In this ArchDaily article, author Diogo Borges Ferreira argues that writing has always been intrinsic to architecture, not merely a tool for explaining buildings, but a way of conceiving, theorizing, and critiquing the field itself. Long before architectural schools or professional practices, figures such as Vitruvius and Alberti used treatises to codify principles, project ideals, and establish architecture as a learned discipline. Ferreira shows how these early texts did far more than describe; they shaped architectural norms and frameworks.
In the modern era, architects have continued to deploy writing as a form of creative and critical practice. Le Corbusier, Adolf Loos, and Lina Bo Bardi, among others, used essays, manifestos, and publications to push architectural discourse beyond form and function. During the postwar decades, collectives such as Archizoom and Superstudio treated written texts as speculative space, using literature, collage, and image to question architectural conventions.
Ferreira highlights that in our era of interdisciplinarity, architects increasingly engage with systems, politics, media, and infrastructure. Writers such as Beatriz Colomina or Keller Easterling illustrate how texts and editorial projects intervene in the “constructed environment” even when no brick is laid. Writing becomes a spatial and political act. The article also emphasizes the role of editing, curatorial practices, and publication platforms in shaping how architecture is read, and how it influences which voices gain visibility.
Writing presents its own challenges for architects. Translating spatial, sensory, and material experiences into linear prose requires precision, humility, and rhetorical creativity. Ferreira suggests that good architectural writing must do more than explain; it should provoke, inspire, and participate in shaping future possibilities. He quotes Guy Horton: writing about architecture must reach “beyond the confines of institutionalized insularity” into broader public imagination.
Summing up, Ferreira’s article reframes architectural writing not as auxiliary or secondary, but as fundamental. Architects, by writing and editing, help define the boundaries, questions, and futures of their own discipline.