ABSTRACT
If one of the defining characteristics of modernity is the sense of an irrevocable
separation between the present and the past, it is no longer evident why the past
should be studied. In architectural history this breach became manifest in the
last two decades of the nineteenth century when architects gave up looking to
the styles of the past as models for a contemporary style that would accommo-
date the demands of their age and express its spirit. Instead they turned their
energies to developing a truly modern style that would be free of the formal
vocabularies of the past. In the study of architectural history and theory this
change of attitude towards the past resulted in a transformation of the aims of
writing architectural history or studying the theory of historical styles, particu-
larly of classical architecture. History and theory were no longer the storehouse
whose riches the architect could use to develop a style that would be both histor-
ically correct and an expression of the age. The aim and legitimation of their
existence was no longer to be the foundation for present-day practice. In the
case of the neogothic this led to an increasingly antiquarian approach once the
gothic revival had ended, in the sense that the past was studied only for the sake
of the increase of historical knowledge, and without consideration for the use of
that knowledge except for conservation purposes. What happened to the study
of the history and theory of classical architecture is the subject of this essay. It
offers a reading of the three main theorists of classical art and architecture in the
nineteenth century – Bötticher, Semper and Warburg – not to demonstrate the
increasing irrelevance of their attempts to grasp the principles behind classical
design, but to show how their emphasis on design was overtaken by a project
that can best be termed hermeneutic: understanding the significance of classical
art for the present day as a cultural phenomenon. The nineteenth century saw both the establishment of architectural
history as an academic discipline – Alois Hirt was appointed the first professor of architecture at the newly founded University of Berlin in 1809 – and a transformation of the relationship between the theory and history of classical architecture and its practice. Before the birth of modern classical archaeology in the 1750s the remains of Greek and Roman architecture had been studied mainly to establish firm principles of classical design. From the measuring excursions of Alberti, Brunelleschi and Palladio, through Antoine Desgodet’s measuring and drawing of Roman buildings to solve the contradictions found in the treatises and former reconstructions, to the measuring, surveying, drawing and reconstructions by students at the Ecole des Beaux Arts who had won a Prix de Rome, historical investigation had been inseparable from design. In the nineteenth century that connection was significantly loosened, if not severed. The main point of historical investigation was no longer to illustrate, explain and support Vitruvian theory; it also became an academic subject in its own right, closely linked to archaeology and other disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, such as linguistics and anthropology.
