A History of Architecture: Settings and Rituals

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Spiro Kostof

Oxford University Press, New York, 2010, 1985, English

Nonfiction, Architecture

ISBN: 9780195034721

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Kent Kleinman

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Spiro Kostof’s survey has special qualities that at the time were groundbreaking: he insisted that the drawing was as important as the built edifice as a object of study; he bucked the tradition of chronology as the only legitimate structure for the genre; and he insisted on including context as part of his subject matter, not just in his text, but also by producing new drawings of well-known sites showing surrounding conditions—often even the site’s topography. He oriented all site plans with north up as a didactic reminder of cardinal orientation as a kind of meta-context.

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