Anthony Vidler, an architectural historian who, beginning in the 1960s, reshaped his field by setting aside dry chronologies of styles and movements for an interdisciplinary approach borrowing from psychoanalysis, French literary theory and cultural studies, died on Oct. 19 at his home in Manhattan.
His wife, the literary critic Emily Apter, said the cause was B-cell non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Mr. Vidler, who was born in Britain during World War II, was part of a generation of European and Latin American architectural historians who arrived in the United States in the 1960s and ’70s, bringing with them new, theory-driven viewpoints about architecture as a realm of ideas and not just design.
Sometimes cast as architecture’s version of the British Invasion, scholars like Mr. Vidler, Kenneth Frampton and Alan Colquhoun settled in New York City and in architectural programs at a small number of institutions, above all Princeton University, where Mr. Vidler taught for almost 20 years and remained affiliated for decades.
He also served as dean of the architecture schools at Cornell, from 1997 to 1998, and Cooper Union, from 2001 to 2013.
Persons:
Anthony Vidler, Emily Apter, Vidler, Kenneth Frampton, Alan Colquhoun
Organizations:
Princeton University, Cornell, Cooper Union
Locations:
Manhattan, Britain, United States, British, New York City