A History of Architectural Theory From Vitruvius to the Present.

The doer distrusts or despises the scribbler. For, in the capricious and unforgiving world of direct practical action, success often seems to depend on hard work, long experience, the right friends and good luck -- so who needs fancy philosophising? The scribbler in return patronises the doer. For only by the light of theory and its attendant reflectors (history, criticism and education) can the doer clearly see the present and the future on which he or she acts -- there's nothing so practical as a good theory.

The late Professor Kruft's lofty perspective over two millennia of architectural theorizing, originally published in German in 1985 and now translated into elegantly lucid English, makes such squabbles over precedence dwindle to insignificance. By illustrating how practice never stands outside contemporary cultural and institutional continuities he shows that it is always to some extent 'theorized'. Similarly, by recounting the individual motives, not uniformly selfless, which make architectural practitioners turn to their writing desks, he depicts theory as the social practice it is.

I am as astonished to find this book written, so great was the scholarship and labour involved, as I am to find it previously unwritten, so great is the need for it. Its scale and scope is unique: some 450 pages of text, 150 of notes, and 70 of classified biography, plus 200 illustrations, take us from Vitruvius to Venturi, tracing the route by which, say, the odd speculations of Juan Bautista Villalpando (Kruft's upward reassessment of Spanish theory is particularly welcome) find their way into the writings and work of Salomon de Bray, Fischer von Erlach, Pratt, Wren and Wood the Elder. Important theorists are quoted generously and after-notes record the extracts in their original (if not English) tongue.

Kruft 'can scarcely imagine that anyone will read the book from cover to cover'. It is indeed mainly for reference and lucky-dipping. But his description of Wootton's Elements of Architecture--'written in a characteristically English style, combining modesty, humour and common sense [with] a considerable knowledge of the literature of the subject, which he discusses with critical sympathy' -- applies equally to this history, and makes extended reading of it a pleasure. Mercifully, too, his distaste for generalisation prevents him using his Olympian vantage-point to offer some unified meta-theory of architecture. Other authors might have succumbed.

He is defeated by his subject only in the last chapter covering 1945-85, which he begs us to read 'in a different frame of mind from the rest of the book'. So close is he to his subject that he cannot focus and becomes tetchy. Yet in 1985 he can report serenely that 'discussion of architectural theory in the United States continues to follow a more liberal and pragmatic course than in Europe'. Could he have predicted the theory explosion of the last decade? And would it have made him even tetchier?