With this issue, a+u reaches a landmark - 500 issues since its foundation. That we have come this far is due solely to the support of our readers and others involved in the field of architecture. We are very grateful. In today's global information society, the world seems to have become smaller. As the view changes, it seems that creativity and the thirst for knowledge are being lost. Around 1971, when this magazine was founded, it must have been incomparably harder to gather information about international architecture than it is today, when information of every kind is overflowing on the Web. In those times, one of the pleasures of reading must have been the exercise of imagination touched off by a photo (often a grainy one) or a phrase in a essay. For issue 500, three editorial advisors have selected the best from among the many brilliant essays contributed to a+u by authors from around the world. The selected essays are remarkable for their insight into architectural trends of the time and for the inspiration they offer for the architecture of the future. Drawings are presented along with the essays. We hope that the essays republished here will be read by readers from the generation born after a+u was founded, and that they will find hints to inspire their thinking about architecture to come. This fall, we intend to publish another commemorative issue devoted to visual material from the first 500 issues.Regardless of the 40 years of architectural history introduced in these pages, and regardless of region, we have always tried to introduce the architecture that readers of the time demanded. Without chasing after fads and fashions, a+u will continue its conversation with the best that architecture has to offer. Please look forward to it. (Translated from Japanese by Thomas Donahue) Nobuyuki Yoshida a+u 500 Covers On a Selection 'Word and Image' Yasuhiro Teramatsu, Erwin J.S.Viray, Ken Tadashi Oshima Paul Rudolph (a+u 71:02) Essay: 'Twentieth Century Brick' Louis I. Kahn (a+u 73:01) Essay: 'The Room, the Street and Human Agreement' Colin Rowe (a+u 75:10) Essay: 'The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa' Bernard Tschumi (a+u 80:06) Architectural Manifestoes 'Three Spaces' Rem Koolhaas (a+u 88:10) From Delirious New York Jeff Kipnis (a+u 90:01, Feature: Peter Eisenman) Essay: 'A Matter of Respect' Jean-Louis Cohen (a+u 91:03) Essay: 'Architecture and Modernity in the Soviet Union 1900-1937 ' part 1: The October Revolution and the Continuity of Architectural Culture' Jacques Lucan (a+u 95:09) Essay: 'Architecture: Face to Face with Matter' Peter Zumthor (a+u 97:01) Essay: 'The Body of Architecture Observations' Zaha M. Hadid, Wolf Prix, and Bernard Tschumi (a+u 98:07, Feature: Reality of the Image) Conversation Sverre Fehn's Sketches (a+u 99:01) Barry Bergdoll (a+u 03:01) Essay: 'Schinkel and Mies: Nature's Perspective' (Excerpts) Toyo Ito (a+u 04:05) Interview: 'In Pursuit of an Invisible Image' (Interviewer: Kumiko Inui) Peter Maekli (a+u 08:01) Fragment of Lecture: 'On Ancient Architecture'