Spatial Analysis as a Tool for Architectural and Urban Historians

Cornelia Jöchner's essay is focused on the specific longue durée of the city. Very often, art and architecture researchers translate this fundamental condition into chronologies instead of searching for the constitutive 'construction factors' of spatial situations. The combination of chronologies, however, derives from ideal cases of architecture. By contrast, acknowledging - including methodologically - the permanent pressure on the city to change is a far more realistic view. This means that the continued interpretation of the city's topology and buildings against the background of conversions and new buildings, urban planning schemes and repurposing, is analytically assumed from the outset.