Premature studies.

Banister Fletcher, Andres Calzada and the history of architecture.

Abstract

The object of this text is to discuss the repertoire of works, emblematic examples, and supposedly representative cultural developments through which various western schools of architecture defined their history programs from pre-Classical civilizations to the Renaissance. These operations, both theoretical and ideological, are susceptible of being dismantled in their original formulations and in their reproduction routes. Through this brief essay we seek to reconstruct some of the gridiron of the intercultural relations and translations that defined what can be considered, at least in modern terms, the first complete text in Spanish on the history of universal architecture and on Spanish architecture in particular. Its resonances and its diffusion exposed, for the Spanish-speaking world, a first canon of works and cultures from antiquity to the 16th century, which was installed programmatically in several American architecture faculties, especially during the second half of the 20th century.