Starting from the fundamental premise that references are essential for all cultural techniques, the contributors to this volume elaborate architecture's ambivalent tension between reference and contemporaneity, its central role in both architectural production and discourse. The issues surrounding contemporaneity do not pertain to a condition, but to an agenda - one where references are selected according to interests and adapted to present needs. This perspective enriches existing conceptions of references as tools of design economy, imitation, and historicization by tying them more explicitly to contemporary agendas than has been done before.