Narrating the Globe: The Emergence of World Histories of Architecture

How notions of progress, beauty, and cultural superiority structured the genre of nineteenth-century world histories of architecture—and shaped the discipline as we know it today.

The nineteenth century saw the emergence of a new genre of architectural writing: the grand history of world architecture. This genre often expressed a deeply Eurocentric worldview, largely dismissing non-Western architecture through narratives of historical progress and stylistic beauty. Yet even as nineteenth-cen...