ABSTRACT
This chapter presents autobiography of Joseph Rykwert. Rykwert is Paul Philippe Cret Professor Emeritus of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, and one of the foremost architectural historians and critics of his generation. He has spent most of his working life in the UK and US. Born in Warsaw in 1926, Joseph Rykwert is one of the best-known critics and historians of architecture. He addresses the dualities between which he had to navigate: Jewish/Polish, Polish/British and later Practice/Scholarship. He returned to student life, politics and trouble - some of which was due to a cause, the bungled 1946 competition for a new Crystal Palace. Paxton's original buildings had perished in a famous fire of 1936, and the site had stood empty during the war, nor has any replacement yet been decided 80 years later.
