ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an autobiography of Joseph Rykwert that explores how his life's experiences shaped his working life. He addresses the dualities between which he had to navigate: Jewish/Polish, Polish/British and later, Practice/Scholarship. He spent most of his working life between the USA and UK and worked both as a designer and a writer; as such his ground-breaking ideas and work have had a major impact on the thinking of architects and designers since the 1960s and continue to do so to this day. He was trying to come to terms with all this uncongenial environment when he was snatched out of it – called back to Oxford from school when the final stroke felled his father. Many of the Russian group came, as did some old friends; a Revisionist politiko, Salomon Landman, spoke a rather moving eulogy. What remains most vivid in his memory, though, is the tubby figure of Jack Goody running, breathless, through the cemetery gates.
