Reflexion Sur La Question Architecturale

The crisis affecting architecture today is one involving its capacity to express meaning, which stems from a broader decline of its symbolic function in the West.What distinguishes an edifice from a building? What differentiates architecture from construction? It is that architecture essentially conveys a discourse which assigns human beings a place in the cosmos. Historically, it was political powers who defined this place and made architecture the chosen vector of the message they wanted to convey.At present, in an era when core beliefs are dying out, architecture is bereft of the legitimacy once bestowed upon it by this representation of power. Architecture has nonetheless retained this profoundly significant vocation to convey meaning, thanks to certain attributes which this study strives to describe and comprehend.In exploring a certain number of canonistic, yet obsolete, notions – composition, ornamentation, symmetry, rhythm, etc. – this work outlines the conditions under which such a symbolic function existed.For venturing into an ontological approach to architecture ultimately calls for an exploration of what makes the latter an art rather than a trade: humanity’s statement in confronting time and death.