1

Stephen Davies, Philosophy, University of Auckland

Important note: This is a final draft and differs from the definitive version,
which is published in Philosophy and Architecture, Michael Mitias (ed),
(Amsterdam and Atlanta, Ga.: Rodopi, 1994), 31-47. I have been assured by
the University of Auckland's research office that if they have made this
publicly available then it does not violate the publisher's copyright rules.

Is Architecture an Art?

The questions I address are these. Are buildings, the products of

architects efforts, artworks? If so, are they the artworks of their architects? If
yes, then is architecture an artform? My answers are sometimes, usually, and
no. In the papers third section I enquire of those buildings that are art what
kind of artworks they are - temporal, multiple, or performance? I suggest
they find their artistic confrres in these categories only occasionally.

Before I get to those answers and the arguments leading me to them, I

consider in this first part (1) if, as assumed already, the artistic product of the
architects craft is a building and (2) I attempt to characterize what it is for
something to be a building.

(1) In some artforms, the artist works directly on her materials in

fashioning her artwork. This is true of the painter in oils and the sculptor
who carves marble. In other artforms, the artist does not directly produce the
piece and he need not work at first hand on its materials. This is the case
with the composer who produces a score and the playwright who produces a
script. Neither the score nor the script is the artwork as such. These are
instructions specifying the determinative properties of the artists work to
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those who read and execute them according to the conventions applying to
the relevant notation. Now, if the architect is an artist, he is so more in the
manner of a composer than a painter in oils. If he produces an artwork, that
is not the drawings on which he works directly but the building created by
others in following the instructions implicit in those drawings.

A corollary of the above view might easily be overlooked. An architect

who presents sketches of the appearance of a finished building and can offer
no more than this could not stand to the building as the composer stands to
her work, as its creator. The composer deals in the medium of sound, not of
drawing or writing, even if she records her labors by applying a pen to
manuscript paper. Her concern with sound is not mainly theoretical (as a
physicists is), for she must be interested in the practical means by which
those she directs are to execute her instructions successfully. Similarly, the
playwrights medium is drama, not writing as such; he must understand
acting and stage-craft, if not as a practitioner then as a director. To work as
an artist, typically, is to work in and through media. The architects media
are wood, steel, glass, plastic, concrete, and the like, as well as space. If
architects are the artistic authors of the buildings they claim as their artworks,
they must show an appropriate awareness not only of the media from which
such things are constructed but also the skills and limitations that govern
their construction. A person does not show that awareness unless he can

produce drawings from which builders might work. If he can draw the
appearance of non-existent buildings he might be an artist as a painter or as a
sketcher, or he might have a status like that of a person who is acknowledged
as supplying the idea or plot others turn into a screenplay and, from that, a
film, but he is not an artist qua architect, I hold. If Jrn Utzon not only did
not but could not solve the constructional problems posed by his prize-
winning idea for the Sydney Opera House, and if that building is an artwork,
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then those who did, thereby making it possible for the building to be
constructed, are its co-artists.

The above point is easy to miss because, in practice, it is common for a

skilled architect to come up with the concept, delegating to minions the job of
supplying working drawings (the detail of which is formulaic and repetitive
sometimes). Architecture, like film-making, frequently involves a team effort,
even if the kudos goes rightly to those whose authority and creative vision
give them a commanding position within the ensemble. (The team might
have more than one leader and a building that is an artwork might have
many co-architects each of whom is a specialist in some aspect of design.) But
if the chief architect claims to be an artist whose designs become artworks, he
must work with an awareness both of structural principles and practical
matters, so that he could translate his visions into working drawings if he
chose, whether he does so in fact.

Some so-called Decontructivist architects, such as Zaha M. Hahdid,

have produced prize-winning drawings and models; many details of
construction are absent from these. Her concern lies with theory, shape, and
form. She seems content that her projects stop at the drawing stage, believing
that already they are established not only as works of art but as architectural
ones in that representation. Is Hahdid an architect as I have characterized
that role? Someone who draws or models buildings with no intention that

these be built and showing no concern with their constructability, materials,

and uses might produce work of the highest aesthetic quality, but his artistic
role is that of painter/drawer or sculptor, I maintain. Similarly, his plans
are not plans as such; rather they are pictures in the style of architects plans.
At best, this artists work stands to architecture as does the stage-designers.
But, as I understand her goal, Hahdids designs are meant to be buildable,
even if most are not built. Her main focus is on the ideas her designs
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embody. These can be conveyed to a degree that suits her purpose by the
plans and models she produces. If Hahdid is an artist she is one as an
architect; it would be a mistake to equate her apparent indifference to the
actualization of her projects with a lack of concern in her work for the media
of architecture. One could work as an architect while realizing that ones
design never will be realized for lack of money, or of interest, or of materials,
or of suitably skilled craftspersons. Indeed, where competitions are held, one
might become a famous architect even if none of ones designs is executed.

(2) I argued that, if the efforts of architects result sometimes in the

production of artworks, these are the buildings constructed by those who
execute the architects plans rather than the plans themselves. Now I take up
the question of what a building is. My goal is to map the subject-matter to be
interrogated, though I do not attempt to offer a definition of building in
terms of jointly necessary and sufficient conditions. After distinguishing
buildings from some constructions that are uncontroversially artistic in
provenance (statues) and from others that are borderline in this respect
(arches), I indicate some features salient in our common understanding of the
notion and refer to these in differentiating buildings from outwardly similar
non-artistic constructions (such as excavations and ships).

As practitioners of one Fine Art, sculptors are bound to produce

artworks; sculptors are artists. So, if the question is not to be begged in favor

of architects being artists and buildings being artworks, the role of architect
must be treated as distinct from that of sculptor and buildings must be
separated from sculptures and statues. Such distinctions are not counter-
intuitive, especially where one has in mind paradigm cases, even if some
architects, such as Giotto, Michelangelo Buanarroti, and Gianlorenzo Bernini,
are also famous as sculptors or in the other arts. Thus, if the Statue of Liberty
is a statue, as the pieces title suggests, it is not a building, despite including
 5

rooms, stairs, lifts, doors, and other features often found in buildings. The
point is not that there cannot be a building in the form of a woman, or a giant
vegetable, or a hamburger - the world is full of such things. (One example,
more distinguished than most, is the temple of the sun at Konrak on the Bay
of Bengal, which is shaped as a chariot.) It is, rather, that a building in the
shape of a woman would be a building by virtue of features of its functional
design not depending directly on its having the shape it does, whereas a
statue of a woman takes its character as a statue primarily from that external
form.

Also to be distinguished from buildings, for the sake of this

preliminary, ground-clearing discussion, are fountains and monuments
(arches, obelisks, stone circles, and the like), since these provide so many
cases that are borderline between artistic and non-artistic constructions.
Cleopatras Needles and LArc de Triomphe are not buildings or, anyway, are
not among our paradigms of such. Even if some of these not only turn out to
be artworks but also to be so as the designs of architects, it would be better to
build the case for architects being artists by justifying the art-status of more
orthodox, mundane constructions. I know from conversation how various
are peoples intuitions when borderline cases are raised not only about what
is ar t but also about what is a building, .

Putting aside the similarity between some artworks and buildings, as

well as the difficulty posed by cases with a claim to being cross-categorial, it

also is appropriate to set apart buildings from other members of the wider
class of constructions. Here it is important to acknowledge the difference
between building as the gerundive name of an activity and as the name of
the product resulting from this activity. Although the activity of building
results in constructions, by no means are all constructions buildings. Which
ones, typically, are not? - roads and paths, tunnels and bridges, parks,
 6

gardens, open air amphitheaters and terraces, open swimming pools, damns,
aqueducts, mines, and quarries; also, ships and boats, cars, caravans, trains
and planes. Some of these could have buildings on them, or might include
buildings, but are not themselves buildings.

A comparison between these and obvious paradigms of buildings -

private homes, blocks of flats, halls, hotels, schools, factories, barns, and
sheds - brings the following to light. In the normal case, buildings are
constructions made for human use. Though they serve a variety of functions,
the relevant use frequently involves the occupation of the building and
depends on the permanence of the building, as regards both duration and
location. Buildings usually enclose a space accessible to humans and possess
both an interior and exterior. In the following paragraphs I clarify what is
covered by the terms italicized here.

The requirement of occupation is a vague one but might explain a

reluctance to regard the pyramids at Giza as buildings. The worry, I imagine,
is not so much that the pyramids house the dead as that they exclude the
living, doing so not with locked doors but by the absence of doors. A
mausoleum (such as the Taj Mahal near gra) or a charnel house might count
unequivocally as a building, as the pyramids perhaps do not, provided it is
designed to permit access and, thereby, occupation.

The requirement that a building be of a permanent, stationary

character suggests that the functional use of buildings depends on their not
being ephemeral. The point, it should be emphasized, is one about the type
of construction rather than about the fate, intended or not, of the particular
instance. A building can be moved sometimes and a building can be
constructed with the intention or in the knowledge that it is to be temporary,
because it is part of a film set that is to be destroyed, say. Typically if not
 7

necessarily, buildings are designed and made to last where located unless
subject to unusually powerful, destructive forces, and this is because the use
to which buildings are standardly put depends on their displaying these
features. This is one reason architects must concern themselves with the
character of their media (as stressed above); with the tensile strength of steel,
with the load-bearing capacity of beams, with the liability of shallow
foundations to slide if the substrate moves. Even if the goal is to create
something that seems to defy gravity, the architect cannot ignore gravity.

It is their relative impermanence and instability that call into question

the claims as buildings of tents and marquees, and of ships and other forms of
transport. The former are, in general, temporary shelters, though this is not
to deny that a tent might remain on site and withstand the elements for years,
and the latter are commonly made to be mobile, though a ship might never
leave its mooring and might be used as a casino. Caravans and recreational
vehicles can remain stationary - indeed, might have their wheels removed -
and in other respects may be very like homes, but they are not buildings, for
they are of a kind made to be movable. Also, the Trojan horse, though it was
designed to be occupied by humans, is not a building both because it is a
statue and because it is mobile.

An aside: Once I taught a graduate from the universitys School of

Architecture who criticized his professors for, as he saw it, their irrational

obsession with designing buildings that would not fall down. No doubt this
student was right to stress that people would have a dramatically heightened
sensitivity to their architectural environment were buildings produced
without regard for a distinction between the possibilities of the horizontal
and the vertical. Nevertheless, in rejecting the importance of permanence and
stability, he revealed himself as more likely to succeed in academe than in the
profession; a promise he has since fulfilled.
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In the normal case, buildings enclose an interior space, accessible from

outside, and possess an exterior surface; usually they have walls and a roof.
(Deconstructivist architects, among others, sometimes aim to undercut the
dichotomy between interior and exterior; for instance, see Peter Eisenmans
design, which is based on the Mbius strip, for Max Reinhardt Haus intended
for Berlin. Note that the goal in these cases often is to integrate the two, so
that the difference is not so striking as it is in the normal case; that is, still
there is a concern to delimit areas of space, even if the boundaries are blurred
rather than sharp.) Solid constructions lacking an interior are more like
(some) statues or monuments than buildings. And if excavated houses or
complexes - such as those at the opal town of Coober Pedy in South Australia,
or military headquarters hidden beneath the ground, or extensive catacombs
and sewerage systems - are not buildings, this is at least because they lack
exterior surfaces. If open-air sporting stadia are not buildings, this is because
they are not roofed, though a roofed grandstand could be a building as part
of such a stadium. A watchtower constructed in the manner of scaffolding
might fail to be a building in lacking walls. In that case it is doubtful also that
the Eiffel Tower is a building, though it might be a monument. Equally, piers
and oil-rigs might have buildings on them without themselves being
buildings. (By now the justification for excluding monuments and fountains
from the architects realm might be clearer. Not only are some undoubted
works of art, even if others appear to be without aesthetically redeeming

properties, but also many lack properties paradigmatic of buildings.)

I hope the previous discussion makes plain some of the features central
to, if not always definitional of, our concept of a building, thereby revealing
what is bothersome about borderline cases that lack one or more of these
characteristics while displaying others. The point of the exercise is to identify
the ultimate product of the architects efforts and to do so in a manner
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distinguishing it on the one hand from the outcome of the sculptors work
while on the other confining it to a class significantly narrower than that of all
constructions, of every product of the activity of building. Without the first
distinction it follows automatically that the members of a sub-set of
architectural products are bound to be artworks, since sculpture is an
accepted artform. Without the latter distinction it seems impossible to take
architecture seriously in its claim to be an artform, for holes in the ground,
suburban roads, and sewerage systems seem far too prosaic and aesthetically
uninteresting in most cases to be generated through the practice that marks
an artform.

*******

In this second section I turn to the agenda outlined at the outset by

addressing the first question - are any buildings artworks? This is to be read
as asking if they are works of art like Mona Lisa, Hamlet, and David, not
merely if buildings are the products of skill. Even if, in answering this
question, we disregard the claim to art-status of the Washington Monument,
Stonehenge, Charess statue of Helios in Rhodes, the Hanging Gardens of
Babylon, and other non-buildings, it seems obvious that many works are
uncontroversial in being both buildings and works of art. For instance, the
Taj Mahal, the Sydney opera house, the duomo in Florence, El Scorial outside
Madrid, the palace of Versailles, and the Sistine Chapel all are acclaimed as

works of art. So, the first question is answered, uncontroversially I think,

with yes.

The second question is: Are architects always the art-makers, the
artists, of the buildings that are artworks? Observe that this question is not
settled affirmatively merely by discovering that some buildings designed by
architects are artworks. There are at least two ways in which a building
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might become an artwork, or might be included in one, without its being an

artwork attributable to its architect; in both cases it becomes an artwork in
mid-life. In the first, an established artist appropriates a building, making of
it a conceptual or readymade artwork. (Once Marcel Duchamp tried to
transform the Woolworth Building in New York into an artwork. Apparently
he was more successful in taking smaller items planned and manufactured by
others - bottleracks, combs, urinals - making them his artworks by using his
artistic authority in declaring them such.) In the second, some agent of the
artworld acknowledges the historic or aesthetic value of an item or type of
thing by recognizing it as art. In this way cave paintings, religious artifacts,
distinctive pieces of furniture, some embroidered quilts, and some modern
Italian cars have been taken up by the artworld and have been accorded the
status of art though they were not art before this recognition. Even where the
status is applied not only from the time of recognition but retrospectively to
the time of creation, such pieces are not made as or to be art by their creators.
So, though it may be true, as I take it to be, that the Parthenon, is an artwork,
it does not follow simply from that fact that it was made to be art by its
designers acting as an architect.

I have indicated above why sometimes it will not follow from a

buildings being a work of art that it is its architects artwork; nevertheless,
most buildings that are art have architects and are created as art by their

architects. As examples one might cite Frank Lloyd Wrights Falling Water
House, Le Corbusiers Chapel of Ronchamp, Mies van de Rohes Barcelona
Pavilion, and the Pompidou Center by Piano and Rogers.

Note these caveats, however. (a) Not every building created as an

artwork must have an architect. One can imagine a building cobbled together
in an ad hoc fashion, not in accordance with an overall design, that,
notwithstanding this serendipitous method of planning, succeeds as an
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artwork. Such a piece would have as its artist not an architect but its builder.
Whoever made the crucial decisions about its form and appearance would be
the buildings artist. (b) Not every building created as an artwork by
architects will have been determined in its detail before its construction
begins. One can imagine a building, perhaps one taking many decades to
erect, that falls successively under the control of numerous architects, each of
whom draws on the others earlier designs in evolving her new vision. (This
would appear to have been the case with many Medieval cathedrals.) If the
completed building is an artwork, it is one with many artists. (c) Not every
building created as an artwork by architects will have been determined in its
detail by any single individual. As indicated earlier, co-artistry might be
distributed throughout a team of architects, or between successive architects,
or between architects and draughtspersons, or between architects and
builders. The Taj Mahal was designed by a committee with members from
India, Persia, Central Asia, and beyond.

We arrive now at the third, vital question. Some buildings are

artworks and most of these are made to be so by their architects, but is
architecture an artform, one of the high arts, to be classed with opera, ballet,
painting, poetry, and the like? Let me make clear what I take to be entailed
by different replies. If the answer is yes, all buildings designed by
architects will be art, though most might be poor artworks. If the answer is

no, then, though some buildings designed by architects are works of art,
most buildings designed by architects will not be artworks of any kind. To
assert that architecture is an artform just is to say that architects are artists
who, as such, are bound to produce artworks, if not always of the best kind,
in performing their role. Whereas, if architecture is not an artform, some
architects might acquire the standing of artists and some buildings might be
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made to be artworks by their architects, but the architect is not an artist and
does not produce art in performing her standard role.

Now, according to a well-entrenched view, a creative artist practising

an artform is limited only by the boundaries of her own imagination; the
artist is unconstrained by externally imposed laws or rules. Because the
practice of architecture is subject to regulations and limits of many kinds,
architecture cannot be an artform. (i) The design of permanent, stable
buildings must respect the laws of gravity and relevant properties of the
material used. Gingerbread does not have the load-bearing strength of wood,
so the walls of gingerbread houses no doubt must be broader than those of
wooden ones, or buttressed to support the weight of a marzipan roof. (ii)
The architect must work within limits set by political laws and civil
regulations. Where I live there are height restrictions to be observed, fire-
walls sometimes to be built, at least two doors to be installed between a toilet
and an area in which food is eaten or prepared, and so forth. Building laws of
this kind pay regard to the fact that people occupy buildings. The rules
preserve standards so that users are not endangered in their lives or health by
the buildings they occupy. Naturally enough, the designs of various building
types - halls, restaurants, theaters, factories, houses - must meet different
requirements. (iii) More generally, that buildings are intended for human
use imposes many functional constraints on the architect. Structures should

allow comfortable access; that is, there should be doors. There should be
windows that admit light and air or, if not, vents to the outside, or ducts for
air-conditioning; there should be toilets, hand-basins, showers, and baths in
numbers appropriate to the level and style of the buildings occupation; there
should be power-sockets and light-switches within easy reach. (iv) The
architect who is employed or commissioned might be subject to the desires
and whims of those for whom he works.
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Architecture is not an artform according to the view mentioned above,

but is that view a convincing one? In many ways it is not. Sculpture is an
artform, yet the sculptor is no less the servant of gravity and of the properties
of his media than is the architect. Moreover, the sculptor sometimes is
constrained by the same building regulations and by-laws, and also might be
directed by a commissioner or employer. But, even if we reject the model of
art-creation provided above, still it remains, I think, that the architect usually
and quite properly gives priority to functional over aesthetic considerations,
even if she often seeks to integrate the two where possible, whereas the
practice of sculpture and other artforms aims primarily at artistic goals,
accommodating and reconciling non-aesthetic considerations as appropriate.
Given how expensive buildings are to make and given that the over-riding
consideration almost always is that of providing efficiently, comfortably, and
unobtrusively for the activity centered on the building, it is not surprising
that aesthetic considerations often play a secondary role in the architects
enterprise, even if these are major concerns for the few architects fortunate
enough to be able to devote themselves to such matters.

To regard architecture as an artform is to take the activities and focus

of a very few as establishing the ethos and norms of the whole profession,
while blindly ignoring the manner in which the majority of architects
performs and characterizes its job. I think it is inappropriate to take this

stance. To rate architecture an artform is to condemn most of the profession

unreasonably and unfairly by suggesting that this majority produces inferior
artworks when, in fact, it responds to the reasonable demands of its
employers by designing functionally successful buildings within the myriad
of constraints commonly applying, not least of which are financial ones.

Perhaps this rejection of architectures claim to be an artform is too

hasty. Earlier I distinguished buildings on the one hand from sculptures,
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standing stones, and the like, and on the other from the wider class of
constructions, which includes drains and trains. Now, it might be thought I
should have narrowed the focus yet further, separating architecture as the art
practised by architects from the mundane craft followed by the
draughtsperson, thereby targeting the relevant sub-set of buildings rather
than the general class. In this view, then, I have failed to recognize
architecture as an artform as a result of confusing the realm of architect-
designed buildings with the wider one of buildings in general. Though most
buildings are designed, they are not designed by architects and do not fall
within the ambit of architecture. That no works within this majority are art
does not count against the claim of architecture to be an artform. Just as
literature is an artform that should be distinguished from journalism and
other kinds of writing, so architecture is an artform that should be
distinguished from other types of building-design.

I reject this approach. I see no basis in the skills used or the works
produced for delineating the role of architect from that of draughtsperson
such that a person filling the one role is an artist whereas an occupant of the
other is not, or such that the first person holds a position within the artworld
from which the second is excluded. Unless one adopts this vacuous
formulation - that architects plan all and only the buildings that are artworks,
whereas the remainder of buildings, if designed at all, are inevitably

produced by draughtspersons - it will not be possible significantly to separate

architecture from building-design, I claim. I deny a genuine basis for a
distinction between the architect and the draughtsperson such that the former
always deals in the production of art whereas the latter never does. The
architect might charge more; he might supply impressions of how the
finished result will appear, including sketches of plants evocative of the
ambience desired; and he might register a higher score on the governments
 15

ranking of professions. But, I maintain, none of this reveals the architect to

have a more secure claim than the draughtsperson to the status of artist and
none of this shows architecture to be distinct in kind from the more prosaic
incarnations of building-design, or to be an artform if building-design is not
one also.

*******

Suppose we are agreed that some buildings are artworks and are such
by their architects design. One issue then remaining is that of considering
what kinds of artworks these are. When buildings are artworks, where do
their affinities lie? The matter is an important one because it is arguable that
artworks derive both their identities and their artistically salient properties
only in relation to categories or classes of art. Whether some property is
artistically important in an artwork depends, at least in part, on what kind of
work it is, since properties significant by being unusual in one genre may be
standard in others. Sculptures tend to be three-dimensional whereas
paintings are not; as a result, what one should make of some works tendency
toward three-dimensionality will depend to a large extent on what kind of
piece it is. In this section I argue that, as artworks, different buildings share
similarities with different artistic super-classes. (1) A few are temporal, like
novels, music, films, and plays, rather than atemporal, as are most statues
and paintings. And (2), most are singular, like hewn statues, rather than

multiple, like novels and symphonies. (3) Those that are multiple are not
regarded as of the performance variety.

(1) Consider first the property of temporality. Some artworks are

temporal not merely in that they exist and are explored by their audiences in
time but in the further sense that they are structured to be experienced in a
temporal order. Such a work has a beginning and an end, as well as a
 16

sequence of elements leading the appreciator from the one to the other.
Novels and musical works are typically temporal in this sense, whereas
sculptures and paintings are not. The point is not that the latter might be
taken in at a glance, which usually is not true anyway, but that there is no set
order in which their various parts are to be experienced. The sequence of the
experience is not designed to be constitutive of the works aesthetic character.
The painter might design her work to attract the viewers eye to particular
paths or lines but the effect is more structural than temporal; what then is
drawn to the viewers attention are the aesthetic dynamics of lines of force or
composition and these might be noticed independently of the order in which
the work is scanned.

Many buildings, like many sculptures, indicate, depict, or articulate

movement and in that way imply or direct the users course. The Gothic
cathedral is structured to display the liturgical progression from east to west.
Foyers in the theaters designed by Alvar Aalto draw the user into the main
hall. But, just as few statues depend directly for their artistic achievement on
the sequence in which their elements are experienced, so too for those
buildings with a claim to be artworks. Nevertheless, a building that is a
temporal artwork in the sense discussed above is describable. Such a piece
includes an entrance and an exit. It presents to the person who passes
through it a series of vistas revealing thematic or structural integration,

contrast, or another relation, so that there is connection and development

rather than mere succession between the views presented. One work
possibly meeting this account is Barry Gassons Burrell Gallery near Glasgow,
since here the viewer is led deliberately on an aesthetic journey from room to
room. Another might be the Museum of Fine Arts, Louisiana, near
Copenhagen, by Jrgen Boe and Vilhelm Wohlert, the openings of which
frame a series of views each of which becomes more closed and intimate,
 17

progressively transferring the viewers focus from the surroundings to parts

of the building itself.

If there is a comparison to be made here with other plastic artforms or

works, it is perhaps with landscape design or gardening. A relevant
consideration in such cases surely is that of size, given that the work is
presented primarily to the sense of sight. If some spectacles are withheld
from the appreciative viewer at the outset in order that her passage reveals a
sequence of prospects, then distance, or parts of the work, or the lie of the
land, must block those vistas from sight at the point of ingress. For buildings,
relevant effects might be achieved by lighting, perhaps, or by blinds
manipulating the audiences visual access to the work, though such devices
are not standard to the architects repertoire.

To the extent that architectural works might display this mode of

temporality, they are less like symphonies, films, and drama than like novels
or gardens. The sequence of events in works of the former types unfolds at a
fixed pace of a second per second; by contrast, there is no given pace or rate at
which a novel must be read, readings of its parts need not follow each other
at set intervals, and readings tolerate the possibility of back-trackings. The
gardens explorer has a freedom similar to that of the novels reader, even if
movement through the garden is directed. And the person who experiences a
building, including one displaying the features of temporality emphasized

here, usually has the same sort of freedom as the novels reader or the
gardens ambulator. (This would not be so if the architect intended the user
to be confined to a vehicle or escalator while passing through the building.)

More like the symphony or drama than the novel is the fountain
designed to present a play of water-jets or lights structured not merely by
succession but in a fashion somehow acknowledging what has gone, so that
 18

what follows refers to the displays sequence. Likewise, those gardens that
highlight not merely the passing but also the cyclic series of the seasons when
viewed from a fixed point such as a window, so that they can be seen as an
allegory for life itself, are temporal in the same fashion. Now, architectural
works might display this, further degree of temporality by melting into their
sites, so that changes in the site through time are echoed by alterations to the
buildings qualities, or by including appropriately organized light shows as
constitutive of, rather than as incidental to or merely illustrative of, their
forms. I know of no building of which such things are true, though many are
designed to be unobtrusive in their settings.

(2) Consider now whether buildings are singular, as are hewn

sculptures, or admit of multiple instances instead, as do cast bronzes, novels,
and symphonies. Of course, outside the world of kitset homes, which is an
architectural type not usually regarded as generating artworks, most
buildings exist only in single instances. This does not settle the question
posed, though, since works that are multiple in principle might possess in fact
only a single instantiation. This occurs, for example, where a play folds after
its first night and is never again performed.

So, if not always by the number of their instances, what distinguishes

multiple from singular artwork-types? The former are marked by three
methods of generation, I think. (a) A model-instance, one that is supposed to

be imitated in producing subsequent tokens of the work, may be offered, as in

ballet or the novel; or (b), instructions (scores, scripts, and the like) for the
creation of instances can be issued to those familiar with the conventions for
interpreting the instructions and skilled in the actions commanded; or (c),
templates - molds, woodblocks, etched plates, silk screens, film negatives -
might be provided from which instances can be cloned by a more or less
mechanical process.
 19

The instancing of singular pieces sometimes also is proceeded by

sketches, instructions to welders, and the like. Moreover, a singular work
might involve the slavish imitation, acknowledged or not, of another piece.
So it is not that multiple works always are prefigured whereas singular ones
never are; neither is the claim that singular pieces have an originality
somehow absent from multiple ones. As I see it, the crucial difference
between multiple and singular art-types comes to this: Where the form of the
work is singular, it is completed only when its instance is produced. No
matter how many sketches have been made, the marble statue is done only
when it has really been hewn from some piece of actual marble. By contrast,
Haydn finished a symphony when, satisfied with its score, he wrote Fine
Laus Deo, though the completion of the score pre-dated the first
performance. So it is that composers and playwrights might finish works
having no instances in that those works never have received a single
performance. Meanwhile, whereas the novelist and ballet director do not
complete their works prior to delivering an exemplar, the model in these
cases has a normative function not occupied by singular pieces. The model-
instance serves not only as a fully-fledged example of the work but also as a
template for yet-to-be-made instances.

One way of making the distinction is this: To forge a singular work

one need only copy it and try to pass it off as the original, whereas to copy a

multiple work usually is to re-instance it instead. (Forgery might be

involved, however, where a copy is made by using the artists casts without
her permission, or where copies in excess of the number stipulated in a
limited edition are made.) One forges a multiple work either by illicitly
presenting as original a set of instructions for the production of its instances -
that is, by forging the original score, or manuscript, or model-instance - or by
creating a new work in the same style and passing it off as by the same
 20

author. Another way of drawing the distinction makes the following point:
To eliminate a singular work one need destroy only a single material object
with which it is identical or in which it is embodied or from which it emerges,
whereas to excise a multiple piece one must destroy not only all its examples
but all the things from which an instance might be generated, such as casts
and the like, including all the memories that might be aggregated in
recreating a model-instance or a notation no less detailed than the original.

With the above in mind we can consider the building that is an

artwork created as such by its architect. Because the architect produces a set
of instructions (or provides sketches that others turn into working drawings)
for builders, and because there might appear to be nothing inherent to those
instructions preventing their being executed more than once, buildings as
artworks seem more likely to be multiple than singular. This impression is
misleading, though. Just as the composer does not notate what can be
presumed as resident to the performance practice of those for whom the score
is intended, so the architect does not specify every aspect of her plan in the
drawings produced. Though the plans produced by the architect usually are
not explicit about the matter, she almost always works with a particular site
in mind, tailoring the character of the building to its setting. For instance,
Utzons design of the Sydney Opera House, with its maritime echo in the sail-
shapes of the various white dome segments, as well as its general structure

and proportion, suits it intimately to the harbor setting of Bennelong Point. A

similar concern for the integration of the building with its environment is
shown in Frank Lloyd Wrights Falling Water House. If these buildings are
site-specific, and if their sites are location-specific, then these works are
singular for all intents and purposes. A building constructed elsewhere to the
specified plan would not be an artwork even if these are, or would not be the
same artwork. So, despite the apparently general nature of the instructions
 21

produced by the architect for the builder, to the extent that these take special
account of features of the site on which the building is to be located, the
building is likely to be singular as an artwork. Many buildings appropriately
to be regarded as artworks are site-specific in this fashion. (The musical work
can be finished with the completion of its score, before it is instanced, because
the interpretation of the notation is governed by interpersonal conventions.
To the extent that design notations fail to capture the detail of site-specificity
according to publicly accepted conventions, I think the architectural work
differs from the musical in not being completed before its construction, or the
construction of detailed models instead. Perhaps it is significant that the
architect often retains responsibility for the work during the phase of
construction, whereas the composers job is done usually before the
orchestras first rehearsal.)

I have implied that, insofar as they qualify as artworks, many

buildings are site-specific. This implication would be undermined if
architects regularly instruct modification of the site itself. The Taj Mahal
might derive important aspects of its character from its environment, but that
was extensively modified by the designers to suit the building. If sites can as
easily be manufactured as buildings, then the site-specificity of a building
need be no bar to its multiplicity in principle, because the requisite site might
be reproduced in other locations and a further instance of the specified

building might be constructed there. By contrast, if sites are location-specific

and if locations cannot be reproduced at will even where their physical
natures can be duplicated, the singularity of site-specific buildings is more
secure.

If someone replicates the Taj Mahal and its surrounds in Santa Barbara,
relying on the pun that the site includes everything that can be sighted from
the original, still it would be doubtful that the copy is an artwork even if the
 22

original is one. The point is not that the light and climate will differ in Santa
Barbara from that near gra, thereby affecting the experience of the building,
though this might be true and relevant. Rather it is that the original, which
duplicates no other piece, is the supreme achievement of Mughal style,
whereas the Santa Barbara version, which reproduces without making the
architectural achievement it displays, merely is a copy of an old Indian
building. Even were the original building and geographical environment
tele-transported to Santa Barbara, it seems likely that crucial properties of the
piece depending on its cultural and historic context would be destroyed, so
that, though it is more than the shadow of its former self, it is not more than
the mere material of its former self.

The moral is this: Buildings are located not merely at physical sites,
but in socio-historic space. They take their identities and some of their
aesthetically significant properties from this location. If buildings as artworks
usually are site-specific, if sites are location-specific, and if locations possess
socio-historic as well as physical characteristics, then buildings could be
multiply instanced as artworks, if at all, only within the same culture and
period, however closely the copy resembled the original otherwise. Because
locations are no more replicable than are history and culture, the singular
buildings of prior eras cannot be multiplied in their number as artworks,
however faithfully copied.

These considerations make plain not only why most architectural

works with a claim to art-status exist in only one building (or complex) but
also why this situation cannot easily be altered. The argument does not rule
out the possibility that architectural pieces, qua art, are multiple, however. If
the execution of a design results in a building that is an artwork, and if the
design specifies in detail how the site, as well as the building, is to be
constructed, and if duplicates are made within the same area and era as the
 23

first, then the artwork has multiple instances. Aesthetic refinement and
subtlety do not inevitably depend on originality, so the goal of replicability
can be consistent with the pursuit of the highest aesthetic ideals, as is
evidenced, perhaps, in the modular and much repeated style of the
traditional Japanese home.

(3) Some multiple-instance works, such as dramatic and musical

pieces, are created by the artist for performance, whereas others, such as cast
bronzes, are not. Earlier I implied that there is a more or less mechanical
process for generating multiple non-performance works, which are likely to
resemble each other closely as a result, whereas a work for performance
provides instructions that can be brought to life only with the creative
participation of the performer, so that the various instances of a work for
performance often differ considerably according to their performers
interpretations. Performers are rightly acknowledged as artists in their own
right, so that one goes to see Oliviers interpretation of Shakespeares Hamlet,
while those who run off lithographs, screen prints, or bronzes, receive no
artistic credit.

Are multiple-instance architectural artworks of the performance or

non-performance variety? So odd is the idea that builders perform a building
in constructing it, one is immediately inclined to dismiss the former
suggestion. Yet there are important respects in which the instructions created

by architects more closely resemble scripts and scores than woodblocks,

photo negatives, and the like. The builder must be able to read the
architects instructions and, like a performer, brings to their execution
considerable skill and practical knowledge. In the past, important details
sometimes were left to specialized craftspersons; for example, skilled masons
might have the job of creating the gargoyles. Despite these points and the
degree of collaboration sometimes involved, nevertheless I doubt that the
 24

builders role displays the artistic creativity that would make it comparable
with the performers. For understandable reasons, the relevant authorities
nowadays insist that architects provide detailed instruction before building
commences and that builders adhere to these scrupulously. To the extent that
buildings are multiple artworks specified in their architects designs, these
works of art are best not regarded as of the performance variety.1
Stephen Davies,
Department of Philosophy,
University of Auckland

NOTES

1 For their comments and suggested examples I thank Peter Bartlett, Jan
Crosthwaite, Tim Dare, John Fitzpatrick, Stan Godlovitch, Kathleen
Higgins, John Hunt, David Novitz and Denis Robinson.