Pier Paolo Tamburelli

In 1721 the Austrian architect Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach publishedthe Entwurff einer historischen Architektur,  a collection of eighty-six folios intending to illustrate the architecture of the Jews, Egyptians, Syrians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Turks, Siamese, Chinese and Japanese together with some projects by its author. Fischer’s goal was to obtain an Idée generale de la diversité des batiments de l’antiquité et de toutes les Nations. Fischer selected the various buildings and landscapes to be included in his book according to two simple parameters: the elements of the collection are all monuments and they are all real (or at least he believes they are). In so doing Fischer delineates a possible method for the understanding of monumental architecture that is both realist and comparative. Fischer seems to implicitly suggest a critique of the liberal presuppositions of Modern architecture that is similar to the critique addressed by anthropologists and economists to the interpretations of primitive economy in classical liberalism. These realistic critiques – as well as the arguments we can discover in Adolf Loos’ Architecture, Aldo Rossi’s The Architecture of the City and Rem Koolhaas’ Delirious New York–allow us to (re-)think architecture as something immediately immersed into linguistic exchange and inextricably linked to social and religious ceremonies.