ABSTRACT
Although architectural nationalism, which I will provisionally dene as the design of a building according to considerations of how it represents or advances ideas of a nation, did not emerge as a widespread practice until the nineteenth century, its sources can be detected much earlier. Before ‘architecture’ and ‘nationalism’ were associated with each other, the historical development of each concept embodied a like manner of systematizing inquiry. ‘Architecture’ and ‘nationalism’ converge around the ordering of concrete particulars into an abstract whole by a centralized authority: in one case, the architect or architectural discipline; in the other, rulers or states. Architects carve beams into entablatures and, in so doing, elevate an element of building into the realm of publicly sanctioned representation. Nationalists, somewhat similarly, convert Venetians and Sicilians into Italians, rening the miscellaneous peoples of a state into the related members of a nation. Each action harmonizes its particulars through the use of sub-concepts intended to ameliorate irregularity or dierence – for architecture, symmetry or ornamentation; in the case of nationalism, language or ethnic ties.
