Time, History and Architecture: Essays on Critical Historiography

Gevork Hartoonian

Oct 2017 · Routledge

About this ebook

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.

About the author

Gevork Hartoonian is professor of Architectural History and Theory at the University of Canberra, Australia. He is the author of numerous books, including Global Perspectives on Critical Architecture: Praxis Reloaded (Routledge, 2015). He was the 2013 and 2016 visiting professor of Architectural History at Tongji University, Shanghai, China.