Who is most important - the developer or architect?

• In especially older studies on architecture the role of the builder very often comes in the shadow of the architect's. It can certainly be said that it is the existing building, not what it could have become, or what negotiations, characterized of a mutual giving and taking that have preceded the finished product, that shall be the object of the analysis. A study of the long creation process, however, gives a surer ground for analyse and understanding. This is especially relevant for modern urban architecture, whose road from the first ideas to the finished building is characterized of a number of complicated negotiations, considerations and compromises between fighting wills. For the architecture scholar of today, the task of mapping this complex context is self-understood. If I self-critically look upon my own research in this field, I find that in my two large monographs on the architecture of the 19th century, I have a tendency to give the architect the main role. The first is about the self-taught architect, and professor of Greek, Carl Georg Brunius (1792-1869), a Swedish example of what in Germany was called ""Baudoktoren"" the second about the professional architect and civil-servant Fredrik Wilhelm Scholander (1816-1881). In two later publications, one more related to the history of ideas, one a survey of the building activities of a whole epoch, 1850-1890, I have, however, strived for a better balance.

Subject headings

HUMANIORA  -- Konst -- Konstvetenskap (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Arts -- Art History (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Art

Konstvetenskap

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)