In recognition of a six-decade career, the critic and historian Joseph Rykwert has been given the RIBA Gold Medal, awarded by the Royal Institute of British Architects since 1848. Born in Warsaw in 1926 and an emigré to London at the outbreak of World War ii, Rykwert has devoted the bulk of his life to university teaching in Europe and the USA. His most influential works include The Idea of a Town (1963), On Adam’s House in Paradise (1972), The First Moderns (1980), The Necessity of Artifice (1982), and The Seduction of Place (2002). The origins of the city and architecture, architecture’s relationship with the human body and art, and the contemporary city are some of the main themes of his work.