ABSTRACT
This chapter presents autobiography of Joseph Rykwert and 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. London had pleasures to offer more varied – in spite of the bombs – than he had tasted in Cambridge, which semi-rural High Barnet denied him. There was a good proportion of opportunist sloggers – the prospects of large-scale reconstruction made architecture a default profession for anyone looking for a career through higher education.
