ABSTRACT

Time, History and Architecture presents a series of essays on critical historiography, each addressing a different topic, to elucidate the importance of two influential figures Walter Benjamin and Gottfried Semper for architectural history. In a work exploring themes such as time, autonomy and periodization, author Gevork Hartoonian unpacks the formation of architectural history; the problem of autonomy in criticism and the historiographic narrative. Considering the scope of criticism informing the contemporaneity of architecture, the book explores the concept of nonsimultaneity, and introduces retrospective criticism the agent of critical historiography. An engaging thematic dialogue for academics and upper-level graduate students interested in architectural history and theory, this book aims to deconstruct the certainties of historicism and to raise new questions and interpretations from established critical canons.

chapter |13 pages

Introduction

Time and history: an introductory outline

chapter 1|16 pages

On history

chapter 2|15 pages

On time

chapter 3|21 pages

On style

chapter 4|25 pages

On baroque

chapter 5|24 pages

On Mies

chapter 6|15 pages

On autonomy

chapter 7|21 pages

On brutalism

Crisis postponed

chapter 8|24 pages

On architecture and capitalism

The tale of three frames

chapter 9|19 pages

It’s time

Historicism revisited