ABSTRACT
Colin St John Wilson had beers invited by Donlyn Lyndon to be Bemis Visiting Professor at MIT, for two years, from 1970. Wilson brought back a deep belief in debate, and a resolve to invite teachers with quite different standpoints on architecture. On occasions Wilson had regretted turning down both Paul Rudolph's invitation to be Head of the Yale School of Architecture in 1964 and the approach made to him by Cambridge at the time of Leslie Martin's retirement in 1973. Having left Cambridge in the late 1960s - with the works of Norberg-Schultz under his arm - Wilson welcomed the newcomers, sharing their keen interest in phenomenology. Wilson's invitation to Dalibor Vesely and Carl swept a small hurricane through the School: one colleague recalls 'a real academic kind of warfare',29 between the phenomenologists, represented by Vesely, and the mathematically grounded Martin legacy.
