What Remains Open

The invitation chapter is the last chapter of Volume IV, and the open questions it leaves are properly the province of Volume V — which will be written, if it is written, from within the experience of the building rather than from the intellectual position of the design. Volume IV cannot answer the questions that only the building can answer. What it can do is commit to the honesty that Volume V will require: the honesty to report what the building actually produced, what the architecture looked like in contact with reality, what was learned that the maps did not and could not anticipate.

The only open question that belongs specifically to the invitation is the question of who accepts it. That question is answered not by this chapter but by the people who read it. The invitation is extended. The rest is their decision.