Remarks on Attitudes to Tradition in Architecture and its Aesthetics

Abstract

The paper looks at a wide range of terms to interpret various streams of architecture and its aesthetics: heritage, tradition, living tradition, dead tradition, positive tradition, negative tradition, traditionalism, antitraditionalism, neotraditionalism, vitalization of tradition, devitalisation of tradition, new, modern, modernization, vernacular, neovernacular, postmodern, neomodern. The following styles are analysed: renaissance, historicism, neovernacularism, early modernism, matured modernism, neomodernism and postmodernism. The conclusion is surprising: each of the analysed architectural styles contains an element of tradition, even modernism, which explicitly refutes it.