© William Staffeld / Cornell College of Architecture, Art, and Planning

Anthony Vidler was my first student. More accurately, he was in the first class I taught, in 1960, at the tender age of 28, when I was the first-year master at the Cambridge School of Architecture. Out of that strange (to me) and very English-looking group of students, one would over time rise above the others: Tony. During that first year, Tony came to help me through the gauntlet of learning how to teach, made the model of our unsuccessful entry for the Boston City Hall competition, and assisted in my PhD dissertation – his first wife typed the text, and Tony elaborated the footnotes...[+]