One recent estimate claims there are 4.732 billion buildings on Earth, but it’s difficult to establish a credible methodology to count them. Is Manhattan’s Rockefeller Center, created out of swaggering pride and ambition, in the same category as a shanty hut in an Algerian bidonville? Unless you live in a desert, buildings are unavoidable, making architecture not just a necessity for survival but the art form most pregnant with meaning.
When I was a boy I wanted to be an architect. Not because I was interested in drain schedules, load paths, wrangling with local authorities or designing kitchen extensions but because architecture seemed the most powerful expression of style. We know and judge cultures by their monuments, not their facility for credit default swaps.
