ABSTRACT
One must conceive in order to realise. Our earliest ancestors only built their huts after having conceived the image thereof. It is this production of the mind, this creation that is constitutive of architecture, which we may consequently define as the art of producing and bringing to perfection edifices of all kinds. The art of building is therefore only a secondary art, which it seems to us to be appropriate to call the scientific portion of architecture. Art in the strict sense, and science, these are the notions that we believe should be marked out distinctly in architecture.
