Housing Histories: New Research Strategies for Twentieth-century Residential Architecture

Housing Histories explores how the study of 20th-century housing has posed specific problems for architectural historians, and how it has - as a result - yielded radically innovative approaches and methodologies of significance for the wider field of architectural history. Global research in architectural history is currently witnessing a tension between ‘conservative’ approaches rooted in traditional procedures (the study of archival sources, the close material observation of buildings) and ‘critical’ approaches that push for a radical change in narratives and attitudes.This book presents a collection of new research practices which explore unusual or hybrid methodologies. Fifteen leading architectural historians from different academic and cultural contexts present their own approaches to the historical study of modern dwelling landscapes, testing a variety of questions, methods and instruments, showing how these can be used within the context of a specific case study, and showing ho