I Almost Forgot

<b>Unpublished writings of Colin Rowe—letters, essays, lectures, and a postcard—clarify his thinking on key concepts while revealing his wit and erudition.</b><br><br>Colin Rowe (1920–1999) was one of the great architectural historians of the twentieth century, publishing the influential works <i>The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa and Other Essays</i> (1976) and <i>Collage City</i> (1978). While his written work was rigorous and authoritative, his lectures and letters were more casual, “carefully careless,”<b></b>both witty and erudite. <i>I Almost Forgot </i>gathers twenty-three such writings—letters, essays, lectures, a postcard, and a eulogy. Both edifying and entertaining, sometimes tongue-in-cheek, occasionally scathing, they fill in personal details and clarify key concepts in Rowe’s work.<br><br>In these writings, Rowe tells of the “Corbu superstructure upon a beaux-arts base” that refugee Polish architects and their stu