Mintchy House

Architecture  (from Greek word  - arkhitektonike) is the art and science of designing and constructing buildings and other physical structures for human shelter or use.

A wider definition often includes the design of the total built environment, from the macro level of how a building integrates with its surrounding context  to the micro level of architectural or construction details and, sometimes, furniture and hardware. Wider still, architecture is the activity of designing any kind of system.

As a profession, architecture refers to the professional services provided by architects.

Architecture is also experienced through the senses, which therefore gives rise to aural, visual, olfactory,and tactile architecture. As people move through a space, architecture is experienced as a time sequence.

Even though our culture considers architecture to be a visual experience, the other senses play a role in how we experience both natural and built environments. Attitudes towards the senses depend on culture. The design process and the sensory experience of a space are distinctly separate views, each with its own language and assumptions.

Architectural works are often perceived as cultural and political symbols and, sometimes, as works of art. Historical civilizations are often known primarily through their architectural achievements.

Such buildings as the pyramids of Egypt and the Roman Colosseum are cultural symbols, and are an important link in public consciousness, even when scholars have discovered much about a past civilization through other means. Cities, regions and cultures continue to identify themselves with (and are known by) their architectural monuments.

Etymology and application of the term

The word “architecture” comes from the Latin architectura and that from Greek  (architecton), “master builder”, from the combination of - (archi-), “chief” or “leader” and  (tekton), a “builder” or “carpenter”. While the primary application of the word “architecture” pertains to the built environment, by extension, the term has come to denote the art and discipline of creating an actual (or inferring an implied or apparent) plan of any complex object or system.

The Architect

Architects plan, design and review the construction of buildings and structures for the use of people by the creative organisation of materials and components with consideration to mass, space, form, volume, texture, structure, light, shadow, materials, program, and pragmatic elements such as cost, construction limitations and technology, to achieve an end which is usually functional, economical, practical and often artistic.

This distinguishes architecture from engineering design, which has as its primary object the creative manipulation of materials and forms using mathematical and scientific principles.

As documentation produced by architects, typically drawings, plans and technica; specifications, architecture defines the structure and/or behavior of a building or any other kind of system that is to be or has been constructed.