introduction to architecture (What is Architecture)

What is Architecture?

On this quest to determine the most fitting explanation to Architecture, we come across many definitions given by different intelligentsia related in some way directly or indirectly to Architecture.
The first one we encounter, to later on use it as a means of negation, is the definition given by Ruskin who states that Architecture is nothing more but ornament added to building. The statement is immediatly rejected by the author while he moves on to Even Ferguson with a slightly bettered but yet not correct version, agreeing that: "Architecture commences when some embellishment is added to the building which was not strictly a structural necessity." It is later proved wrong by this analysis's author, through an analogy with poetry which he develops into a truth of Architecture and its sublimity related to simplicity and abstraction. The argument continues with an explanation from Vitruvius who believes that Architecture, as a master art, is integrated into knowledge of practical building as well as the application thereto of reasoning. In fewer words, practice supported and guided by theory is what makes the difference between mere building and Architecture. So we can say that such a transition has been made possible the moment an idea was introduced as the product of reason, thus raising Architecture into the category of aesthetics. With the concept of beauty added to the picture we are finally able to derive a more inclusive definition on Architecture, saying that it was developed by building the structural forms themselves into forms of beauty. This last explanation comes as the opposite of the one introduced at the beginning of the analysis by Ruskin, which brings us at an even simpler phrasing on this line of logic: "Architecture is building beautifully."