In the Edifice Complex, Sudjit explains that “architecture is a means to tell a story about those who built it.”  Stories that express capability, decisiveness, seduction, imitation, celebration, and ideologies of the architects, the countries and the patrons.  While he sounds believable (especially because of his passion in looking for the symbolism and the whys of architecture) I find it hard to see architecture in the same perspective.

The stories in architecture constantly change depending on what you believe and how you see the work.  Because architecture is an existence independent of those who pay for it, it’s impossible to find a definite meaning and story that everyone will believe in.  In the examples that Sudjit uses, Hussein’s use of architecture is a good example.  When describing Hussein’s quest to build across Iraq, Sudjit describes several motives that Hussein may have had in building his mosques and postulates even more motives and attempts at symbolism that the world may have had in the same mosques.

Whether or not architecture is a symbol or a story, it always has a purpose.  Sudjit mentions that the basic level of building is for pragmatic, useful purposes as well as an effort to keep a restless workforce quiet.  This I agree with.  Instead of the whys of architecture, I would rather look at the building itself.  A building meant to be a house will continue to be a house where humans sleep, eat and live no matter what it symbolizes or means because in the end it’s still a house.  The stories that people see are the stories that they themselves have placed on a building.  As an independent existence, architecture won’t have a story unless there is a story one wants to invest in it.