ABSTRACT
Architecture can be seen as the psyche, or collective mind, in spatial and structural form, of a culture. Until the invention of the printing press, architecture was the primary means of the expression and communication of the ideas, values, and beliefs of a culture. There are important ways in which architecture is still capable of more completely communicating the human condition than the printed word. It is essential that architects do not lose sight of the potentials for architecture to communicate and represent the human psyche and the human condition, and not stop developing the potentials for architecture to play those roles. Human beings have examined and explored what it is to be human since the beginning of civilization, through the mechanisms of tropic language in written and visual expression, in the condition of the self-consciousness of reason. The self-consciousness of reason and rhetorical expression define the human condition, and should therefore define architecture as poetic or artistic expression, as the manifestation of the psyche. In that architecture is a product of collaboration, and has a functional requirement, it is the most complete expression of the collective psyche of a culture, and the relation between the psyche and the functional, physical requirements of a human being in life, and the operational requirements of a culture. The relation between the mind and the material world is as old as philosophy, as in the relation between the nous poietikos, creative intelligence, and the nous hylikos, material intellect, of Aristotle.
