Kostof Lectures Now Available Online

Former SAH President, Spiro Kostof (1936-1991), widely recognized as one of the world's leading architectural historians, taught his last course in the Spring of 1991 in the Architecture Department of UC Berkeley's College of Environmental Design. The 26 lectures of his course "A Historical Survey of Architecture and Urbanism" covering the period from the Florentine Renaissance to the post-modernism of the late 20th century were video recorded and have recently been digitized and made available for public viewing. Kostof's lectures were hearlded for situating the architectural monument in a framework of vernacular buildings that give it new meaning. 

He was also known for exposing the relationships between architecture and the people and cultures that built it.  Kostof was the author of A History of Architecture: Settings and Rituals (1985), The City Shaped (1991), and The City Assembled (published posthumously in 1992).  The 26 80-minute streaming lectures can be found at http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/kostof.html.