Architecture is not building

Aaron Betsky makes it pretty clear: it's not the buildings that make architecture, it's the architects, and they don't even really need to build. In fact, architecture is more about unbuilding than building, or so says Betsky.

Betsky talks about architecture like someone who is not only passionate about the building-lingo, but about life in general. It's no surprise he wrote a lot about architecture and sex, also becoming one of the main contributors to a spatial interpretation of queer theory.
During his conference at Transmitting Architecture in Turin, he explained how architecture is the whole process around building, not necessary including it. Thinking, talking, experimenting with an environment's geography, landscape, history, people, relationships, culture, beauty.
The exhibition he's curating, taking place at the Venice Biennale and titled Out There: Architecture Beyond Building, deals with interventions in space and landscapes aiming to make our world feel like home, without covering it with the "architecture graves." That is, the buildings. Betsky's vision is rather minimal: he looks for beauty in simple and subtle things rather than in grand celebrations of wealthy clients that only house bureaucrats.
Making the people feel at home in their world is the mission of the architect, but by people Betsky means the widest range possible. When we interviewed him and asked him about low-cost traveling, he believes that what we call "low-cost" is not properly "low" for the environment, and it's available only to high-end customers and not to the much bigger crowds of the poor of the world, who can't afford to satisfy their most basic needs. We're not so sure.

But enough with the babble, the video interview we made speaks for itself. Check it out.