Amanda Reeser Lawrence

Ana Miljački

This collection of critical essays focuses on how material is transformed, revised, swallowed whole, plagiarized or in any other way appropriated in order to address pressing and timely questions regarding architectural influence. It charts new territory within this still unexplored yet highly topical area of study by establishing a shared vocabulary with which to discuss, or contest, the workings of influence as a vital and progressive aspect of architectural discourse. Written by a group of rising scholars in the field of architectural history and criticism, the essays cover a range of architectural subjects but they are linked in their investigations of how architects engage with their predecessors, and in what ways we can productively begin to analyse the workings of influence.

Essays on Architectural Influence

Terms of Appropriation

How do we create the new from the old? The Architecture of Influence explores this fundamental question by analyzing a broad swath of twentieth-century architectural works—including some of the best-known examples of the architectural canon, modern and postmodern—through the lens of influence. The book serves as both a critique of the discipline’s long-standing focus on "genius" and a celebration of the creative act of revisioning and reimagining the past. It argues that all works of architecture not only depend on the past but necessarily alter, rewrite, and reposition the traditions and ideas to which they refer. Organized into seven chapters—Replicas, Copies, Compilations, Generalizations, Revivals, Emulations, and Self-Repetitions—the book redefines influence as an active process through which the past is defined, recalled, and subsequently redefined within twentieth-century architecture.

Amanda Reeser Lawrence

Books

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