ABSTRACT
Our current definition is, architecture is shelter with symbols on it. Or, architecture is shelter with decoration on it. In this chapter, to justify our definition of architecture and to clarify how the author come to it, he uses four comparisons—those between Rome and Las Vegas, Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art, Mies van der Rohe and McDonald's hamburger stands, and plain and fancy styles of architecture. The Pop artists opened up our eyes and our minds by showing us again the value of representation in painting, and bringing us thereby to association as an element of architecture. Definitions of architecture now included meaning via association as well as expression—a term of the fifties—via perception. The author explains how he looked at the piazza in that decade in the same way that he looked at an Abstract Expressionist painting, and how this limited our vision of the urban landscape.
