JEAN CASTEX is an architect and professor of architectural history at the Versailles School of Architecture, where he has served as president of the faculty. Professor Castex graduated from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1968 and was awarded a doctorate from Paris VIII University in 1997 with a thesis on the seventeenth-century French architect Francois Mansart. He has published several books and articles on urban studies, including Urban Forms, the Death and Life of the Urban Block (1977), which he authored with Ph. Panerai and J. Ch. Depaule. His 1989 book on architecture of the fifteenth through the nineteenth centuries, Renaissance, Baroque, Classicisme, 1420-1720, was re-edited in 2004 and has been translated into Dutch and Spanish.