Architecture has always been commonly regarded as one of the arts. Incorporating as it does the arts of both painting and sculpture, it has indeed been called the “mistress” art. But unlike the other arts it alone is useful in the ordinary sense of the word. Unlike pictures, poems, sculpture and music, it protects us from the rigours of the environment. In it, artistic expression and functional fitness are inextricably mixed together. Architecture is also recognized as having a socio-political function, reinforcing the authority of those who seek to organize the society in which they live. For architecture represents an influential picture of the ideal world, drawing mankind along various paths of social development and evolution.

At its most basic, the term “architecture” can also be used to describe any structured object. In this sense the cathedral, the bicycle shed, and even the pine tree, the ants’ nest or the sea shell could all be described as architecture. This view is a useful stimulant to our appreciation of built form even if we take the more conventional view and believe that architecture only correctly describes a building which does more than serve a basic function and delights the senses, such as the great temples and palaces and other habitable products of the famous designers.

As there is no universally agreed definition ? even the Concise Oxford English Dictionary is rather vague, defining architecture as

??thing built, structure, style of building, construction”

-architecture may be taken to mean any habitable building with a form dictated by considerations beyond pure utility. The earliest surviving examples of stone-built architecture date back six thousand years but the roots of architecture go back further still. The tendency for mankind to organize its communities and habitations into meaningful shapes seems instinctive, like the drive to make pictures, to dance or to sing. Impermanent architecture probably flourished (within the limits of its builders’ resources) for many millennia until human resources made it possible to give architecture a more lasting and permanent expression. Archaeologists recording evidence of neolithic settlements have uncovered evidence of fairly extensive village complexes. Lines of post-holes preserved in the old layers of clay give a clue to the kind of structures these prehistoric people built. However, there is little evidence of the “architecture” of these peoples in the sense of the aesthetic effect sought after and the means by which it was achieved, and while the traces are of intense academic interest, they supply us with little information as to how the building actually looked. However, this ephemeral architecture is not entirely lost to us beyond all conjecture. In order to imagine some of its probable forms, we need only look at the contemporary building of cultures with strong neolithic roots.