For an architect, architecture is a kind of memoir. A piece of construction, the making of a building, even the viewing of a monument, is a form of autobiography; as personal an autobiography as an architect can write. It carries notions of professed aims and ideas influenced too by the people who build them, and those who live in them. Seen through the architect's eye buildings express the architect's own perceptions of a place - the way he would make it for himself, the way he would occupy it. And, to that degree, architecture becomes a canvas of confession. Since architecture is such a conspicuous, immensely physical object in space, its presence in fact, influences everyone. The presence of building around us provides a persistent frame of reference - as permanent as roads or fields - from which there is no escape. Buildings are explicit, big, always visible. They line the street, they are at the end of the road, they make the town. The final products of a difficult endeavour, they involve questions of aesthetics, design, construction, layout, structure, materials, details, ornamentation, personal likes and public taste - all things that can be individually identified to convey the way a building is made. Through them, architecture becomes a treasure trove of unfolding links and discoveries, connecting histories of culture to expressions of style and personal histories, making the past visible in the present.