ABSTRACT
To what extent is architecture allegorical? Painters, sculptors and writers across the
ages have shown that architecture as a discipline, as well as architects and their
works, can serve perfectly as a ‘donor’ for allegorical representations. The community
of the faithful was depicted as a church, man as a house and God himself was charac-
terized as the architect. There was hardly any doubt about the fact that the semantic
fields of architecture and the city could be concealed within the sensus allegoricus of,
for instance, the representation of a machine. There are innumerable examples of
houses and cities that are depicted as living organisms, or even as people who speak
and express feelings. If works of architecture are perceived as living, they must,
sooner or later, also die. So it is not surprising that one can care about what could be
called ‘dead architecture’.
