A History of Western Architecture

A History of Western Architecture is a textbook by British architectural historian David Watkin, first published in 1986. The seventh edition (2023) was revised and expanded by Owen Hopkins.^[1] The book is known for emphasising the classical tradition's importance for later architecture.

A History of Western Architecture

Front cover of 1992 paperback version of 1st edition
Author	David Watkin
Language	English
Subject	History of architecture
Genre	Textbook
Published	1986 (original) 2023 (7th ed.)
Publisher	Thames & Hudson (original), Laurence King Publishing (7th ed.)
Pages	591 (original) 752 (7th ed.)
ISBN	978-1529420302

Contents

As of the fourth edition (2005), the book has 11 chapters:^[2]

• Mesopotamia and Egypt
• The Classical Foundation: Greek, Hellenistic, Roman
• Early Christian and Byzantine
• Carolingian and Romanesque
• The Gothic Experiment
• Renaissance Harmony
• Baroque Expansion
• Eighteenth-Century Classicism
• The Nineteenth Century
• Art Nouveau
• The Twentieth Century and Beyond

Publication

Seven editions have been published as of 2024^[update]. The seventh was revised and expanded in 2023 following Watkin's death in 2018 by Owen Hopkins, another British architectural historian. By then, a chapter on 21st-century architecture had split off the 20th-century one.^[1] Translations have been published in multiple languages such as Dutch.^[3]

Reception

By the 2000s, Watkin's textbook became widely used in architectural schools in the Netherlands and Belgium for the standard introductory survey course on the history of Western architecture. In a 2002 article, architectural historians Hilde Heynen and Krista de Jonge noted that the textbook's use along with a few other standard ones promoted a standardization of the taught architectural canon of a small set of buildings that illustrated recognized periods of architectural history. At the same time, these schools were trying to move away from a standard canon.^[3]

British art historian Deborah Howard recommended A History of Western Architecture as a survey reference textbook in 2002.^[4]