Marshall McLuhan explained our unawareness of how much we are shaped by our communications media by saying ‘Whoever discovered water, it wasn’t the fish.’

Something similar applies to architecture. Our relationships with it are so intimate, so fundamental and all-pervasive as the settings of our lives, that we do not fully register how much they sustain and shape us. Thus architecture is not a regular topic of normal conversation as are the other arts, an omission that is not fully explained by recognising that it is not only an art. Even architects underestimate how important architecture is and fail to grasp some of its fundamental purposes.-ar