What if architecture was a story?

There he was, an old man begging on the busy streets of a crowded city. Next to him, a sign that says: ‘I’m blind, please help’.

Unfortunately, no one seemed to care. As if passers-by were blind as well, almost no one tried to help. Suddenly, a young woman approaches him and, without saying a word, flips his sign and writes something on it. As soon as she left, coins start pouring like rain on the blind man’s tray!

Later that afternoon, the young woman came back. He recognizes her instantly at the sound of her steps. Still mesmerized by the changes, he hurriedly asks her:

- Thank you, thank you! But what have you done to my sign?

- I wrote the same but in different words…

On the sign was written:

‘It’s a beautiful day and I can’t see it.’ 

I first saw this story as a beautiful video that you can find here. Then the screen goes black with a bold headline: ‘Change your words, change your world’.

I must have watched this video ten times and I still tear up whenever I reach the end. Why does the second sentence mean so much more than the first one?

And, on a seemingly unrelated note, it made me wonder... What if we’re doing a similar mistake when we talk about architecture? When we explain a project to someone else, we often let ourselves dive into all the jargon words to talk about double heights, slabs, beams, the budget it took to complete it, etc. However, while doing so, we forget something crucial. Architecture is not only a shelter. Architecture is an experience. And that’s the best way to describe it.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry said it best in his book ‘The Little Prince’:
If you were to say to the grown-ups: ‘I saw a beautiful house made of rosy bricks, with geraniums around the windows and doves on the roof,’ they would not be able to get an idea of that house at all. You would have to say to them: ‘I saw a house that costs one hundred thousand francs.’ Then they would exclaim: ‘Oh, what a pretty house that is!’

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