ABSTRACT
A time of change for the profession The stimulating climate of the 1860s had offered many new perspectives, to be followed in the 70s by feelings of depression, frustration and stagnation. This cyclical aspect was certainly the most prominent feature of the debates of the time. In fact, what was happening was not stagnation at all, but slow, fundamental changes that would become increasingly evident over the following decades. This is the point when architectural theory was finally to lose its central position in the development of architecture to building practice, and when that theory was to be reduced to the relatively simple - and materialistic - tenet that construction is the quintessence o f the art o f building. We could say that these changes represented the transition from the eighteenth-century to the twentieth-century concept of architecture.
