Many years ago,

while studying at The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at The Cooper Union in New York, Professor Peter Eisenman told us that an architect is not an architect until he writes and publishes a book. And that he shouldn’t attempt anything like that before he’s 35. Peter, I met both conditions.

My first book was called Towers-9/11 Story and, in addition to the main theme of September 11 in New York, it was also about architecture and its historical development, about structures and skyscrapers. The skyscrapers were, right after school, my first intimate acquaintance with construction trades, with architecture. I liked to read about architecture, especially articles by Herbert Muschamp in The New York Times, where Muchamp had just joined in 1992 as a literary critic of architecture. He wrote about architecture as if it were about life. Perhaps he was often lucky, he frequented Andy Warhol’s famous Factory, where anything could happen, passionately discussed with the architects who were my professors at the time – John Hejduk, Peter Eisenman, Ric Scofidio, Toshiko Mori, Diana Agrest, Lebbeus Woods, Diane Lewis, Michael Webb, Daniel Libeskind and others.

 

Other books were Czech women without borders and Czech men without borders about famous Czech women and men – emigrants who made us famous in the world. The last book, about our own emigration, is the book And water the plants – a refugee story.