Of all of the visual and applied arts, architecture alone engages us on both profound and mundane levels.
We inhabit our buildings for shelter as well as for cultural expression; they are built with technologies that are often basic, yet also capable of exquisite precision. Our buildings, like ourselves, are integrated into a larger context. We create them as an expression of beauty and function; therein rests the art and craft of our profession. Architecture depends upon invention and discovery: both are essential to the creative process; each is informed by a specific place, time and program. Architecture, whether it is an object in the landscape or an interior space, activates in us a physical connection and reinforces principles of human organization through proportion and rhythm, hierarchy and scale. A building’s site circulation and topography, its tectonic language, skin and mass, its entrances and interior spaces, are all components of a larger continuum of the built and natural environment.