Atlas of Architectural Theory(s)

Architecture, like any discipline, develops its theory in words; but, together, it is capable of thinking in images. When Renaissance humanists began to set out their knowledge of the art of building in treatises, they tended to combine words and illustrations.

Indeed, some of the most famous treatises are more like a visual atlas than a written volume. But how can the image develop a theory? The theoretical fertility of the image appears, almost by surprise, if we replace the modern conception of “theory” with the genuine meaning of the Greek voice theoria: visual act of “contemplation” and “speculation”, of developing a “vision”.

Atlas of Architectural Theory(s) is a visual display of different ways of looking at the art of building: different ways of conceiving what architecture is, how it is made and how it should be understood. Each generation of architects has needed to rewrite history from its own present and, consequently, also to develop its own theory —which, like a ghost, is presented to it as an urgency over and over again—. Architectural theory, as Hanno-Walter Kruft demonstrated, is shaped as a multiplicity of theories of architecture that are connected, in turn, by a multiplicity of historical relations.

Catalogue:

De la O Cabrera, Manuel Rodrigo, ed. 2019. Atlas de Teoría(s) de la Arquitectura. A través de fondos del Centre Canadien d’Architecture y de la Biblioteca de la Escuela de Arquitectura de la Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. Madrid: Ediciones Círculo de Bellas Artes.