Frances to Luis...
This thorny topic has grown into a lively debate. It seems there
is no global consensus of opinion among learned experts here on
what objects may be architecture, let alone defining what
architecture indeed is. It might be agreed here that architecture
or "the architecture" like say "the circus" as a global object is
a type or class and norm and kind that holds individual
architectures as its token members, aside from deciding whether
the type is mainly an objective material construct independent of
mind or is mainly a subjective mental construct dependent on
mind. It is also not fully clear to me as to what kind of global
object that architecture might best be held as. There is a
tendency to call it an aesthetic object, but this may wrongly
imply that all architecture to be such is artistic and amoral.
All architectures have or bear aesthetic qualities as material
properties in their form to some degree, but not all
architectures will be art merely because of this formal fact.
There are therefore ordinary architectures that are not art or
are nonart, and there are extraordinary architectures that are
art. The necessary condition sufficient and efficient enough to
make an architecture art is seemingly not yet clearly defined.
Consider furthermore that all drawings are pictures, but that not
all pictures are drawings, so that therefore while all buildings
are architectures, not all architectures are buildings.
