Architecture and Buildings

Architecture and Buildings

“Architecture” and “building” are not synonymous.

Architecture is a vast immaterial network, uniting trades, concepts, traditions, and canons of taste.

A building is a thing. Rooted to the ground, shaped by human hands and by time, in turn it shapes lives—sometimes for generations, or even in one civilization after another.

Assembled here are three representations of architectural subjects: a drawing, a photograph, and a painting inscribed with a descriptive text. Each uses different means to place its subject in history.

Photography depends, functionally, on the physical state of its subject. A poet or painter can invent fictional structures in order to evoke architecture’s role as a conduit of ideas and values. Photographers do something else: they represent buildings—concrete objects, present in space and time before the camera.