Building-in-Time ─ From Giotto to Alberti and Modern Oblivion

In pre-modern Europe, the architect built not merely with imagination, brick, and mortar but with time, using vast quantities of duration as the means to erect monumental buildings that otherwise would have been impossible to achieve. Virtually all the great cathedrals of Europe were built under and by this regime, here given the name “Building-in-Time.” It places in an entirely new light the major works of pre-modern Italy, from the Pisa cathedral group to the cathedrals of Milan, Venice, and Siena, and from the monuments of 14th-century Florence to the new St. Peter’s.

In this illuminating book, Marvin Trachtenberg rewrites the history of medieval and Renaissance architecture in Italy and recasts the turn to modernity in new terms, those of temporality and its role in architectural theory and practice. Recovering this lost element of the deep architectural past revises our view of the present: temporality is not a neutral or secondary factor in modern architecture culture but a condition that affects all production and experience of the built environment.