1If there is an ahistorical essence of architecture, this cannot be simply deduced from a collection of objectified buildings, theories, or drawings. The reality of architecture is infinitely more complex, both shifting with history and culture, and also remaining the same; analogous to the human condition which always demands that we address the same basic questions to come to terms with mortality and the possibility of transcendence opened up by language, while expecting infinitely diverse answers, appropriate to specific times and places. Architecture possesses its own "universe of discourse" and over the centuries has seemed capable to offer humanity far more than a technical solution to pragmatic necessity. My working premise is that as architecture, architecture communicates the possibility of recognizing ourselves as complete, to dwell poetically on earth and thus be wholly human: the products of architecture have been manifold, ranging from the daidala of classical antiquity to the gnomons, machinae and buildings of Vitruvius, from the gardens and ephemeral architecture of the Baroque period to the built and unbuilt "architecture of resistance" of modernity such as Le Corbusier`s La Tourette, Gaudi`s Casa Batlo, or Hejduk`s "masques." This recognition is not merely linguistic {like a semantic pair where a=b}, it occurs in experience and like in a poem, its "meaning" is not separable from the experience of the poem itself; as an "erotic" event it overflows any reductive paraphrasing, overwhelms the spectator-participant, and has the capacity of changing one`s life. Therefore, the pervailing and popular contemporary desire to circumscribe the epistemological foundations of our discipline concerns primarily the appropriatness of language to modulate our actions as architects, but can never pretend to "reduce" or "control" its meaning. The issue is to name the kind of discourse that may help us better articulate the place which our design of the built environment may play in the technological society at the end of the millenium. 2Indeed, after two hundred years of struggle testing the possibilities of instrumental discourses in architecture {after the model of Durand}, it is not difficult to come to the conclusion that a radical alternative must be contemplated. The perpetuation of a dialectic of styles or fashions is as senseless as the notion that architecture can only provide material comfort and shelter. Furthermore, it is not enough to claim pluralism and diversity as an excuse for fragmented and partial answers. The first responsibility of an architect is to be able to express where he/she stands, here and now, rather than postponing answers under the excuse of either progressive knowledge or deconstructive strategies. 3A first step is to obtain some clarity concerning the role of discourse in understanding a practice that traditionally was acquired through long apprenticeship. The common {false} assumption in our digital age that meaning is simply equivalent to the communication of "information" makes this discussion even more pressing. The realization of a project obviously demands different kinds of specialized knowledge. But is there a way we may conceptualize, what is of the essence in architectural discourse, a mode of speech that might result in a working hierarchy of necessary knowledge in the realization of architectural work? 4Since the beginning of our tradition as reflected in Vitruvius`s Ten Books, it became possible to render certain aspects of the knowledge necessary to the architect as techne -a stable discourse, focused on mathemata, that could be transmitted through a "scientific" treatise. Nevertheless, traditional theory always acknowledged that the crucial questions of meaning and appropriateness could not be reduced to the same level of articulation. Appropriateness {decorum} was always understood in relation to "history", to the capacity of the architect to understand the work at hand in relati
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