My visual response to the question "Architecture is?" is my feeling on what architecture education is, or isn't.  It seems as though the process of learning architecture is through a series of examples on what not do.  Thus, the image.  Not that all my feelings are negative, or that there is much "right" about the collection of images, but it is rare to find a professor that is enthusiastic about something happening in the real world, or a popular architecture literature that doesn't criticize the way things are done today.  Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I just haven't slept much lately, but this is the impression I have been getting lately.

architecture is...

The art of human intervention.  From the first human to use trees for shelter to the most high technology “green” construction.  Everything people create, build, modify, inhabit, or destroy is architecture.  Not that nature cannot be architectural; it often serves as the inspiration for architecture, but architecture comes to existence through human means.  Architecture is part of our everyday lives; it manifests itself in everything we do, our emotions, our well-being, our environment.  It changes with us and we change with it.  It is the foundation of society, our legacy to be remembered by, and that by which we define ourselves and our peoples.  Without it, and without its diversity, there would be no tomorrow.