How to use this book

This book is written as an introduction to the conceptual questions faced by those who write architectural history and study the work of architectural historians. As such, it assumes some basic knowledge of architectural history, its chronologies, canon and geographies, such as the reader might find in a more general survey of the history of architecture. Readers of this book might be taking courses or conducting research in architectural history while attached to a school of architecture, or in a department of art history; or they might be undertaking a history programme where buildings and city plans are thought to evidence historical phenomena that do not originate in architecture. What is Architectural History? introduces some of the key issues that have shaped the way in which historical knowledge of architecture has been formed, rallied and disseminated over the last century or so, and aims to direct inquisitive readers to other writing that explores aspects of this subject and its major figures in greater depth.