Perchance to Dream: Architecture and the Conflict of Historical Perception
For history, architecture remains both a property of the universal and trans-historical and subject of a unified and coherent structure of chronological progression. As part of this traditional and privileged framework of periodized and continuous succession, architecture has retained for itself an...
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| Format: | Conference Paper |
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Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand
2006
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/8876 |
| _version_ | 1848745787104690176 |
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| author | Basson, Steve |
| author_facet | Basson, Steve |
| author_sort | Basson, Steve |
| building | Curtin Institutional Repository |
| collection | Online Access |
| description | For history, architecture remains both a property of the universal and trans-historical and subject of a unified and coherent structure of chronological progression. As part of this traditional and privileged framework of periodized and continuous succession, architecture has retained for itself an historical identity expressive of the eternal, romantic and heroic. But time has itself moved on, leaving behind what once constituted the certitudes of historical perception and analysis. The old objects of exemplification and origin have evaporated, the heroes have become mortal, continuity has surrendered to rupture, and the singular ideals of truth and reality fragmented. And yet, seemingly indifferent to the problems of the meta-historical and metaphysical, architecture persists along its own path of historicist discourse and through this, subsumes all acts and ends of built form to an order of undifferentiated motives and needs that transpose the events of the past into an illusory history of the same. Here, history becomes expressive of a dreamed reality and as a result, a terrain of critical contestation. The following discussion will consider this conflict in relation to the conventional perception and use of architecture's historical subject. |
| first_indexed | 2025-11-14T06:22:54Z |
| format | Conference Paper |
| id | curtin-20.500.11937-8876 |
| institution | Curtin University Malaysia |
| institution_category | Local University |
| last_indexed | 2025-11-14T06:22:54Z |
| publishDate | 2006 |
| publisher | Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand |
| recordtype | eprints |
| repository_type | Digital Repository |
| spelling | curtin-20.500.11937-88762017-01-30T11:09:15Z Perchance to Dream: Architecture and the Conflict of Historical Perception Basson, Steve Historical Philosophy Historical Theory Historical Perception - Architectural Histiography For history, architecture remains both a property of the universal and trans-historical and subject of a unified and coherent structure of chronological progression. As part of this traditional and privileged framework of periodized and continuous succession, architecture has retained for itself an historical identity expressive of the eternal, romantic and heroic. But time has itself moved on, leaving behind what once constituted the certitudes of historical perception and analysis. The old objects of exemplification and origin have evaporated, the heroes have become mortal, continuity has surrendered to rupture, and the singular ideals of truth and reality fragmented. And yet, seemingly indifferent to the problems of the meta-historical and metaphysical, architecture persists along its own path of historicist discourse and through this, subsumes all acts and ends of built form to an order of undifferentiated motives and needs that transpose the events of the past into an illusory history of the same. Here, history becomes expressive of a dreamed reality and as a result, a terrain of critical contestation. The following discussion will consider this conflict in relation to the conventional perception and use of architecture's historical subject. 2006 Conference Paper http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/8876 Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand fulltext |
| spellingShingle | Historical Philosophy Historical Theory Historical Perception - Architectural Histiography Basson, Steve Perchance to Dream: Architecture and the Conflict of Historical Perception |
| title | Perchance to Dream: Architecture and the Conflict of Historical Perception |
| title_full | Perchance to Dream: Architecture and the Conflict of Historical Perception |
| title_fullStr | Perchance to Dream: Architecture and the Conflict of Historical Perception |
| title_full_unstemmed | Perchance to Dream: Architecture and the Conflict of Historical Perception |
| title_short | Perchance to Dream: Architecture and the Conflict of Historical Perception |
| title_sort | perchance to dream: architecture and the conflict of historical perception |
| topic | Historical Philosophy Historical Theory Historical Perception - Architectural Histiography |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/8876 |