Provenance in Architecture: A Dictionary of Terms

From Acquisition to Will-A critical compendium

The provenance of artworks is a burning issue in current scholarship and politics. Transpose provenance into architecture and it reveals new and surprising dimensions in the social, material and cultural lives of buildings and architectural artefacts, reframing questions of migration, movement and circulation. Provenance in architecture illuminates the intricate trajectories of fundamentally composite objects from their complex origins to their uncertain destinations.

This dictionary examines architectural provenance across 101 key concepts from "Acquisition" to "Will". The entries provide new ways of writing architectural history, highlighting how architecture moves, is destroyed, survives and is transformed.