This study was first published in 1984 in Umriss, the Vienna architecture and design magazine. The new title is more apt to express the factual content of the study. The text has not been changed, except for some minor alterations. It is still valid.
Postmodernism speaks of styles again.
The untiring fashion-creator of architecture the history of architecture as art has quickly pounced upon the worn out mantle of modernism. The eclecticism of the nineteenth century, vehemently denied by Giedeon, Zevi and Pevsner, has become socially acceptable once more. The first part of the following article deals symptomatically with these methodologically reactionary, radical changes and critically hints of contradictions in architectural theories that are based on the history of art. Recently proposed theories under the promising label architecture and language are rather unsuitable for architectural teachings. Both the Second World War s shocking effects on the value of history and the more recent critical successes of social psychology against modern urbanism have helped to prepare the fertile grounds in which the pre-modern type of history of architecture as art has again taken root.