Construction History: Between Technological and Cultural History

As I have just pointed it out, while construction history can be considered as a branch of the history of technology, its position within this broader field appears as somewhat marginal. This marginal position is especially evident in the studies devoted to nineteenth- and twentieth-century technological evolution. For these studies are dominated by the question of industrialization. In standard accounts of the industrialization process, and despite its economic weight, the building industry is not usually scrutinized with the same attention as manufacturing. The importance given to construction is more pronounced for earlier periods like Antiquity or Middle Ages, for sure. As a whole, history of technology has nevertheless had a tendency to concentrate on other questions than those that construction history is typically interested in. There are reasons for that situation. Some of them are the direct product of the very specific way construction history has emerged as a field. Actually, construction history was among the first domains of the history of technology to be extensively studied. The nineteenth century was marked by the publication of major contributions to the history of construction like those of Gottfried Semper, EugeneEmmanuel Viollet-le-Duc or Auguste Choisy.2 Many of these founding fathers were architects or engineers. Because of that, and although construction history claimed to follow the strict rules of