On the occasion of the 15th anniversary of the ATCH (architecture, theory, culture and history) Research Centre at the University of Queensland, Macarthur asked the panel to respond to the following provocation: The historiography of architecture has for several decades been partly structured by a critique of instrumental history. The first generation historians of the 20th century have been faulted for narrativising the past as a process that would necessarily end in the triumph of modernism. Much meta-history since, going beyond this critique, has shown when and how historical writing has been symbiotic in the wider development of the profession. But now a different kind of instrumentalism is becoming common in architectural history. We have politically progressive work with the explicit aim of de-colonising and de-masculinising the university curriculum as a path to an ethical profession. In parallel the emphasis of governments and universities on the utility of research means that increasingly history is becoming an aspect of Heritage popular meaning and social cohesion. As the profession itself undergoes transformation how should we reflect on the uses of history in the past, today and into the future?
John Macarthur (Thu,) studied this question.