A split between modern and historical realities – whether real, imagined, projected or fantasised – has long configured modern architectural culture. The very construction of this division has proved a durable, near structural, means by which to assert the idea of a properly ‘modern’ architecture defined in opposition to the past. The writings of Bernard Cache confound exactly this attempt to divide and then distance the contemporary world from its history.

A split between modern and historical realities – whether real, imagined, projected or fantasised – has long configured modern architectural culture. The very construction of this division has proved a durable, near structural, means by which to assert the idea of a properly ‘modern’ architecture defined in opposition to the past. The writings of Bernard Cache confound exactly this attempt to divide and then distance the contemporary world from its history.