Tafuri Manfredo. Theories and History of Architecture

London: Granada Publishing, 1978. — 340 p. — ISBN 0246 11175 5 (hbk); 0246 11227 1 (pbk)This book is a crucial examination of the roles of the historian and critic within the history and practice of architecture. His critique is focused on recent architectural practice and mostly about the Modern Movements anti-historical bent. He exhaustively tries to demonstrate the dangers and complications of ideologically motivated exclusions and dismissals within historical research. He goes on to outline the linguistic turn in architecture (i.e. architectural objects as symbols + codes to be read), discusses its connection his the ideas of structuralism and Roland Barthes. Tafuri draws on a wide list of examples covering the past 500 years of architecture. The breadth of his architectural knowledge and his willingness to challenge orthodoxy make this an important and wide ranging book.These examinations can be applied to any of the art disciplines, the social sciences and to some degree even the hard sciences. His relentlessness and rigor is crucial to an understanding of the importance of the critic.At root Tafuri advocates for a critical view of history and historical research encouraging students to trace the history of particular objects and styles and to decode the various obfuscations, ideological readings and omissions that are part of the architectural records available. I believe that this is a much richer form of research and definitely applies to any number of fields. The book was written in the late 70's but the material is timeless. [Marty @ Goodreads]Foreword
Note to the second (Italian) edition
Note to the fourth (Italian) editionModern Architecture and the Eclipse of History
Architecture as ‘Indifferent Object’ and the Crisis of critical Attention
Architecture as Metalanguage: the critical Value of the Image
Operative Criticism
Instruments of Criticism
The Tasks of CriticismIllustrations
Index of names