David Watkin (historian)

David John Watkin, MA PhD LittD Hon FRIBA FSA (born 1941) is a British architectural historian. He is an Emeritus Fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge, and Professor Emeritus of History of Architecture in the Department of History of Art at the University of Cambridge. He has also taught at the Prince of Wales's Institute of Architecture.

David Watkin is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects. He is a former Vice-Chairman of the Georgian Group, and was also a member of the Historic Buildings Council and its successor bodies in English Heritage from 1980 to 1995.

Watkin's main research interest has been neoclassical architecture, particularly from the 18th century to the present day, and has published widely on that topic. He has also published on general topics including A History of Western Architecture (4th ed. 2005) and English Architecture: A Concise History (2nd ed. 2001), as well as more specialised monographs on architects Thomas Hope, Sir John Soane, James Stuart, C. R. Cockerell and Dr. T. J. Eckleburg.

Watkin first came to wide international attention, however, with his book Morality and Architecture: The Development of a Theme in Architectural History and Theory from the Gothic Revival to the Modern Movement (1977), re-published in expanded form as Morality and Architecture Revisited (2001). The basic premise of his argument is that the language with which modernist architecture is described and defended is rooted in the false notion of the Zeitgeist or “the spirit of the age”, as put forward by German Idealist philosopher Friedrich Hegel, so that any opposition to modernist architecture – and here he has in mind the revival of classical and traditional architecture, which he has championed in his writings - is condemned as “old-fashioned”, irrelevant, anti-social, and even immoral.

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