What is Architecture?

Saskia Sassen: For me architecture at its best is a form of knowledge. It is not just putting up walls. It is incorporating all the knowledge we have.  How can we use biospheric capabilities and how can we insert them in buildings? How can we use technologies, light, existing breeze, etc? It really is a form of knowledge; but a form of knowledge that is an axial condition that brings together many different forms of knowledge to come up with something. I make a big distinction between simply building a building (construction, the construction industry) and architecture. A lot of what goes under the name of architecture, I think, is a very mediocre form of knowledge. It’s not living up to what it should be.

AD Editorial Team. "AD Interviews: Saskia Sassen" 22 Aug 2013. ArchDaily. Accessed 23 Aug 2013.