An absorbing discussion of what makes a building good or bad-which, both guests are adamant in arguing, is different from asking whether it is beautiful or ugly-ranging from Mrs. Huxtable's account of the Finnish architect Alvar Aalto designing a hospital ("he started this way: when he woke up in the morning and he was lying in bed, he would think, 'I am a patient, and I'm here. I'm flat on my back, and I'm looking at the ceiling, and that is all I can see' ") to Mr. Rossant's explanation of the importance of context ("Much as a theater is the framework of plays, the city is the framework of buildings. We have been conditioned in this country, throughout our history,... to hate cities ... We had escaped the evils of Europe, and the evils of Europe were personified in the cities...." WFB: "But so many of the cities were so beautiful." JR: "Not to the intellectuals and the Founding Fathers of the time").