What Even Is Architecture? (And Why Do Philosophers Care?)

Imagine you’re walking through your neighborhood. You pass a towering glass office building, a small brick house with a porch swing, a gas station with a garish yellow sign, and a stone monument in the park that no one seems to visit. Which of these is “architecture”? All of them? Only some? What about a termite mound, or a bird’s nest, or a cave that people have lived in for centuries?

If that seems like a silly question, you’re in good company. But for a surprisingly long time, philosophers have argued about exactly this. It turns out that the answer matters—for how we treat buildings, how we think about art, and even for who gets paid when someone copies a design.

Here’s the strange thing philosophers noticed: We talk about “architecture” like it’s a special kind of thing, different from just “building stuff.” But nobody agrees on what the specialness is. Some say architecture is just a fancy word for well-designed buildings. Others say it’s a real artform, like painting or music. And a few philosophers think the question itself is the wrong one to ask.

Let’s dig into this.

Is Architecture an Art?

Start with something simpler. Is architecture an art? Not “can buildings be beautiful,” but is the whole enterprise of making buildings an artform, like poetry or dance?

One group of philosophers says no. The philosopher Stephen Davies points out that most buildings are designed to be useful, not to be art. Your school building was probably designed to hold classrooms efficiently, not to express deep truths about the human condition. That doesn’t mean it can’t accidentally be beautiful—but beauty isn’t the point. On this view, architecture is closer to engineering or craft: it produces useful things that sometimes happen to look nice.

The other group says yes. They point out that for thousands of years, from ancient Greece to the Renaissance to today, people have treated architecture as one of the fine arts. The philosopher Robert Stecker argues that we can just carve out a special subclass of buildings that are art, even if most aren’t. The Sydney Opera House is architecture-as-art; the average suburban garage probably isn’t.

A third group goes further and says all buildings are art—just some are bad art, or low art, the way a pop song can be art even if it’s not Beethoven. On this view, calling something “vernacular architecture” (ordinary buildings made by local tradition) only makes sense if we think of those buildings as art objects too.

So we’ve got three positions: (1) architecture is not art, it’s just useful stuff; (2) architecture is sometimes art, when it’s special enough; (3) architecture is always art, just at different levels.

Nobody has won this argument yet.

The Bigger Question: What Counts as Architecture?

That debate leads to an even bigger one. Imagine you’re a philosopher who wants to define what counts as an “architectural object.” You have two options:

Exclusivism says only some buildings are real architecture. Maybe it’s just the ones you can walk inside. Or maybe it’s only the ones designed with serious aesthetic intention—the kind of building that makes you stop and stare. The philosopher Roger Scruton thought architecture involves a special intention to “exalt,” to lift people up. A boring concrete parking garage probably doesn’t qualify.

Inclusivism says everything built is architecture. The philosopher Allen Carlson argues that all designed objects form a continuum—from a spoon to a skyscraper—and everything on that continuum can be appreciated aesthetically. On this view, your garage door, the drainage ditch by the road, and the Taj Mahal are all architectural objects. Some are just more interesting than others.

Here’s why this matters: If exclusivism is right, then most of what gets built isn’t really architecture, and maybe we should only care about the special stuff. If inclusivism is right, then how we design everything matters, not just the fancy landmarks. And that has implications for who gets called an “architect” (just the person who designed the fancy stuff? Or also the person who designed the practical stuff?) and for whether we should bother making ordinary buildings beautiful.

A Concrete Example: Ruins

Here’s a puzzle that shows why these questions aren’t just academic. Consider a ruined castle. It’s beautiful, tourists visit it, we call it “architecture”—but nobody built it to be a ruin. The original architects intended a functioning fortress, not a crumbling shell.

For the exclusivist, this is awkward. If architecture requires intention to create something aesthetically special, what do we do with ruins? The original intention is gone. For the concretist (someone who thinks architectural objects are just the physical buildings), a ruin is still an architectural object—just a degraded one. For the abstractist (who thinks the real architectural object is the design or plan, not the physical building), the ruin is just a defective copy of the true object.

And here’s the really tricky part: We sometimes design things to look like ruins (fake ruins in gardens, for example). That suggests we have a concept of “ruin” as an architectural category, even though ruins are basically failed buildings.

What About Buildings That Talk?

Some philosophers have argued that architecture is like a language. The idea goes back to the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius, who said buildings have parts that can be combined according to rules—like grammar. In the Renaissance, people compared architectural styles to Latin. In the 1960s and 70s, some architects literally wrote books about “the language of architecture.”

The basic idea is this: Buildings have a syntax (parts that combine in rule-governed ways), a semantics (they mean something), and a pragmatics (meaning depends on context). A column might mean “strength” in one culture and “government authority” in another.

Most contemporary philosophers think this is overblown. Buildings don’t work like sentences. You can’t really say “The building asserts that…” the way you’d say “The sentence asserts that…” There’s no architectural vocabulary that consistently means the same thing—a Greek column in ancient Athens, Renaissance Italy, and 21st-century Washington D.C. means totally different things. Buildings communicate, but not the way language does.

The philosopher Nelson Goodman had a different take: He thought architecture might be an “allographic” art, like music. A musical work is the score, and any performance that follows the score correctly is an instance of the work. Similarly, a building might be the plan, and any building that follows the plan correctly is an instance. But Goodman concluded architecture isn’t truly allographic, because history and context matter too much. A perfect copy of the Parthenon in your backyard isn’t really the Parthenon—it’s a replica.

What Makes a Building Good?

Philosophers also argue about how we should judge buildings.

Formalists say it’s all about the shapes, colors, and visual properties. If a building looks good, it’s good. Context, history, and meaning don’t matter. This is tempting because architecture is so visual, but it misses something: The Louvre Pyramid in Paris is striking partly because of its contrast with the historic palace around it. A formalist can’t explain that.

Anti-formalists say non-visual properties matter too. We might appreciate the University of Virginia campus not just for its Neoclassical forms, but because of what it means—democratic ideals, the history of American education, the way it still functions as a university today.

One important version of anti-formalism is functional beauty theory: the idea that a building is beautiful when it looks like it does its job well. This goes back to the philosopher David Hume and was developed recently by Glenn Parsons and Allen Carlson. A sleek bridge is beautiful because it looks efficient and appears to work. A church is beautiful when its design seems to express spiritual purpose.

But what about ruins? They have no function, yet we find them beautiful. The functional beauty theorists have an answer: Ruins aren’t functional objects, so they can’t be beautiful that way—but they can be beautiful in other ways (like their shapes or historical associations). This doesn’t defeat the theory, but it shows it’s not the whole story.

Are Buildings Moral?

Here’s where things get serious. Buildings affect people’s lives deeply. A poorly designed hospital can make patients sicker. A beautiful public square can bring a community together. A prison designed to isolate and control can cause real suffering.

Some philosophers, like John Ruskin and August Pugin, thought architecture is basically moral—that good design and good ethics are the same thing. Others argue that aesthetic value and ethical value are separate: a building can be beautiful but morally bad (a gorgeous slave quarters), or ugly but morally good (an ugly but warm homeless shelter).

The philosopher Roger Scruton thought architecture expresses community values, and that designing honestly (not pretending a building is made of stone when it’s actually concrete) is an ethical obligation. The philosopher Karsten Harries agreed, seeing architecture as a way of sharing what a community believes is important.

This gets practical: Should architects design things that are environmentally sustainable even if they’re ugly? Should they prioritize beauty if it costs more (and therefore reduces affordable housing)? There’s no easy answer.

The Big Picture

So here’s where we are. Philosophers still argue about:

Whether architecture is an art (or just a craft, or both)
What counts as architecture (everything built, or only special things)
Whether buildings “say” anything
How to judge whether a building is good
Whether buildings can be morally good or bad

These aren’t just philosophy-class puzzles. They affect how we design cities, preserve historic buildings, train architects, and even decide legal cases about copying designs. The way we answer “what is architecture?” shapes the world we build for ourselves.

Next time you walk through your neighborhood, try asking: Which of these buildings is architecture? Why? And does your answer change how you think about what the architect should have done? You’ll be doing philosophy—whether you meant to or not.

Appendix

Key Terms

Term	What it does in the debate
Exclusivism	The view that only some special buildings count as architecture
Inclusivism	The view that everything built counts as architecture
Formalism	The idea that only visual properties (shapes, colors) matter for judging architecture
Functional beauty	The idea that a building is beautiful when it looks like it does its job well
Allographic art	An art (like music) where the work is the set of instructions and any correct copy is equally valid

Key People

Roger Scruton (1944–2020): A British philosopher who argued that architecture involves a special intention to “exalt” and that it expresses community values through an “imaginative perception” on the viewer’s part
Stephen Davies (born 1950): A philosopher of art who argues architecture is not really an artform because its main goal is usefulness, not beauty
Nelson Goodman (1906–1998): An American philosopher who explored how architecture might function like a symbolic system and whether it could be considered “allographic” like music
Allen Parsons and Glenn Carlson: Contemporary philosophers who developed a theory of “functional beauty” for architecture and design
John Ruskin (1819–1900): An English critic and writer who believed architecture was deeply connected to moral values and honesty

Things to Think About

If someone makes a perfect copy of a famous building (like the Parthenon) in their backyard, is it the same building? Or is it something different? What’s lost?
A building that’s very beautiful but completely impractical—does it count as good architecture? What about a building that works great but is ugly?
Should we design all buildings to be beautiful, even if it costs more and means fewer buildings get built? Or is it okay to have ugly but cheap buildings so more people can have shelter?
If a corporation builds an environmentally destructive factory that happens to be gorgeous, should we admire the architecture or condemn it? Can we do both?

Where This Shows Up

City planning debates: When communities argue about whether new buildings should be “contextual” (matching the neighborhood) or “innovative” (doing something new), they’re debating versions of the formalism vs. anti-formalism question
Historic preservation laws: Legal fights over whether to tear down old buildings often turn on questions of whether they’re “architecture” worth preserving
Environmental activism: Arguments about “green” architecture force us to decide whether sustainability is a separate value from beauty, or whether sustainability is a kind of beauty
Copyright law: Architects can sue for copyright infringement, but only if architecture counts as a creative work—which depends on the philosophical debate about whether architecture is art