Toronto Star

As far as Bernard Rudofsky was concerned, architecture was too important to leave to architects. He preferred handmade structures created by anonymous builders. Travelling in places like Italy, Greece, China, Sudan and Japan, he found them in seaside villages, mountain towns, underground cities, caves, even trees and living rock. Though "primitive" by our standards, in them he saw an antidote to modern existence, which he considered sterile and anti-human. According to Rudofsky, life was too important to leave to experts of any kind. Though a trained architect himself, he designed little beyond a series of houses, including his best known, for himself. But by the time he died in 1988, Rudofsky had gained an international following as a critic, curator, author, photographer, painter and polemicist.