In 1999 the influential London-based architecture magazine Blueprint published Baudrillard's thinking on what he saw as ‘radical thought’ on the one hand and the ‘future of architecture’ on the other, translated into English by Chris Turner. Baudrillard, who never practised architecture, wrote and spoke frequently about architecture as a practice during his life, stressing that his focus was really the ‘radicality of space’. Baudrillard and his world-famous countryman, the architect Jean Nouvel, had engaged with other architects and philosophers in a conference sponsored by University of Paris VI and La Villette School of Architecture in Paris in 1997 and 1998. The project was entitled Urban Passages and consisted of six encounters, each between a writer and an architect. In conversation, on the topic of ‘architecture et philosophie’, with Jean Nouvel in two wide-ranging and creative interviews Baudrillard admitted that he had ‘never been interested in architecture’ and that he had ‘no specific feelings about it one way or another’. Baudrillard insisted that he was most interested in buildings like the Beaubourg and the World Trade Center. However, it was the ‘world they translate’ not their status as ‘architectural wonders’ that fascinated Baudrillard. The Blueprint ‘essay’ is made up of translated pieces from Baudrillard's part of the conversation with Nouvel. This piece was published at a time when architecture practitioners like Rem Koolhaas, Jean Nouvel and Daniel Libeskind were much in demand, not though so much as architects for hire but rather as celebrity social and cultural theorists.