The air we breathe

Chris Thompson

Architecture is as natural as breathing.

It's an impulse, an instinct, the tangible extension of self-preservation. To say the history of architecture reflects the history of us is no more an overstatement than arguing the persistence of life is our nature.

But it's easy in the modern world to lose the fundamental definition of architecture as shelter. It's come to represent more than survival. Architecture is cathedrals, skylines, warm homes on winter nights. Architecture is strip malls, parking ramps, fast-food restaurants.

Architecture soars in the clouds of art and stumbles in the alleys of commerce. We wield architecture with the philosophies of our generations and let it stand as a testament to our ambition. The architects of our time mirror our priorities, and their work is as striking or repulsive as our needs dictate.

And it's everywhere we want it to be with a range limited only by our imagination. We bend architecture to the curves of our whims. We want it invisible. We want it to scream for attention. We honor its foresight and deride its pomposity.

But it's always there, waiting around a corner or at the end of a long, winding driveway. And for all of its public context, our reaction to architecture is almost always personal, that is when we notice it at all.

It's so ingrained, so elemental, that most of it doesn't even register. And much of it doesn't need to. Architecture, with a utilitarian core, makes its living on usefulness, and it doesn't often have the time or inclination to move us with its elegance.

But when it does, it stops us cold. It leaves us sitting at a green light or shocked on a busy sidewalk. The elements of architecture can astound us with their simplicity, overwhelm us with their grandeur or simply make us smile.

Great architecture captures our attention. It forces us to take notice, even to come back again for another look. It stays with us, urging our consideration, challenging our conventions.

It's at those moments that the science of design becomes the art of invention.