Lorenzo Gafà practised at a period when the terms of architecture itself were under argument.
The record lists Lorenzo Gafà as Maltese architect and sculptor.
Lorenzo Gafà was born in 1639. His recorded nationality is Malta.
Baroque and neoclassical building served courts, churches and states, and architecture became an instrument of display.
Buildings outlast their architects and usually their purposes, which is what makes the discipline unforgiving.
That the work was built in Malta shaped it: climate, materials, planning law and who holds the budget all decide what can actually be built.
Lorenzo Gafà died in 1704, aged 65. The buildings remain, still in use by people who never knew the name - which is the particular afterlife architecture offers.
