[6] Rykwert is the author of many influential works on architecture, including The Idea of a Town (1963), On Adam's House in Paradise (1972), The Dancing Column (1996) and The Seduction of Place (2000).

In 2000 he was awarded the Bruno Zevi prize in architectural history by the Biennale of Venice, and in 2009 the Gold Medal Bellas Artes, Madrid.

His work is fundamentally concerned with the origin of architectural ideas and, having experienced displacement himself at an early age, with our sense of 'place'.

Frances Yates explained this novelty of approach in The Times Literary Supplement: ‘The range of Rykwert's learning is enormous.

It invigorates both through the attempt at a new kind of history of architecture.’ In The Dancing Column: On Order in Architecture (1996) Rykwert turned his attention to the origins of the architectural Orders, and more recently in The Seduction of Place: The History and Future of Cities (2000) to the question of how to make successful urban spaces and forms in cities today.

In 1955 Rykwert published an annotated edition of Leoni's 1756 translation of Alberti's treatise, entitled The Ten Books of Architecture, by L.B.

Alberti, and this was followed in 1989 with a new translation from Latin, entitled On the Art of Building in Ten Books (published with Robert Tavernor and Neil Leach).

Joseph Rykwert married his second wife, Anne, during his time in Essex, and she was a collaborator on notable works including the international Alberti exhibition and a book on the Adam brothers.

Sir James Stirling commented on The First Moderns, for example, that it was: ‘An erudite lead into my favourite period (early nineteenth century) with amazing revelations on the architectural heroes of the time.’ Many of Rykwert’s former pupils have gone on to have significant careers in their own right, such as Daniel Libeskind, Shams Naga, Eric Parry, Alberto Pérez-Gómez, Mohsen Mostafavi, Robert Tavernor, Vaughan Hart, John Macarthur, and David Leatherbarrow.