ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how writing the history of architecture is related to contemporary architectural practice and potentially informs architectural preservation in Arab states. Udo Kultermann’s Contemporary Architecture in the Arab States not only captures a history but also shapes its discourse by identifying a thematic direction for ‘history-worthy’ contemporary practices as championed by the historian-critic. As architecture serves financial and political power, the economic unevenness across the Middle East during the period covered in Kultermann’s book is evidenced by his selection of buildings. Architectural history has been fundamental to the development of the architectural profession since the nineteenth century. The focus on identity and its relationship to contemporary architecture in the Arab world, as proposed by Kultermann, has been at the expense of the legacy of an important chapter in the history of global modernism, namely, its manifestations in the Arab world from the start of the twentieth century to the 1970s.
