Still on the Margin: Reflections on the Persistence of the Canon in Architectural History

Proceedings of the panel “Still on the Margin: Reflections on the Perspective of the Canon in Architectural History” (1st Conference of the European Architectural History Network, Guimaraes, Portugal, June 17-20 2010).  Published in ABE: Architecture Beyond Europe
A collection of 12 short pieces on the theme of Still on the Margin: Reflections on the Persistence of the Canon in Architectural History has been published. These are all based on discussion papers presented in a panel that was organized at the first EAHN international meeting in Guimaraes in 2010. The collection, which was edited by Joe Nasr and Mercedes Volait, is part of the first issue of a new journal ABE: Architecture beyond Europe. They can all be found in open access at http://dev.abejournal.eu/index.php?id=117. Please note that this address is likely to change in the future. Below is the full list of authors and papers in this collection.

Part 1 Reasons for the Persistence of the Canon

Paolo Scrivano, The Persistent Success of Biography: Architecture as a Narrative of the Individual

June Komisar, Designing a Better Textbook: Challenges to the Expansion of the Content of Architectural History Survey Texts

Zeynep Aktüre, Institutional Reasons behind the Persistence of the Canon: Structure and Organization of Architectural Education in Turkey

Markus Breitschmid, In Defense of the Validity of the “Canon” in Architecture

Davy Depelchin, Ambiguities in Terminology and Taxonomy as Factors in the Marginalization of Architectural Styles: The Case of Orientalism

Part 2: Transcending the Canon

Michela Rosso, Revisionist Histories and Their Limits: Seeking Alternative Representations of Architectural History

Daniel Maudlin, Interrogating Values and Assumptions: A Postmodern View of Cultural Production, Relativism, and the Use of the Canon in the Classroom

Michaël Darin, For a History of Building: The Contribution of Typological History to the General History of the Twentieth Century

Ellen Van Impe, Bringing Invisible Architects into the Picture: The case of the reconstruction after the World War I in Belgium

Émilie d’Orgeix, Possessing Architecture with Words and Letters: Docomomo International’s “Other Modernisms” experiment as a means of broadening the canon

 Caroline Maniaque, Presenting Another Profile of Architecture: Alternatives to Museographical Canonization