, including prominent reference to W. H. Walsh, "Colligatory Concepts in History" in Burston and Thompson, Studies in the Nature and Teaching of History (London: 1967)

11. Norberg-Schulz, Christian, "History and the Language of Architecture" in John E. Hancock, Ed., History in, of, and for Architecture (Cincinnati: 1981) pp. 6-15.

12. Anderson, Stanford, "The Presentness of Interpretations and of Artifacts: Towards a History for the Duration and Change of Artifacts" in ibid., pp. 49-57.

13. Attoe and Moore, op. cit., p. 2.

14. Millon, Henry, ''History of Architecture: How Useful?" AIA Journal December 1960, pp. 23-5; and Spiro Kostof, as quoted by Denise Scott Brown, "Teaching Architectural History" Arts andArchitecture May 1967, p. 30.

15. The four function definition is from a 1970 EDRA Conference paper by Bill Hillier, with John Musgrove at Pat O'Sullivan. RIBA Intelligence Unit.

16. Stromberg, Roland N., 'Some Methods Used by Intellectual Historians" American Historical Review June 1975, pp. 563-73.

17. Connors, op. cit. (note 32). Also for an entertaining critique of this lingering affliction, see Joseph Rykwert, "A Healthy Mind in Healthy Body?'' in Hancock, Ed., op. cit. (note 35), pp. 44-8.

18. Colquhoun, Alan, "Gombrich and Cultural History" in Architectural Design Profile: "On the Methodology of Architectural History" (London:1981) p. 39.

19. Fitch, James Marston, American Building. The Environ- mental Forces that Shape it (Boston:1972) pp. 1-4.

20. Scully, Vincent, The Earth, The Temple, and The Gods (New York:1962)

21. Rowe, Colin, The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa and Other Essays (Cambridge, Mass: 1976)

22. Daniels, Robert Vincent, Studying History. How and Why (Englewood Cliffs:1972) p. 34-5.

23. For other exercises of design from a model see: Frances Halsband, et al, "Drawing from Models" Journal ofArchi- tectural Education September 1978,

pp. 7-17; Gordon Simmons, "Analogy in Design: Studio Teaching Models" Journal of Architectural Education February 1978, pp. 18-20; Norman Crowe, "Using the Past" Central Papers on Architecture Spring 1980, pp. 21-39; and Robert A. M. Stern, "Architecture, History, and Historiography at the End of the Modernist Era" in Hancock, Ed., op. cit . pp. 34-43.

Residential College after the Palazzo Barberini: Per- spective illusions and rhetorical gestures (Jeff Justice, third year).