The Purpose of Writing

Writing on architecture is essentially a mode of producing meaning and attentive thoughtfulness, where writing and theory are not just finite practices or processes. They function like the space of a workshop where ideas and built histories are evaluated, measured, and analysed through critical tools, and the experiences of a workman – the maker (and practice of shaping and constructing) and the intellectual (processes of knowing)

- Kaiwan Mehta

Architecture is the act and art of making buildings, shaping the built environment and the physical fabric that makes a world the human being and societies occupy, be inside, and constantly engage with, exchanging relationships between everyday life, the world of bricks, mortar, steel and glass, as well as the civilisation of symbols and meanings the built world holds within and is shaped by. Architecture is a complex object, entity, organism, system and weave of civilisation and human culture. Architecture grows cumulatively always, whether it draws from history or stands in rigid criticism of it. And this architecture has to be always explained and understood; as architecture changes even after it is built. Every built space has a life beyond what its author created, and every author has a life beyond – before and after, every built space s/he has created. To write about architecture is a complex process of unearthing the nature of a practice that contributes to the cultural life of human societies as well as the processes of civilisation and everyday politics.