Edited Jantje Engels and Marius Grootveld

For the jubilee edition of Forum we have approached 45 European architects from several generations all looking for the analogy in architecture. The brief: Design a fictitious extension for an existing building that compliments and continues the inherent narrative of the original building.
The result is a collection of dialogues between contemporary architects and the past rather than a publication with a series of loose ideas. Browsing these pages is like strolling through a city.This research is a local research. We ask to what extent can we still conduct a cohesive dialogue with existing work? How do we absorb former insights and weave together the city of the past with the stories of our present? Can we not consider the city again as a single construction project that is built up by subse-quent architects? A great inspiration for us are the tightly knit Medieval town centres that seem to have been created as a single structure by a single hand. As if the Medieval zeitgeist was one of togetherness. The unity also came from more practical constraints. The few, locally available materials ensured a tonal uniformity, that often blended harmoniously with the surrounding landscape. The city's limited architectural vocabulary stemmed from the restricted methods of construction at the time. Because of this the city formed in a causal manner.