Lives of the Most Excellent Architects

One of architecture’s enduring oddities is that the entirety of its bibliography features very little biography. This realisation is cloaked by the fact that to survey a large architectural library today is to be confronted by the spines of various books identified only by a name – not merely that of the architect–author, but also that of the architect–subject. Yet in spite of this abundance of signatures, upon opening these volumes it soon becomes obvious that in architecture a name is not a passport to the understanding of a life, but rather is key only to the presentation of a body of work, since most architects of the last 2,000 years have been confidently telling us about everything except themselves. It is this omission that this course seeks to address, and is inspired by in many ways the only sustained investigation into architectural biography, Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects (first published in 1550). Following an introductory session that explores the history of the absence of biography, the course will proceed through profiles of assorted architects, arranged through various characterisations (ordinary architects, extraordinary architects, heroic architects, villainous architects, etc, etc), and highlighting exemplary figures through images, quotations and sound recordings.

This lecture course presents a history and theory of architecture not so much as a history of projects, buildings, movements or styles, but as a history of lives. In the process, it will argue for the relevance of biography, stories, anecdotes, jokes, truths, half-truths and even wilful fabrications.

In presence

TBA

TBA