22. October 2024
Joseph Rykwert in 2017 (Photo: Screenshot from CCAChannel's “The University Is Now on Air: Joseph Rykwert” at YouTube)
Joseph Rykwert, the esteemed architectural historian and recipient of the 2014 RIBA Royal Gold Medal, died on October 18, 2024 at the age of 98. Here we present two video interviews — one from 2020 and one from 2017 — in which Rkywert recounts certain formative events of his life.
In its announcement of the 2014 Royal Gold Medal, the Royal Institute of British Architects described Rykwert's writing as an “inspiration to so many who practice in the heart of our cities” and further said his “writing and teaching are rare in that he can deliver the most profound thinking on architecture in an accessible way. All our lives are the richer for it.”
The author of numerous books, including The Idea of a Town (1963), The Dancing Column (1996), The Seduction of Place (2002), and an annotated version of Leon Battista Alberti's On the Art of Building in Ten Books, Rykwert was one of the few Gold Medal recipients who was a theorist rather than a practicing architect, joining Colin Rowe (1995), John Summerson (1976) and Nikolaus Pevsner (1967). His influence lives on in his writings as well as in the words he shared with video interviewers late in his life.
The first of a couple films of interest is “Conversations with Joseph Rykwert,” which was released by the Polish Cultural Institute in London in 2020. The 20-minute film covers Rykwert's youth in Poland, his education in England, and his early career (in English and Polish with English subtitles):
The second film, “The University Is Now on Air: Joseph Rykwert,” was created by the Canadian Centre for Architecture as part of The University Is Now on Air: Broadcasting Modern Architecture, the 2017 exhibition about the Open University, the experimental school that was founded in the UK in 1969: