The essays collected here, written over a span of nearly four decades, examine architectural history from various perspectives. What unites all these texts—historical episodes of ideas, critiques of buildings, overarching questions about theory and practice—is that they were not created as academic exercises, but out of genuine curiosity. They consistently trace the ideas behind the architectures. They belong to a history of architecture that explores beyond form, investigating ideologies, political conditions, societal circumstances, economic possibilities, techniques, and, not least, cultural influences and references. The reflections are based on biographies, personal and architectural stories, and the circumstances that led to architectures, but above all, they start from the architectures themselves.