The Historiography of Modern Architecture

Literature, according to Panayotis Tournikiotis, has always exerted a powerful influence on architecture. The historiography of the title refers to the writing of history, Tournikiotis argues that the history of modern architecture tends to be written from the present, projecting back onto the past our current concerns, so that the beginning of the story really functions as a representation of its end. Tournikiotis focuses on a group of books by historians of the 20th century: Nikolaus Pevsner, Emil Kaufmann, Siegfried Giedion, Bruno Zevi, Leonardo Benevolo, Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Reyner Banham, Peter Collins and Manfredo Tafuri. In examining these writers’ thoughts, he draws on concepts from critical theory, relating architecture to broader historical models.