Witold Rybczynski

About

Witold Rybczynski is the Martin and Margy Meyerson Emeritus Professor of Urbanism at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of more than twenty books including the Olmsted biography, A Clearing in the Distance, which won the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize and was short-listed for the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction.

As You Were

from The Varieties of Travel Experience, Volume 26, Number 2

There is nothing unusual about wanting to recreate a destroyed past.

The Historian’s Revenge

from Markets and the Good, Volume 25, Number 3

The architects were inspired by the local vernacular.

The Man Who Built Forward Better

from Political Mythologies, Volume 24, Number 1

Olmsted’s landscape creations, especially his urban parks, are anything but relics of the past—they remain a vital part of the present.

The Unbearable Burden of Invention

from Who Do We Think We Are?, Volume 23, Number 1

A corollary of giving priority to invention is that imitation, once the foundation of creativity in architecture, is banished.

The Flasher of the Arts

from Identities—What Are They Good For?, Volume 20, Number 2

Historically the most conservative of the arts, architecture was an unlikely candidate to carry the red banner of insurrection. And yet.

Contemporary Notions of Home

from Meditations on Exile and Home, Volume 7, Number 3

“The layouts of new houses have changed significantly in the last twenty years.”