ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the persuasive qualities of architects' design processes, presentations, and completed buildings to explore how it is part of architects' character to effectively persuade: as a rhetorician, persuader, seeker of beauty and truth, seducer, and developer of trust. Pausanias wrote that after Athens had been unified, Theseus created a cult of Aphrodite, Pandemos, and Peitho on the slope of the Acropolis in Athens. While much is written about Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty, less is known of her attendant Peitho. Architects use media such as drawings and models to explore concepts and to persuade others to their views because they are easily manipulated media in a design process. Pertaining to a completed construction, architects cannot stand in front of their buildings to verbally explain their intentions; instead, the buildings must assume this task. Buildings can visually represent the persuasive rhetoric determined by architects. Often this is accomplished through the use of metaphors.
