# ARCHITECTURAL THEORIES /// What is Architecture ? An Ideological and Hermeneutic Map of Architecture by Nick Axel
Published
After his Supurban Project, Nick Axel comes back on the Funambulist with a new project that despite its lack of images -which I therefore salutes as the cult of the image consumption seems to have definitely won the world of architecture- develops an interesting visualization of what is architecture. Nick indeed continuously assembles -and dates when he can- a series of aphorisms that all begins with “Architecture is…”
He found a beautiful way to call this assignment, an ideological and hermeneutic map of architecture, and describes how the saturation of those aphorisms makes pure explicit meaning lost all meaning. This is indeed one way to interpret this very long graphic list of affirmations. Another one could be to observe that those short sentences that attempt to encompass the discipline of architecture in a very short amount of words, might in fact manage to define what is architecture by adding themselves to each other, tending a bit more toward a complete yet unreachable definition that is beyond words.
Finally, a third one could relates to the last article I wrote about how each manifesto constitutes a system of interpretations of the world (here, of architecture). Each of those aphorisms has indeed folded in itself, an entire story of founders, followers, detractors, and most importantly a certain amount of creative work that have been produced according to this small sentence. Words have this power in them. Not only they are able to constitute some meaning via their assemblage, but they also allow to compose (combat) banners that host in their material, pieces of historicity.
The following list is this hermeneutic map as it is today (you can participate to it by sending your “architecture is… sentence on Twitter with the following hashtag: #ArchitectureIs):
Architecture is not made with the brain___1995
Architecture is the art of building according to principles which are determined, not merely by the ends the edifice is intended to serve, but by considerations of beauty and harmony___1892
Architecture is the art which so disposes and adorns the edifices raised by man for whatsoever uses, that the sight of them contributes to his mental health, power, and pleasures___1857
The proper definition of architecture is merely the art of designing sculpture for a particular place, and placing it there on the best principle of building___1857
Architecture is nothing more or less than the art of ornamental and ornamented construction___
Architecture is the art of construction according to the principles of the beautiful___
Architecture is form and substance – abstract and concrete – and its meaning derives from its interior characteristics and particular context.___1966
Architecture is evolutionary as well as revolutionary___1966
architecture is a social language___2002
architecture is a social craft, not a creative art___2002
architecture is to “disloacate the knowing subject”___2002
architecture is a verb, an action, not just a set of correct theories or prescriptions___2002
architecture is a language, and one for which the architect is explicitly responsible___2002
architecture is in some sort the embodiment of the Polity, Life, History, and Religious Faith of nations___1857
Architecture is to be regarded by us with the most serious thought. We may live without her, and worship without her, but we cannot remember without her.___1857
Architecture is stifled by custom___1931
Architecture is a plastic thing___1931
Architecture is one of the most urgent needs of man, for the house has always been the indespensable and first tool that he has forged for himself___1931
Architecture is a thing of art (an artistic fact), a phenomenon of the emotions, lying outside questions of construction and beyond them.___1931
Architecture is a matter of “harmonies,” (“relationships,”) it is “a pure creation of the spirit”___1931
Architecture is the masterly, correct and magnificent play of masses brought together in light___1931
architecture is rooted in the very beginnings of humanity and that it is a direct function of human instinct___1931
Architecture is the first manifestation of man creating his own universe, creating it in the image of nature, submitting to the laws of nature, the laws which govern our own nature, our universe.___1931
Architecture is very well able to express itself in a precise fashion___1931
Architecture is the art par excellence, one that attains a state of Platonic grandeur, mathematical order, speculation, perception of harmony through stirring formal relationships___1923
Architecture is plastic invention, is intellectual speculation, is higher mathematics. Architecture is an art of great dignity___1923
Architecture is the use of raw materials to establish stirring relationships___1923
Architecture is a social project full of rhetorical symbolism___2008
Architecture is not all a matter of walls and wall patterns. It is primarily organized space___2008
architecture, is a symbol of functional existence___2008
Architecture is now open to the play of historical revival as having an absolute value in itself, calibrated according to the demands of a new civic order___2008
“architecture” is a fundamentally modern phenomenon, one born with, and in support of, all the advanced instutitions of developed capitalist societies___2008
architecture is the most base of the arts, made of earth, timber, and stone; the stones are outside art, and the disctinction between architecture and building is slight___2005
architecture is to give form to the transgressive and formless desires of the subject, often reduced in modern architecture to voids within rationalized frames or thin membranes___2005
Architecture is the convulsive form produced by the temporary arrest of the psychoanalyst’s spiraling questionaire___2005
architecture is not about the reality of the external world but about the interiorized space of fantasy___2005
Architecture is the expression of the true nature of societies, as physiognomy is the expression of the nature of individuals___2005
architecture is a tool for controlling the de-generation and re-generation of a man’s physical and psychical being___2005
Architecture is the difficult object of the real, par excellence, for once constructed it is the physical manifestation of desire into fact___2005
architecture is only legitimate if it proposes a normal, “healthy” condition___2005
architecture is fundamentally concerned with the wall that becomes the meeting plane and surface for the dialogue between interior and exterior conditions___2005
Architecture is the ultimate erotic act___2005
Architecture is an intricate play with rules that you may break or accept___2005
Architecture is defined by the actions it witnesses as much as by the enclosure of its walls___2005
architecture is atemporal by its very nature and that its essence is to cancel time by setting up a permanent structure___2005
architecture is itself a mask, or a series of masks that seduce the observer by creating illusions and hiding identities___2005
architecture is linked to events in the same way that the guard is linked to the prisoner, the police to the criminal, the doctor to the patient, order to chaos___2005
Architecture is seduction and desire___2005
Architecture is inescapably operative in human experience___1969
architecture is a cognitive process that in and of itself, in the acknowledgement of its own autonomy, is today necessitating a refounding of the discipline; that refuses interdisciplinary solutions to its own crisis; that does not pursue and immerse itself in political, economic, social, and technological events only to mask its own creative and formal sterilty, but rather desires to understand them so as to be able to intervene in them with lucidity – not to determine them, but not to be subordinate to them either___1973
architecture is a permanent, universal, and necessary fact___1973
architecture is dissolved into a deconstructed system of ephemeral signals___1974
Architecture is society’s authorized superego; there is no architecture that is not the Commendatore’s___1929
Architecture is a compulsory loan burdening all of ideology, morgagigng all its differences from the outset___1974
Architecture is a science that must be accompanied by a great diversity of studies and knowledge, by means of which it judges all the works of other arts___
Architecture is of all the sciences the one to which the Greeks gave a name signifying superiority and stewardship over the others___
architecture is … not confined to its own narrow idiolect of design, but rather transcodes between design and non-design, throwing discursive forces into multiple play___1974
architecture is no longer either implicitly or explicitly seen as the dominant system, but simply one of many cultural systems, each of which, including architecture, may be closed or “designed”___1974
architecture is wedged in a gap between two architectural surfaces, two edges of the pyramid and the labyrinth, two types of pleasure, one conceptual, culturally conservative, and rule-bound, the other sensual, transgressive, even violent___1975
Architecture is then nothing but the space of representation___1975
architecture is an endless manipulation of the grammar and syntax of the architectural sign___1975
architecture is not unlike fireworks, for these “empirical apparitions,” as Adorno puts it, “produce a delight that cannot be sold or bought, that has no exchange value and cannot be integrated in the production cycle.”___1975
architecture is always the expression of a lack, a shortcoming, a noncompletion. It always misses something, either reality or concept. Architecture is both being and nonbeing.___1975
architecture is for the eye as well as the mind, and that it includes both a conceptualized formation of space and the circumstantial modifications that a program can make this space undergo___1977
Architecture is an important part of material production___1976
Architecture is subject to the realization of capital, to be sure; but its social function may not be restricted to the economic dimension. Architecture is conditioned and is conditioning: architecture as a collective fact is inseparable from society, but “its principles are of a specific nature; they are derived from architecture itself,” as Aldo Rossi writes (Zurcher Vorlesungen, 1974).___1976
architecture is understood to be the signifier of a sign having its signified in socio-cultural usage but also creating its signified itself, insofar as each work essentially reflects its own “nature”.___1976
architecture is understood as something that can be traced back to determinable and describable elements, i.e., as something of a technical nature___1976
Architecture is able to connotate the real, but not denote it (except at the level of the immediate “first function”).___1976
Architecture is, in itself, a form of material production that includes drawing plans and making models: it is here in the process of representation that an epistemological analysis might be based___1977
architecture is a perennial symbolic langauge, whose origins lie in nature and our response to nature___1978
Architecture is created and sustained in the psyche, and is legitimate boundaries are established by voluntary judgement acting on an imagination nourished by history___1978
architecture is tectonic activity in so far as it makes the Geviert happen, makes it appear, and preserves it.___1980
architecture is to serve as the totality of the social context of communication and life: “as human individuals assembled as a company or nation.”___1981
architecture is subject to the laws of cultural modernity – like art in general, it succumbs to the compulsion of radical autonomization, the differentiation of a domain of genuine aesthetic experience, a domain that a subjectivity freed from the imperatives of everyday life, from the routines of action and the conventions of perception, can explore in the company of its own spontaneity.___1981
architecture is poetic, necessarily an abstract order but in itself a metaphor emerging from vision of the world and Being___1983
Architecture is neither on the inside nor the outside.___1983
architecture is no longer possible___1984
architecture is never fully independent of larger concerns___2008
architecture is malleable; it, along with the auxiliary hypotheses, may be shaped to maintain coherence within the entire program___1984
architecture is inevitably about the invention of fictions___1984
architecture is primarily a device designed for use and for shelter___1984
architecture is merely language___1984
architecture is an instrument of measure, a sum of knowledge capable of organizing society’s space and time by pitting us against the natural environment.___1984
Architecture is a collection of ruins that closes at six o’clock___1984
architecture … is then a system of self-defining limits: the surfaces of orders imposed in SPACE, a measuring (geometry) and a marking (geography of the world).___1984
architecture is never present as an event (not present, not even for a moment) but nevertheless can be recovered by a kind of Nachtraglichkeit, a deferred action in which architecture is constructed and maintained for a moment in the work of architecture by waht can be called only a textual mechanism – a transcription and a translation.___2008
architecture is itself an inahbited constructum, a heritage which comprehends us even before we could submit it to thought.___1986
Architecture is no longer a vehicle expressing the spurious contents of a singular (“grand”) history-in-the-making, no longer a constellation of signs operating externally to culture through the intermediary of a code, but an entirely internal and inhering mechanism inseperable from the body of the world and operating on it from within___1986
architecture is not an arid combination of practicality and utility, but remains art, that is, synthesis and expression___1986
Architecture is understood as a representation of deconstruction, the material representation of an abstract idea___1988
Architecture is the figure of the addition, the structural layer, one element supported by another___1988
Architecture is constructed as a material reality in order to liberate some higher domain___1988
Architecture is cut from within, and philosophy unwittingly appeals to architecture precisely for this internal torment___1988
architecture is bound up with the forever incomplete project of philosophy___1988
Architecture is the translation of building that represents building to itself as complete, secure, undivided___1988
architecture is the structural possibility of building___1988
architecture is a series of discursive mechanisms whose operations can be traced in ways that are unfamiliar to architectural discourse___1988
Architecture is at once given constitutive power and has that power frustrated by returning its status to mere metaphor___1988
architecture is always political in the sense that anything is political, the meaning of politics being diluted to some generalized cultural association___1989
architecture is rarely political, in which case the defintiion is narrowly confined to those activities directly influencing power relations___1990
architecture is understood as metaphysically complete, its general principles known; all themes that can be taken up by architecture have been taken up already, and all that there is left to do, no matter how creatively, is to elaborate those themes___2008
architecture is to express (what is considered to be) the timeless and universal condition of man (at any time).___1991
Architecture is the scene in which, so to speak, the always-becoming-symbolic of the (“arbitrary”) sign is repressed___1991
architecture is an insufficient representation of the spirit to itself___1991
architecture is … always … an allegorical enterprise.___1992
architecture is an abstract machine, insofar as any architecture enables certain functions and constrains others, produces certain effects and forecloses others.___2008
architecture is seen to be “bigger” than sculpture and “smaller” (or less numerous) than urbanism___1993
architecture is related to other spheres of social practice, architecture, too, can be understood as the construction of new concepts of space and its inhabitation; which is to say that buildings and drawings can be theoretical, seeking a congruence between object and analysis, producing concepts as fully objective and material as built form itself.___2008
architecture is still a kind of map of reality, even if the particular coordinates of that map lack a one-to-one correspondence with the everyday world.___2008
architecture is constantly in need of self-assurance___2010
architecture is that which exceeds building’s concerns with shelter and other strictly hygenic, engineered matters___2010
architecture is on the verge of finding out what really happens when “form follows function”___2010
architecture is a shifting, provisional fiction___2010
architecture is radiated by the building and does not clothe it, that it is an aroma rather than a drapery; an integral part of it and not a shell___2010
architecture is concerned solely with material forms, cold and intangible, situated beyond time___1991
architecture is created by human beings – that injects energy into the core of architectural practice___1991
architecture is born in myth, in rite, or in consciousness___1991
architecture is reborn in dream___1991
architecture is the art that most tries, in its rhythm, to reproduce the order of the universe, which the ancients called Kosmos___1991
architecture is movement synchronized towards a precise objective___2005
Architecture is not a business, not a career, but a crusade and a consecration to a joy that justifies the existence of the earth.___1943
Architecture is primarily a utilitarian conception, and the problem is to elevate the principle of pragmatism into the realm of esthetic abstraction___1943
Architecture is a visual art, and the buildings speak for themselves___
Architecture is the art of how to waste space___
Architecture is the reaching out for the truth___
architecture is to put in order___
architecture is the dark side of the moon___
architecture is to make us know and remember who we are___
Architecture is music in space, as it were a frozen music___
architecture is the design of space that contains, cuddles, exalts, or stimulates the persons in that space___
architecture is art you can walk through___
architecture is a social act and the material theater of human activity___
architecture is an art when one consciously or unconsciously creates aesthetic emotion in the atmosphere and when this environment produces well being___
Architecture is a science arising out of many other sciences, and adorned with much and varied learning; by the help of which a judgement is formed of those works which are the result of other arts___
Architecture is basically a container of something___
Architecture is inhabited sculpture___
Architecture is not an inspirational business, it’s a rational procedure to do sensible and hopefully beautiful things; that’s all.___
architecture is politics___
Architecture is the will of an epoch translated into space___
architecture is a social activity that has to do with some sort of communication or places of interaction, and that to change the environment is to change behavior.___
Architecture is a very material thing.___
architecture is not to parody history but to articulate it___
Architecture is a continuing dialogue between generations which creates an environment across time___
Architecture is a sort of oratory of power by means of forms___
architecture is like a piece of beautifully composed music crystalized in space that elevates our spirits beyond the limitations of time.___
Architecture is space structured to serve man and to move him___
architecture is the visible sign of an authentic democracy___
Architecture is petrified music___
Architecture is always in search of itself; the day this does not happen anymore will be the end of architecture___
Architecture is a form of pure and total commitment in the world in which it operates, but in its own way, only in and by means of the work it creates___
Architecture is an applied art___
Architecture is a profession like many others, with its own merits, and that building the real thing is more satisfying than talking or writing about it___
architecture is not just a building, not just what architects do, not just what people experience or write; it is that which asserts that architecture as we presently know and conceive it is dead.___
Architecture is not about aesthetics or style; it is about presence___
Architecture is unable to contribute to the advancement of society___
Architecture is as important for society as art, music, and literature___
architecture is not even about space___
architecture is marked by radical innovation and theoretical argument___
Architecture is too preoccupied with itself___
architecture is a local practice___
Architecture is not a question of amnesia, but of repression, of forgetting.___
architecture is that which does not yield to the temptation of wanting to be architecture___
Architecture is a device___
Architecture is a prayer for order___
architecture is meant to inspire, to be copied, improved on, brought up to date, refined, sharpened___
architecture is not one arbitrary choice of how the environment should look, but actually a multitude of possible architectural schemes, which all are just as valid and beautiful as the other ones___
Architecture is a primordial technology, the oldest next to weapon technology.___
architecture is not to speed up change and the experience of time, but rather to slow them down, so they may be grasped by our bio-culturally based neural and cognitive systems___
architecture is not a desire for the immaculate object; it is therefore not a desire for glory nor a desire for the well-being of society; it is instead a desire for a better relationship with one’s own consciousness___
Architecture is a matter of skin and bones___
architecture is not the problem___
architecture is compelled to deliberate its own status___
architecture is in principle beyond the architectural object itself___
Architecture is a matter of the sustainability and long life of space; but spaces all have different life-cycles___
architecture is usually art of the background___
Architecture is matter, and architects need only work with the vocabulary and syntax of matter___
Architecture is propaganda___
architecture is that place that innately tames the savage___
architecture is a unique condition of discourse in which the sign and the signified are more closely linked than in any other discourse___
architecture is the locus of the metaphysics of presence___
architecture is viewed in a state of distraction___
architecture is a concretization of habit___
architecture is nothing more than a sign and an arbitrary construction___
Architecture is the painstaking clarification and organization of that functional program into a distinctive and aesthetically viable physical form___2008
architecture is still the difficult, conscientious, creative, expressive planning for that elusive synthesis that is a near-contradiction in terms: efficiency and beauty___2008
architecture is the ability to produce images of identity and status that can ccontribute to today’s profitable package___2008
architecture is now breaking scale, and style, everywhere___2008
architecture is about vision and ideas___2008
architecture is to organize and shape space for use, to consign it to individual and collective experience, to expose it to the effects of time___
architecture is not autonomous; it is not a figurative art and can never be divorced from the practical reasons underlying its day to day use___
architecture is to generate thinking rather than mindless happiness___
Architecture is part of the “life-situation”, giving configuration to processes rather than creating objects___
architecture is formal invention, and its quality is of prime importance___
Architecture is too important to be Left to Architects___1969
architecture is involved in everything, root and branch___
Architecture is, and always will be concerned, roughly speaking, with ‘carefully balancing horizontal things on top of vertical things’___
architecture is a process before it is a plastic art___2005
Architecture is probably a hoax, a fantasy world brought about through a desire to locate, absorb and integrate into an overall obsession a self-interpretation of the everday world around us___1966
architecture is not the answer to too much architecture___
architecture is a consumer product; it accelerated that condition, then contrarily dissolved the central object of property-owning democracy, the fixed abode with investment value___2005
Architecture is fun, and one isn’t being superficial___1967
architecture is the constitution of interlocking frames, frames that can connect with, contain and be contained by other frames: architecture is the creation of frames as cubes, interconnecting cubes, cubes respected or distorted, cubes opened up, inflected or cut open___
architecture is experienced with the moving body: we approach a building, walk by or around it, perhaps enter it, walk down a corridor or an aisle, up some steps, open the door to a low-ceilinged chamber, open a window to look at distant mountains___1998
architecture architecture is not what is done … but how it is done___1996
architecture is a function of embodied discourse, that is, discourse instantiated in speech or, more typically, written or graphical documents___
architecture is malleable, dispersed, always in flux___
architecture is ineffable, for as soon as it is written or built, it moves from the virtual to the actual___
architecture is the immobile frame through which motion passes___
architecture is a frame to which motion and forces are added___
Architecture is frequently conceived as the study of the inert because it is dedicated to models of permanence___
architecture is a static frame which intersects motion___
architecture is no more than a patient recognition, a laborious cultivation of seeds that await the hand of whomever is capable of making them grow and bear fruit___
Architecture is only more interesting in that its communities of work are more obvious and more necessary for a longer period of time because the stuff weighs more and costs more___
Architecture is a fairly small field occupied by a bohemian group of people with exaggerated interests who continually overestimate the value of their own effects___
architecture is to substantiate new political regimes___
architecture is film’s predecessor___1993
architecture is the use of geometry to generate form___2006
Architecture is understood to be everywhere___1998
architecture is destined to dominate a far more comprehensive sphere than building means today; and that from the investigation of its details we shall advance towards an ever-wider and profounder conception of design as one great cognate whole___1935
Architecture is first and foremost a discourse, mobilized by the concept of design that is constantly invoked but rarely examined___1998
architecture is robust enough to operate in multiple ontological realms___2009
architecture is not a science, and that architectural effects can be created in myriad, messy ways rather than according to scientific method___2009
architecture is a ‘social construct’, a cultural fabrication and an embodiment of political concepts, disassociated from an architecture governed by natural laws, statics and climatic demands___
architecture is as much a physical construct as it is a social or political one and to understand architecture as a mere representation of the political is as problematic as to declare architecture entirely ruled by natural laws___
architecture is superficial. Architecture is never stripped down to pure functional expression, though building frequently is.___
Architecture is only produced when people and robots rendezvous on the grass___1999
architecture is a discipline seeking self-definition, and for that self-definition it looks outside of itself, to see what others say about it___2001
Architecture is a discipline, not unlike medicine, that does not need to bring the body back to itself because it’s already there, albeit shrouded in latency or virtuality___2001
Architecture is a kind of probe that seeks out and remakes geological and geographic formations while being directed by the requirements of an aesthetic, economic, corporate, and engineering amalgam___2001
architecture is the domain for the regulation and manipulation of made spaces and places___2001
Architecture is a set of highly provisional “solutions” to the question of how to live and inhabit space with others___2001
architecture is that which places man midway between the monkey and the machine___2001
architecture is always in excess of function, practicality, mere housing or shelter___2001
Architecture is not simply the colonization or territorialization of space, though it has commonly functioned in this way, as Bataille intuited; it is also, at its best, the anticipation and welcoming of a future in which the present can no longer recognize itself___2001
Architecture is not the autonomous art it is often held out to be___1997
Architecture is the product of a way of thinking___1997
architecture is in fact both autonomous and purpose-oriented, it cannot simply negate men as they are___1979
architecture is sometimes defined by ‘strong’ aesthetic criteria: it is a matter of creating a good project and a beautiful building.___1995
architecture is always dream and function, expression of a utopia and instrument of a convenience___1986
architecture is the art of the articulation of spaces___1986
architecture is not the field of creative freedom some have imagined it to be, but a system of rules for giving society what it expects in the way of architecture___1986
architecture is a system of rhetorical formulas producing just those messages the community of users has come to expect (seasoned with a judicious measure of the unexpected)___1986
architecture is a form of mass culture___1986
Architecture is a business___1986
architecture is that of defining the limit beyond which an existing form no longer allows the type of life one has in mind, the limit beyond which the architectural sign-vehicles that pass before one appear no longer as a matrix of freedom but as the very image of domination, of an ideology that imposes, through the rhetorical forms it has generated, various modes of enslavement___1986
architecture is dominated by the laws of modern culture – it is subject, as is art in general, to the compulsion of attaining radical autonomy___1982
architecture is the closest constitutively to the economic, with which, in the form of commissions and land values, it has a virtually unmediated relationship___1991
Architecture is business as well as culture, and outright value fully as much as ideal representation: the seam architecture shares with economics also has no parallel in the other arts, although commercial art – rock music, for example – comes close in certain ways; but even that analogy serves to underscore the differences___1995
architecture is a more durable festival___1995
architecture is the most repressible: all other arts demand some minimal efford of reading (which may not seem to go so far as interpretation but which perhaps none the less still minimally includes it or implies it)___1995
architecture is Utopian, in so far as it promises to restore or to resurrect from within the fallen body of the modern city-dweller – with clogged and diminished senses, therapeutically lowered and adjusted feelers and organs of perception, maimed language and shoddy, standardized mass-produced feelings – the glorious Utopian body of an unfallen being who can once again take the measure of an unfallen nature___1995
architecture is a useful experimental laboratory in detecting and observing the operations of ideologemes one would not normally expect to find there___1995
architecture is not a matter of space but an experience of the Supreme which is not higher but in a sense more ancient than space and therefore is a spatialization of time___1986
Architecture is more than an array of techniques designed to shelter us from the storm___1991
architecture is not bricks, mortar, or timber, but the house; and so the principal object of natural philosophy is not the material elements, but their composition, and the totality of the substance, independently of which they have no existence___-350
architecture is in the building it makes___-350
architecture is a field that, by the very nature of things, revolves around a world of seduction___2000
architecture is also structured by various realities, but in terms of their actual presence, those cities, as pure event, pure object, avoid the pretense of self-conscious architecture___2000
Architecture is a mixture of nostalgia and extreme anticipation___2000
Architecture is pretty easy___2000
Architecture is no longer the invention of a world but that it exists simply with respect to a geological layer applied to all the cities throughout the planet___2000
Architecture is one thing; human life another___2000
Architecture is simply the art of necessity___2000
Architecture is the art of constraint; we have to deal with that___2000
architecture is, paradoxically, unviewable; only a very small part of what’s built counts___2000
architecture is like poetry: you can provide all the interpretations of the poem you like, but it’s always there___2000
Architecture is no longer an autonomous discipline___2000
architecture is hidden behind an ersatz façade___2000
Architecture is always a response to a question that wasn’t asked___2000
architecture is not so much transcended as retranslated through its dynamic vernacular context___1996
architecture is inseperable from life as a whole___1941
Architecture is not exclusively an affair of styles and forms, nor is it completely determined by sociological or economic conditions___1941
architecture is a kind of sign system___2001
architecture is understood as an applied practice___1993
architecture is open to analysis like any other aspect of experience, and is made more vivid by comparisons___1966
architecture is too complex to be approached with carefully maintained ignorance___1966
architecture is necessarily complex and contradictory in its very inclusion of the traditional Vitruvian elements of commodity, firmness, and delight___1966
“architecture,” is experienced primarily in a state of “distraction,” a state that ignores the visual characteristics of the building in favor of its haptic and tactile environment, a “dark space,” as Eugene Minkowski would have it, where vision is unconscious and “losing one’s way” is the key to knowledge___2000
architecture is no longer simply the supplement of the body of the building___1991
Architecture is still a “misfit,” a “black sheep.”___1991
Architecture is one vector mingled with many other political, social, economic, institutional and cultural forces___1995
Architecture is not capable of determining events but nonetheless participates in the formation of urban bodies and populations___1995
architecture is the design of urban spaces in which a multiplicity of gestures are possible___1995
architecture is irreducible within any classifications___1978
architecture is no longer the imitation of nature or the search for pleasure and artistic satisfaction, but composition or “disposition”___1978
Architecture is indeed an imitative art, but now imitative of itself, reflecting a fragmented and discontinuous reality___1978
architecture is the substrate for the accidents of history rather than its embodiment___2006
architecture is about speeds rather than movements___2006
Architecture is like the sea, or money: it falls into an intermediate category between matter and events.___2006
architecture is not simply reducible to the container and the contained but that there exists a dynamic exchange between the life of matter and the matter of our lives___2006
Architecture is no longer the positioning of objects in a field; the field itself becomes a kind of object___2007
Architecture is seen to lie at the intersection of ideas___2007
architecture is itself a species with a nervous system to be wired into that of its occupants___2007
architecture is a distinct form of knowledge___2010
architecture is always the ultimate achievement of intellectual and artistic evolution, the materialization of an economic stage___1954
Architecture is the only art form which is indispensable to man, and which is at the same time functional___1954
architecture is inseperable from theoretical discourse___1999
Architecture is always a way of envisioning our world transformed into something else___2009
architecture is an elaborate symptom___1994
architecture is subject to this total loss of control any time you begin to realize a building whether it is because of cost, or because the client is not interested in ideology or conceptualization, or because of zoning___1994
Architecture is considered as a form of artificial life, subject, like the natural world, to principles of morphogenesis, genetic coding, replication and selection___1995
architecture is literally part of nature in the sense that the man-made environment is now a major part of the global eco-system, and man and nature share the same resources for building___1995
architecture is a property of the process of organizing matter rather than a property of the matter thus organized___1995
Architecture is the production of a “detached fit”___2008
architecture is simultaneously the production of a “connected fit.”___2008
Architecture is not a part of the city, but it is a miniature city___2008
architecture is perhaps something like a “hazy area”___2008
architecture is perhaps to produce a primal unified condition, just before the division into light and object, spare and object, natural and artificial, inside and outside, city and house, large and small___2008
Architecture is always clumsy, and unavoidably has a shape, opaque and unfree___2008
architecture is the making of the exterior envelope___2008
Architecture is the delicate design of ruins___2008
Architecture is a delicate method to produce accidents___2008
Architecture is a gesture___1942
Architecture is a putting in order; the operation takes place in your head; the sheet of paper will welcome only the technical signs which are useful in manifesting and transmitting the thought___1947
Architecture is the mold of a society; it constructs shelters___1947
Architecture is a purely human creation___1947
Architecture is in everything, it extends to everything___1947
architecture is drawn toward a destined synthesis___1947
“architecture” is today more understandable as an idea than as a material fact; “architecture”: to order, to put in order … in a superior way – materially and spiritually, and so on …___1947
“architecture” is dead___1947
Architecture is never here and now___2011
Architecture separates and is itself something separated___2011
architecture is, and the a lot of work has to be done___2011
architecture is life___1988
Architecture is that great living creative spirit which from generation to generation, from age to age, proceeds, persists, creates, according to the nature of man, and his circumstances as they change___1988
Architecture is elementary___2005
Architecture is my delight___
architecture is the dark side of the moon___
architecture is infinity made imaginable___
Architecture is to make us know and remember who we are___
architecture is the result of the forming___
Architecture is easy___
Architecture is the framework for communication___2010
Architecture is an interpretation of constructing space___2010
Architecture is the construction of a sensational and/or relational spatiality, be it virtual or real, in the mind or on the earth___2010
Architecture is the artifact, representation, of actualizing ‘human’. It is the materialized sign to the idea of ‘human’ which can be only signified___2010
Architecture is that which realizes what human is, means___2010
Architecture is a dialectical process___2011
Architecture is the embodiment of agonism___2011
Architecture is not art in the sense that it’s not optional___2010
Architecture is frozen ambition___2011
Architecture is a part of a larger story___2011