As a pursuer of meaning in matter, and as a former student of Adrian Forty - who taught me in the Bartlett, UCL, and supervised my Master's dissertation - I seized the opportunity to translate his most recent book when suggested by my friend and colleague Or Aleksandrowicz, editor of the Architectures series at Babel publishers.

Beyond his achievement of looking at things both from a very wide angle and in close-up, Forty brings together, through this insightful analysis of concrete and its ever-changing signification, an invaluable body of knowledge and a taste of a passing age.