Architecture is architecture

— Ethan Holder

Preface: A student’s unrefined critical framework

Architecture is architecture. It must be.

Recently Ma Yansong has claimed to the contrary: “Architecture is not architecture.”¹ While his work and intentions are indeed noble as they seek to broaden the agency of architects, this sentence seems so obviously self-defeating and counterproductive to his intentions that it should be alarming. What is presented as intellectual openness results in ideological collapse.

This exemplifies a shift in architectural theory and discourse that has ultimately led to its own degradation. The shift is characterized first by a drift of lexicon: the language of architectural theorists is increasingly alien to their own profession—sociological, political, botanical, or otherwise. Recently, Jeanne Gang’s book The Art of Architectural Grafting, as a case in point, presents an excellent display of contemporary adaptive reuse strategies yet fails to stick to an architectural language and intentionally “code switches” to another field.²

Our leading practitioners don’t have their own language but are borrowing from other fields. Once the foundations of clear communication and definitions begin to crack, the whole pedagogical structure becomes unfixed. C.S. Lewis coined the term “verbicide” for words losing meaning through misuse, similar to this phenomenon in architecture.³

Undeniably, there are many definitions that remain clear and well understood—a column is still understood to be what it is. Yet in architectural discourse, undoubtedly this would be challenged, while in our peer fields of engineering and building science there is not the same level of confusion. Perhaps these fields have taken some of the burden of professional clarity from architecture, and simultaneously its credibility. While architects have spent at least two generations committing many acts of professional verbicide, its pedagogy has paid the price.

Lack of clear pedagogy, or theoretical discourse, is a second concerning characteristic of professional decline. There is no orthodoxy in architecture; it is complete pluralism. Postmodern art critic Hal Foster said this about art in 1982: “Art exists today in a state of pluralism: no style or even mode of art is dominant and no critical position is orthodox,”⁴ and this has been true of architecture at least since then. While it might be reasonable to diagnose this symptom as being a resultant of market forces or shifts in information dissemination and communication, that would shed too much responsibility for our own profession. Philip Denny shares the same correlation, stating: “Pluralism metabolized in the same moment that architecture’s capacity to critically articulate its material and theoretical conditions has withered.”⁵

Pluralism is incapable of producing a clear design theory; it is inherently aimless and boundless. Yet regaining clear design theories and trends is necessary for productive development of practical aesthetics and could revitalize a public view of what services architects can provide. To outline a design theory in a manifesto, a departure from these foundations of pluralism is essential.

Stated simply: contemporary architectural discourse has abandoned disciplinary clarity in favor of cross-disciplinary metaphors and rhetorical novelty. This erosion of language has undermined architectural pedagogy, thus weakening professional authority. It has produced a field unable to articulate itself. Without a course correction, a degradation of disciplinary clarity, pedagogy, and architectural authority is inevitable.

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Manifesto: A student’s compromised design ideas

To situate and ground a design theory, a simple decoding of contemporary architectural aesthetics is necessary. To clear the haze of pluralism, generalizations need to be made to create definitions again. Postmodernism provides a productive place of departure. While it did lead eventually to pluralism, its initial response to its predecessors is insightful. While the style fell out of favor, it maintains a lasting impact in its acknowledgement that architecture is always situated in relation to precedent.

A looking forward and also back.

Any architectural act that is precedented—a repetition or continuation—operates within an existing lineage; it is historically rooted. In a healthy and growing profession, most acts should be situated in this position. The alternative type of act would be deviance: departure from historical continuity.

As a necessary oversimplification, these can be typified by historicism (acts that are clearly precedented) and futurism (acts of departure from history). Of course, between those two poles there is an array of positions of compromise. Pluralism emerges when all such positions are permissible without criteria. Each position between complete historicism and futurism (modernism, utopianism, etc.) is treated as ontologically equal without constraint, critique, or hierarchy.

The following is not an attempt to eliminate the in-between position, but to organize it architecturally—describing form in clear terms once again.

A logical note on format

The following is organized into domains of architecture. While design rarely starts with structural systems, construction does. As there is a need to rediscover some orthodoxy in design practice, ordering architectural elements here in the order of construction is not a claim about chronology of design thinking, but a declaration of architectural specificity.

Structure establishes the first order of architectural reality. It determines how form can exist and where enclosure should be made. The ordering is an intentional commitment to applicability rather than abstraction.

Structure

“That which principally gives strength to buildings is the mutual connection of all their parts, and the disposition of their lines, angles, and junctions, whereby the weight is distributed and supported.” — Alberti⁶

The system of parts that bears upon the earth and establishes architectural order through the coordination of loads. This necessarily must be an architectural system that organizes other design elements and spaces, and is responsive to those designs.

It must not be constrained by old or outdated technologies, aesthetics, systems, or construction techniques. It is inherently integrated with the whole system of parts and must align with the loads applied by them. It should be expressed throughout a building.

The structure aligns with and defines the “regulating lines” Le Corbusier discusses; they should be an expression of the system.⁷ Either the part itself is exposed or the material cladded over it should indicate its presence.

Structure is the primary interface by which the architect engages with natural forces; this should be clearly perceived and displayed. Beyond being perceived it is a tool for abstract expression or representation—to hide it completely is to negate one domain for architectural control and communication.

It is the abstract expression of order: grid and hierarchy.

Enclosure

“The wall is the place where the inside meets the outside.” — Louis Kahn⁸

The assembly that moderates the relationship between interior and exterior. It is the articulated boundary condition—the threshold—through which environmental forces are filtered and interior conditions are established.

Because enclosure regulates climate, it must be tuned accordingly and not neutral. It must facilitate a comfortable interior climate. It is a defining feature for exterior form and therefore must mediate simultaneously between the building and human scale.

To remain legible and inhabitable across these scales, enclosure cannot be undifferentiated. Architecture shouldn’t be smooth. It must be broken down and articulated according to its means of construction, allowing segmentation to translate overall form into tactile features.

Material and Assembly

“Architecture is revealed in the act of construction.” — Frampton⁹

Material in architecture is not simply a cladding or finish, but the holistic physical substances through which architecture is pieced together. Material selection must be suitable for typological and contextual needs and symbolic intent.

The logic of assembly must be derived from the material itself. For this reason, material consideration must be an integrated part of pre-design, where it can function as a generative constraint rather than designing with abstract masses without real-world qualities.

When materials are acknowledged rather than minimized, they become essential scalar elements and define the base units of the whole assembly. The joints between pieces are an architect’s primary tool in instituting order and rhythm at scale.

The joints naturally become opportunities for potential ornamental intensification through detailing. Architecture should not be smooth. Materials that are designed as permanent fixtures of a building should embody that sense of permanence.

To use a material to act as a different one or to disguise the construction through minimizing joints or painting over them is to deny material assembly as a primary domain of architecture.

Ornament

“Architecture can only be understood as a whole if it is first understood through its parts.” — Aldo Rossi¹⁰

Ornament is primarily an architectural device that intensifies attention at structurally and formally significant locations. Secondarily, it portrays clear metaphor or depiction directly related to its typology or locality. Ornament is architectural before it is iconographic.

History treated ornament one way—using it at points of transition. Its role has been to concentrate visual density in places where architectural order is present. The particular image or figure applied matters, but it matters less than the locations it demarcates.

Contemporary formal and sculptural architecture treats ornament differently. Rather than concentrating emphasis at specific moments, it collapses ornamental intensity into the overall large continuous form: one singular icon. When the whole form becomes the ornament, local articulation is minimized and the human scale is sacrificed.

Segmentation is the architectural act of dividing a formal whole into distinct legible parts. It allows architecture to remain formally ambitious at the building scale, while restoring a clarity and tactility at the human scale.

Throughout history segmentation was natural and necessary; the means of construction required it. Only in recent times, since the late twentieth century, has building science allowed for completely smooth forms. This minimization of any segment or seam has undermined what was once the opportunity for ornament. Architecture should not be smooth.

The architectural domain of ornament is then forgotten, and the agency of the architect is inevitably compressed. Only through segmentation can ornament be reintroduced at the points of transition as it once was.

In this sense, cladding systems must be treated through the same lens as ornamental features historically. Where they are not structural, their architectural responsibility beyond enclosure lies in articulation of assembly and structure, not concealment.

Segmentation of forms reintroduces both the opportunity and architectural responsibility for ornament. Segmentation is only architectural when it is organized.

Organization

“Function cannot be the basis of architecture.” — Aldo Rossi¹⁰

Organization is the governing order of parts and space within the whole. It determines how segmentation becomes clear and ordered—not random—and how formal and program intention is negotiated.

The plan organizes program according to rational adjacency where possible within the form. While practical requirements must be integrated, function must not be allowed to generate the plan on its own.

Form must not be completely subservient to function. When pragmatism becomes the sole driver, architecture collapses into logistics. It becomes purely engineering. Thus, the plan must discipline function through form, not surrender form entirely to use.

Elevation and section order architecture primarily visually. They establish hierarchy and scale through openings and transitions in material. Segmentation in elevation must be governed by the regulating lines established by structure and coordinated with levels.

Articulation follows order; it does not invent it. When architecture is coherently organized, segmentation reinforces architectural clarity rather than reducing the building to a surface effect.

Form

“Form is not the goal, but the result of a process.” — Mies¹¹

Form ought to be considerate of function, as it facilitates it, but it must not be generated by function alone. When form is derived solely from pragmatism, architecture collapses into logistics and engineering.

Form disciplines function; it does not merely accommodate it. Form cannot be so absorbent that it negates ornament, segmentation, or variation entirely. Yet form may remain singular and formally coherent, provided it is legible as a whole composed logically of distinct parts.

Unity of form does not require smooth uniformity.

Form should be understood as the synthesis of the other architectural domains rather than their origin. It is the point at which structure, enclosure, material, ornament, and organization converge into a visible architectural order.

For this reason, form must be articulated in a manner that is first distinctly architectural—not merely sculptural or expressive—and then secondarily symbolic. Architecture is architecture, not merely a symbol.

Formal design theory cannot prescribe a universal appearance, but it must be strict in defining behavior. Form is not an invention imposed upon architecture; it is the visible consequence of architectural discipline.

Formal coherence does not require continuity, nor does unity require smoothness. Architecture should not be smooth.

Site and Context

“A building belongs to its site.” — Louis Kahn¹²

Site is the given condition prior to construction, and everything outside the building. It must be understood as a domain of architecture—not as a backdrop to decorate or a constraint to overcome, but as something to be shaped and occupied.

Architecture is always in dialogue with its context. Tension between the new and the existing is not a failure but a condition of architectural placement. The task of architecture is to determine what that tension should communicate.

Context must be considered, but it must not govern. When architecture becomes subservient to context, it relinquishes its capacity to produce something new or innovative.

Conclusion

Architecture has not been degraded for a lack of intelligence, ambition, or technical capacity. It has degraded due to a gradual abandonment of disciplinary clarity. In place of architectural language, it has adopted metaphors borrowed from sociology, politics, botany, and other fields. In place of clear orthodox positions, it has accepted pluralism.

This manifesto argues for a return to architecture’s internal coherence and unique language. By organizing architectural thought into these domains, the framework asserts architecture’s capacity to convey abstract symbolism—but through architectural means.

Even where the positions outlined may fail in application, the framework succeeds in reforming architectural discourse into a language of clarity. The act of framing architecture in its own terms is already a corrective gesture against verbicide.

If architecture continues down the path of pluralism—where every approach is equally valid—it will continue to forfeit pedagogical rigor, public appreciation, and professional authority. Without course correction, a terminal degradation of architectural agency is inevitable.

Architecture must be discussed in its own terms.

Architecture must be architecture.

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Notes

1. Ma Yansong, “Discover Ma Yansong’s Manifesto for His Domus 2026,” Domus, November 27, 2025.
2. Jeanne Gang, The Art of Architectural Grafting (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2024).
3. C. S. Lewis, Studies in Words (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960).
4. Hal Foster, “Postmodernism: A Preface,” in The Anti-Aesthetic, ed. Hal Foster (Port Townsend, WA: Bay Press, 1983), xiii.
5. Phillip R. Denny, “Against Pluralism, Again,” Metropolis, December 17, 2018.
6. Leon Battista Alberti, On the Art of Building in Ten Books, trans. Rykwert et al. (MIT Press, 1988), bk. III.
7. Le Corbusier, Toward a New Architecture (Dover, 1986), 3.
8. Louis I. Kahn, “Silence and Light,” Perspecta 16 (1979): 23.
9. Kenneth Frampton, Studies in Tectonic Culture (MIT Press, 1995).
10. Aldo Rossi, The Architecture of the City (MIT Press, 1982), 29, 46.
11. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, “Working Theses,” in Theories and Manifestoes of Contemporary Architecture (MIT Press, 1970), 180.
12. Louis I. Kahn, Between Silence and Light, ed. John Lobell (Shambhala, 1979), 56.