Buildings are chunks of the material of the natural world, refashioned by humans and set down into place to stand as silent as the rocks and trees from which they were made. How can we describe that mute actuality? The words we use are a matter of translation and comparison, not of material fact. And since our narratives are as likely to be propagandas, or branding exercises, as they are descriptions of the world, writing about buildings often intensifies the cloud that obscures them rather
