Architecture is not anything physically existing. It is a word with various connotations. Thus, architecture is well suited for discursive reasoning. Defined most generally, architecture involves physical artefacts, and principles as means for giving meaningful forms to the artefacts. Artefacts exist only in physical forms.
Principles that control the forms appear in four elementary types: attributive, proportional, relational and substantial. Principles are configured in norms, rules, and recommendations, as well as in the routinely followed habits in the operative practice of planning and design. Artefacts themselves can only be considered within their own general environment, with nature as the proper constituent part of it. Recognition of the artefact-nature setting is basic in the practice of architecture.