Nikolaus Pevsner, perhaps inadvertently, showed the vulnerability of mainstream architectural history thinking in his introduction to Eric Mendelsohn: Letters of an Architect, by Oskar Beyer, 1967. He pointed out the “incontrovertible logic” of a totally different history of modern architecture from the one he wrote in 1949. In Pioneers of the Modern Movement Pevsner had traced a continuous thread “from William Morris’ theory of social responsibilities of the artist and of his faith and honest simplicity,” to those architects in England who followed these precepts, and then to “‘Art Nouveau’ which freed architecture from period imitation.” He continued on “to the Werkbund, to Loos and Gropius, and Perret and Garnier and to the Chicago skyscrapers and Frank Lloyd Wright, because they all established the rational, bold, cubic style of the twentieth century.”

By 1967 Pevsner was of the opinion however that “the whole of my Pioneers of the Modern Movement could be rewritten now, and will no doubt soon be rewritten by someone of this new generation to which modern design means the very opposite of what it meant to me.” The alternate thread

would start from the unquestioning self-expression of Victorian architects, their bold handling of period precedent and their complex plans and elaborate facades, would call “Art Nouveau” a first climax, with Gaudi as the climax of the climax, would regret the rationalism of Pioneers and go straight on to the second climax, the Expressionism of 1917- 1923,i e the Amsterdam School and Mendelsohn’s Einstein Tower and also Steiner’s Goetheaneum. It would regret the reaction against this personal, creative liberty by those who, like Gropius and Mies van der Rohe returned to rationalism, and finally end with the re-established Expressionism of Ronchamp and so on.

What is impressive about Pevsner’s alternative history scenario is not only his magnanimity in acknowledging a legitimate counterpoint to his own landmark work, but also his adamant dedication to the “mainstream” view of architectural history. The fact that many of the same buildings can be equally comfortably (or uncomfortably) “fit” into two such divergent philosophical lineages illustrates the capriciousness of such constructs and brings to question their legitimacy as a means of recording and teaching architectural history.

The goal of “main streaming” is to thread a continuous cord through history, to link architects and buildings over time. It represents an odd, over-organized notion of orderliness prevalent in much of 20th century thinking. By careful exclusion and more-than-occasional distortion, ties are forged over distance and time to make a continuous development of the Western Tradition appear almost inevitable.

The grand chronology courses taught in many schools of architecture carefully weave a thread from Egyptian to Greek to Roman, etc, with only an awkward splice between Medieval and Renaissance (which provides a convenient opportunity for semester break). The flow of history is allowed to dominate, with periods, places and buildings often selected more for their ability to link than for their intrinsic quality. The march through time becomes the predominant message rather than the places one might choose to stop along the way.

“Mainstreaming” requires selective emphasis, viewing architecture through blinders which highlight “relevant” elements and suppress divergent ones. Exclusion occurs at several levels.

Mainstreaming excludes entire periods and regions which have developed significant, sophisticated architecture that cannot conveniently fit into the mainstream either by time or place (such as Pre-Columbian work in the third century or Pueblo architecture in the twelfth century). Periods are also neglected which did not lead anywhere in terms of extending or connecting the mainstream (evg 19th-century Neo-Gothic or German Rococo).

“Mainstreaming” excludes the work of many remarkable and perceptive architects because they do not fit tidily into a movement (e g, Bruce Goff, Maurice Smith) or because their work is at odds with a more dominant movement (e g, Goodhue, Cram, Cret) . Regional and contextual architecture is often neglected because it is so place-specific as to disjoin it from the mainstream. Buildings which are radically program specific are similarly disadvantaged because they are not organized easily into groups.

Mainstreaming excludes some of the interesting work of even those architects whose other buildings play a dominant role in conventional history. Relatively little notice is given to Le Corbusier’s Maison Errazuris, Maison De Mandrot or Maison aux Mathes of the 1930s, not because they are inferior works to the Villa Savoye or the Villa Garches, but because they are less illustrative of the predominant direction of the Modern Movement.

Mainstreaming even tends to exclude or ignore parts of a building it designates as important if they do not fully support the mainstream point of view. For example, the gutters made of hewn-out logs, the sod roofs and the rugged, mossy rockwork of Alvar Aalto’s Villa Mairea are normally played down in favor of the open plan, the white facades and uninterrupted planes of glass. The massive brickwork on the back side of the Robie house is generally neglected in favor of the floating horizontal bands of the front. The richness of architectural history is diminished by the exclusion of many strong, instructive elements simply because they are outside of mainstream development.

The result of this exclusion is an incomplete comprehension of historical periods, of the work of individual architects and even of selected buildings. This leads to a distorted viewpoint of the way ideas emerge and develop. Mainstreaming makes linear a process which is often distinctly non-linear. It parodies the real development of architecture by implying a tidy inevitability of retroactively constructed movements. We have accepted a mainstream historical perspective to such a degree that we now project mainlines into the present and future, quickly extending whatever thread seems to be projecting at the moment.

Mainstreaming also distorts standards and values appropriate to judging the merits of architecture. Quality is often supposed to be synonymous with “high architecture” (the climax of a movement) while earlier, “lower” works are judged meritorious largely as a means of moving toward the apex. Chartres is sometimes presented to the naive listener as a crude version of the “high” Gothic of Amiens although, in broader perspective, most observers would judge Chartres to be by far the more impressive and inspiring of the two. The notion of movements and streams distorts good judgment of real, experiential architectural value.

A mainstream method of teaching further encourages distortion by implying that a comprehensive view of architectural history is possible. It attempts to simplify the enormous, chaotic and complex past so that it can be digested by survey. This destines students, and sometimes even their instructors, to accept caricatures of buildings – a few carefully cropped, overworked photos – as reality. In an attempt to “cover the ground” no work is covered in depth. A student may emerge from such instruction able to recognize hundreds of buildings but unable to really understand even one of them.

An alternative method might be derived from the sort of history recorded by J-F Blondel in the seventeenth century, where it seldom seems necessary to describe one building in terms of another one. No forced attempt at comprehensiveness or continuum need be applied. Emphasis can be placed on architectural principles and character: shape, detail, proportion, climate response, materials, methods of construction, activities accommodated, etc.

Mainstreaming is almost all wrong. It does have the merit of giving a sense of the flux of architecture and in some periods, applied to some building types (e g, Greek temples or Gothic churches), it may serve as an accurate representation of linear development of architectural thought. It has, however, been greatly overworked as a construct for ordering the past.