Joseph Rykwert. Photo Wikipedia

The critic and historian Joseph Rykwert has died at 98 years of age. Born in Warsaw in 1926, Rykwert studied architecture at Bartlett and later at the Architectural Association. He first worked with architects like Maxwell Fry, Jane Drew, and Richard Sheppard, as well as with the engineer Ove Arup.

The greater part of his life was devoted to teaching and writing. He taught at institutions like the The Cooper Union, Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, and the University of Sydney. His most influential writings 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 with art, and the contemporary city are some of the themes around which his work revolved. Rykwert was given the RIBA Gold Medal in 2014.