We shape the buildings ... then the spaces shape us

Several years ago, Alexandros Tombazis, the important Greek architect who left us last year, published the book "Letter to a Young Architect". It was the essentialized transposition of a lifetime's experience as an architect, as it would be conveyed to the very young who wish to embrace this profession. I had met Tombazis at two of the UIA congresses, where he had spoken and illustrated with appealing images his vision of architecture, with a poetic poetic of its own. Discovered also by architects in Romania, his book was translated in Bucharest and offered to the public as a manifesto poem for his choice of a career as an architect. I included it in the bibliography of a first-year introductory course in architectural theory, as a way of saying "welcome" to students. At one point in the book, Tombazis writes: Winston Churchill once said: "We shape the buildings; then they shape us". I included this quote on the list of assignments for the end-of-semester exam, and one stud