All architecture has art in it

While every form of art need not be architecture, every form of architecture ought to be an art.

Architecture is an epitome of installation art with assemblage of constituent elements which create the spatial narratives.

Moreover, in architectural installations perceiver is always an integral aspect of space and therefore cannot escape the emotions and interactivity of the space. 

Like any form of art, architecture is a process of communication where the designer encodes the messages and the perceiver decodes the same. The communication succeeds when intentions match the experience. Every form of art has its own tools, media and palette. The tools of architecture are: the form and massing, light and shadow, texture and colour. Its medium is the space and the palette is elements of space making such as column, wall, floor, roof, fenestrations. 

Architecture relies on visual percept as primary faculty of its communication and aesthetics. However, contrary to popular perception, art in architecture is not all about the appliqué external layer as embellishment alone, but instead is an inherent nuance of its resolute physicality.

Art in architecture, in addition to the visual, have spatial and notional role to play as well. Spatial role refers to modulation of scale, proportioning, nature of movement as well as perceived sense of belonging and boundaries. The notional role refers to associations and meanings it manages to conjure. 

There are three basic approaches seen for integrating art in architecture. One of which is where building itself is conceived as an art form. The second one is where art is seen as the space modulator. The third approach is about conceiving art as to embellish architecture.

For time immemorial architecture has instinctively been overlaid with art. Historically speaking, right from the cave dwellings it has been human endeavour to integrate art in architecture. With the exuberance of intricate carving and the enhanced opulence of the filigree for the grandeur of the palaces and public buildings man managed to express his supremacy within the terrestrial world.

The creative challenge is to see that art becomes more than visual entity in architecture. It has to participate in the mutual process of encoding and decoding of space by the perceiver and assume spatial as well as symbolic role. Semantics that art can bring to architecture can also prove quite effective in mutual communication with perceiver and thereby the conditioning his behaviour. For example the popular menace of spitting all over the public corridors have been very effectively checked by planting religious tablets of Gods and Goddesses.

Thus in essence art and architecture are inseparable. Art finds its place in architecture through structure, spaces or surfaces and inspires from nature, material, engineering or even the philosophy. 

Although art form remains subservient to the fundamental space making, even to the purist architecture, art remains an opportunity to humanise, particularise and emphasise the space while to involve, interact and engage the perceiver into these timeless spatial narratives...