Non-Western Architecture and the Roles of the History Survey

When two strong men stand face to face, tho' they come from the ends of the earth! Rudyard Kipling Readers who know only the first line of Rudyard Kipling's famously misconstrued "The Ballad of East and West" might fear the worst for the prospects of a survey of global architectural history. Frequently overlooked, though, is the closing line of the refrain, in which Kipling suggests that problems created by differences in geography and culture indeed can be overcome. In fact, many of the historical impediments to incorporating non-Western material in the architectural history survey no longer loom so large. First, in 2006, few architectural historians would deny that architecture outside the West deserves a place in architectural education. Postmodern cultural studies, area studies, gender studies, postcolonial studies, and other fields of inquiry have divested the canon of its clothing. In addition, although in the past many architectural historians felt uncomfortable roaming outside Western topics, many recent Ph.D. recipients specialize in non-Western fields. For instance, the three students entering the doctoral program in architectural history at UC Berkeley in 1994 chose for their dissertation topics South Africa, the ancient Andes, and Japan. The growing pool of non-Western specialists has also created a deeper, broader, more detailed literature on non-Western architecture and urbanism. At the same time, other issues render non-Western material problematic in the context of the conventional history survey. In fact, this paper will suggest that the framework of the traditional survey cannot accommodate non-Western architecture. In 1995, an art historian wrote, "The art history survey is at an impasse and may perhaps have reached the end of its own history. The paradigm is waning. I, for one, say, let it wane. lft In architecture as well, the desire to create a global history survey may extinguish the survey as we know it. In its place, though, a new type of survey may emerge, one more capable of addressing several basic questions surrounding the role of architectural history. First, how does non-Western architecture fit into the methods and goals of the history survey? I will suggest that non-Western architecture calls into question the basic assumptions of the survey; it disrupts the typical historical narrative in ways that demand a fundamental rethinking the survey's nature and goals. Second, how do the potentials of a new survey complement the broader architectural curriculum? How can non-Western architecture further the integration of history with …