The examples chosen reflect my partiality for certain
eras: Mannerist, Baroque, and Rococo especially. AS
Henry-Russell Hitchcock says, "there always exists a real
need to re-examine the work of the past. There is, presumably,
almost always a generic interest in architectural history
among architects; but the aspects, or periods, of history that
seem at any given time to merit the closest attention certainly
vary with changing sensibilities." As an artist I
frankly write about what I like in architecture: complexity
and contradiction. From what we find we like-what we are
easily attracted to-we can learn much of what we really
are. Louis Kahn has referred to "what a thing wants to be,"
but implicit in this statement is its opposite: what the
architect wants the thing to be. In the tension and balance
between these two lie many of the architect's decisions