Rethinking Architectural Historiography

Rather than subscribing to a single position, this collection informs the reader about the current state of the discipline looking at changes across the broad field of methodological, theoretical and geographical plurality. Divided into three sections, Rethinking Architectural Historiography begins by renegotiating foundational and contemporary boundaries of architectural history in relation to other fields, such as art history and archaeology. It then goes on to critically engage with past and present histories, disclosing assumptions, biases and absences in architectural historiography. It concludes by exploring the possibilities provided by new perspectives, reframing the discipline in the light of new parameters and problematics.

This timely and illustrated title reflects upon the current changes in historiographical practice, exploring potential openings that may contribute further transformation of the disciplines and theories on architectural historiography and addresses the current question of the disciplinary particularity of architectural history.

Dana Arnold is Chair in Architectural History and Director at the Centre for Studies in Architecture and Urbanism, University of Southampton, UK. She has held research fellowships at Yale University; the University of Cambridge and the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles and has been a visiting Professor in the United States, Canada and Britain. Her previous publications include Rural Urbanism (2006); Reading Architectural History (2002) and the co-edited volume Architecture as Experience (2004). Her current work on hospitals as agents of social, cultural and urban change will be published by Routledge in 2008.

Elvan Altan Ergut is Assistant Professor and Vice Chair in the Department of Architecture at the Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey. She received her PhD in Art History from State University of New York at Binghamton. Her research areas include architecture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and architectural historiography. She is currently editing one volume on Republican architecture in Turkey (METU Faculty of Architecture Press, 2006) and another one on local modernisms in Turkish provinces (Turkish Chamber of Architects, 2006).

Belgin Turan Ozkaya is Associate Professor of Architectural History in the Department of Architecture at the Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey. She received her PhD in History of Architecture and Urbanism from Cornell University, was a fellow at the 1999 Getty Summer institute in Visual Studies and Art History and a Visiting Scholar at Canadian Centre for Architecture in 2000-2001. She has published on the Italian Tendenza, Ottoman–Venetian relations and architectural historiography. Her work is located at the interstices of architectural history and contemporary interdisciplinary theory. Currently, she is working on an edited volume on visuality and architecture.