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Is architecture art? When dealing with examples of ideology and iconography is it correct to call architectur?

When dealing with examples of ideology and iconography, is it categorically correct to place architecture in the same realm as art? Art, as a modifier of a cultural world view, helps to articulate the status quo in a given culture at a specific point in time. Do you find the argument that architecture expresses the beliefs, desires, or interests of the most elite (because they have the power to influence architecture) to be sufficient reason to examine architecture as art? I'm writing a paper and I want to know if my logic is b.s. or not.

Public Comments

1. Architecture is the best form of art because it can have beautiful form and a beautiful function. Add that to the fact that people get to look at it without wasting time in some lame art museum, and you have the most powerful statements an artist can make. I don't know how you can look at something like the White House or the Pyramids and say they don't express a culture's worldview.
2. Architecture is probably the best form of art when dealing with ideology and iconography. The most successful art comments on the status quo. Most architecture does the same, except the international style, which is supposed to be timeless(one could argue that is a comment on the status quo) On a side note, It would also be interesting to note that most art museums are heavily stocked with religious artifacts, and most historic pieces of architecture are churches, temples, or mosques. That should say something about the need for beliefs to be expressed in art.
3. i would say that yes architecture is its own style of art, whether religious or not. iconographyically speaking the status quo may be represented for any given time yet there will always be variations. look at modern american churches, catholics may use a victorian style building or a more modern set up like cubist design, so in religious terms it varies between the desires of the leading powers and those who have not. i do not feel that just due to elitist ideals that architecture should be studied as art, i feel architecture should be studied as art for the sinple fact that there are both secular and sacred, those art forms usually define a culture, aka embleishments wealth or poverty.