visual art (thoughts)

When architects make something for the sake of aesthetics - it could be form, ornament, cladding, material choice - it is going into visual art: like painting or sculpture. On the other hand, when architects make choices out of functional needs (or requirements, like in parametric systems), it is not visual art. So there are these two categories. An architect then consciously chooses whether or not to design this building as an artist or as a functionalist. These overlap most of the time, but the powerful works tend to lean very much to one side or the other.