Depiction: architecture is a concept

Depiction conventionally indicates the representation of a concept or an object by means of a picture. Yet how does architecture relate to depiction? Can architecture depict? To address what architecture ‘does’ in terms of depiction, it is necessary to move away from the phenomenology of perception and from art history. Whereas painting presents a view of the world on canvas, architecture involves a vision that makes a world within that very world. The question to explore here is not so much the relationship between architecture as an object and its visual representation before and after construction, but rather the very instance of depiction performed by architecture itself. Depiction in architecture, far from being the two- or three-dimensional representation of architecture itself, is the framing of reality by architecture: how architecture interprets and ‘depicts’ a reality that may be physical or imagined but is always embodied in architecture itself. Conceived in this way, architecture does never merely entail building: it is in itself a depiction – of the world, of an idea, of itself. Architecture in itself re-presents, and it therefore both interprets and constructs a reality.