What is Architecture?

Please see "The Nine Phases of Architecture" written in May 2025 for a more definitive description of the effort that produces "architecture".

Architecture has aligned itself with fine art, but fine art is an objective and not the goal. Architecture is shelter. The goal is survival. To achieve the goal, shelter must be contained within geographic limits to protect its source of life. The goal meets fatalism, pessimism and skepticism, however; because city design involves a correlation of project effort with a leadership vocabulary of measurable shelter capacity, intensity, intrusion, and context that has only recently begun to coalesce into language. Architecture is familiar with correlation but retains a limited focus and vocabulary that is not equal to the debate required.

Architectural design will increase in public significance when design responds to special interest with public benefit that can be measured. Building mass, project open space, and pavement quantities are arbitrarily woven into the anatomy of a city with arteries of movement, public open space, and life support systems. The random composition metastasizes to produce "sprawl" at the present time. The objective is survival with security and benefit, but a lack of city design has produced few healthy results and far more prevalent dissonance and economic instability. Design matters because it is more than fine art. It is a resolution of priorities.

I’ve called the prediction of intensity options and the measurement of existing conditions “shelter capacity evaluation”. Future options and decisions defined with its vocabulary of capacity, intensity, intrusion, and context measurements will determine our ability to adapt shelter to a limited Built Domain that recognizes and protects its source of life, The Natural Domain. 

Edited: Walter M. Hosack, May 2025