<div>What is architecture</div>

During a recent discussion scuffle on the pages of archiweb, architects were unable to satisfactorily explain what architecture is.
I don't hold it against them, and perhaps it is even a good sign that they couldn't. They have the ability to see and perceive something that most of their surroundings cannot, but because they were most likely born with this ability, they do not know what it is like to lack it. Just as a person who lives with a musical ear finds it hard to imagine perceiving the world without it. Conversely, someone who does not possess it must make all sorts of awkward attempts and then show a lot of humility in order to enjoy music while coming to terms with the fact that they may never be able to engage with it fully themselves.
Anyone can read anything they want, can understand building houses, can master Autocad and Archicad, and even "draw nicely," but none of that changes the fact that architecture simply exists. Architecture is spatial creation, a creation whose outcome is in space, not in shape as in sculpture, nor in sound as in music, or in language as in literature.
In order for anyone to engage in it, they must primarily be creative, but they must also have spatial imagination, which, as I once read in some popular science magazine, only a very small percentage of the population possesses (a psychology friend said it might be about 5%).
Therefore, spaces that arise from creation are architecture. Spaces (not rooms, little rooms, kitchens) that are created (not built, stacked together, or copied). Thus, architecture cannot be, and never is, the same as it was any time before. We may like it more or less, it may delight us or even irritate and anger us, it may inspire, but it is always architecture.
I know many people who never read fiction or go to concerts, and yet there is no censorship imposed on them, nor is music removed from public broadcasting.. If all (or just Czech?) architecture is unbearable for someone, let them use the comfort of its construction, and the offered experience of space will easily pass them by, as after all, its share of all construction is so small that it hardly seems worth mentioning (around 5%?).
Once, I wanted to find out what the word "modern" means, but I found nothing satisfactory, or I did not understand it, which I have the right to do, since I am just an architect.
However, what "modern" means in architecture is not that difficult. Since roughly the end of the 19th century, the proportions of the constructions that build spaces have fundamentally slimmed down relative to the dimensions of the spaces they define. The difference is so enormous that it is incomparable to the change in proportions of constructions between any known historical eras. Architects who strive to utilize this reality in their spatial creation design modern (and for me perhaps even neo-modern) architecture. Those who unnecessarily encase this still relatively new phenomenon in old, familiar, endlessly repeated layers and then slice it into rooms and kitchens might not even be architects.
I am always surprised again at how many opponents usually arise during the construction of a "modern" design object, regardless of who its author is, even if it is just a family house. No matter what their initial objections are, they always ultimately end up at the appearance of the building. I have yet to experience modernist critics (pardon, lovers of modern architecture) protesting against an old-fashioned pile of rubbish. Perhaps there once were such people in the Czech Republic, but today we are a minority. Honestly, there are not many countries where we would be in the majority, but there are some.
Perhaps enough has been said about justification and trying to please, and it is time to firmly demand our rights as a minority. It is, after all, "only architecture, but I like it."