Oral and Written Production ITESM-CCM Lucia Santa-Ana.

History and Theory of Architecture what they are good for?

Live must be lived forward, but it can only be understood backwards. S. Kierkegaard.

Most architecture students wonder why they have to learn history and theory of Architecture? What I am going to get from studying those boring subjects and how they are going to benefit my architectural practice? Are these two subjects really meaningless for architectural practice? Or is it just a misconception created by the importance that the curricula gives to studio, leaving as second class subjects theory and history of architecture? Along the Eighteen and Nineteenth Century, history and theory of architecture played an important role in the education of architects trained at the different Academies of Fine Arts along Europe and America. In Mexicos case, with the appointment of Javier Cavallari (1857-1863) as dean of the Academy of San Carlos, courses of history and theory of architecture were introduced into the curricula of the Architecture Studies. Students were expected to read the treatise of French architects such as Viollet le Ducs Entretiens sur larchitecture (1863-1872) or the Dictionnaire raisonn de larchitecture francaise (1854-1868), books in which they could examine the ideas that ruled the composition of architecture and study drawings and plans of ancient monuments. Also as part of architectural training, students took a workshop of history of architecture, a course in which they must draw the historical buildings from which they have read about in their history class and they must also go to Mexicos city monuments such as the Metropolitan Cathedral in order to draw relevs of them. These subjects helped students to get acquainted with historical architectural elements, building materials, building techniques and to get the sense of proportion of particular elements and of the space in general by drawing it. As well, theory of architecture treatise allowed students to learn from the greatest masters of the past how to compose new architectural buildings. Nevertheless, these conditions changed at the beginning of the Twentieth Century with the emergence of the avant-garde trends, which discarded the ideas taught at the Fine Arts Academies. For these trendy fads such as the Bauhaus and Le Sprit Nouveau history and theory of architecture were dead weight that should be left aside. For the 1920s Heroic Architects such as Le Corbusier or Walter Gropius, history of architecture had no value; it was only ballast that pulled architectural design backwards, hindering the creation of new forms and concepts. Also Le Corbusier stated that architects should learn from engineers, which used Euclidean forms, leaving aside all ornamentation and just taking care that buildings were merely functional, leaving almost aside any aesthetic consideration.

With these ideas in mind, design courses got considered the central core of architectural education, giving to them at the curricula more emphasis and teaching hours, leaving all other subjects as elements which reinforced architectural design. Unfortunately as time passed this original idea got transformed, and history and theory of architecture were left aside, considering them just as filling courses idea that is passed by teachers to students which start looking at the subjects with certain kind of prejudice. What their studio teachers dont mention to students is what James Burke stated If you dont know where you come from, you dont know where you are. How are they going to design a new building when they dont know what has been made in the past? There are timelessness lessons that we can learn from Vitrubio which mentions at the I b.c. century that architecture should be functional, beautiful and firm. That in order to plan a healthful city or house we should take into consideration orientations, the physical conditions of the site in which we are going to place the building, the use of local materials, the differentiation between public and private spaces, and more concepts which taken into consideration would help to achieve an standout building. Therefore Architectural Schools should reevaluate the way in which history and theory of architecture are categorized, their importance being emphasize by studio professors, turning them once again into the foundation upon which the architectural design starts to grow.