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...building. Like many arts, however, architecture encompasses not only utilitarian concerns but also aesthetic concerns. This distinguishes it from purely utilitarian construction. Architecture is shaped by a number of cultural factors as well. These cultural factors vary according to both time and place. To understand architecture, therefore, we must understand not only the structural aspects of construction, but also the artistic concepts, in the cultural concepts.
This distinction can be better understood when one considers the fact that the common home could most effectively be built as a simple box with a slanted roof line to shed water and other precipitation. The architectural construct of a home, however, encompasses not only shelter value but such concepts as beauty, flow, volume, and even emptiness. Such concepts entail not only strictly structural concerns that such concerns as the use of light and shadow and even surface decoration. Corbusier summarizes:

Architecture is a brilliant, orthodox and original jigsaw puzzle of masses combined in light. Our eyes were created to see the forms in light; light...