Definition of "architecture" []

• The art and science of designing and erecting buildings. (noun)
• Buildings and other large structures: the low, brick-and-adobe architecture of the Southwest. (noun)
• A style and method of design and construction: Byzantine architecture. (noun)
• Orderly arrangement of parts; structure: the architecture of the federal bureaucracy; the architecture of a novel. (noun)
• Computer Science The overall design or structure of a computer system, including the hardware and the software required to run it, especially the internal structure of the microprocessor. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "He studied architecture at the University of British Columbia as an undergraduate and earned a master's in architecture from the University of California at Berkeley -- where he was given a teaching job in ethnic studies after students, angry about Vietnam, protested for a less Eurocentric curriculum."
• "The immediate future in architecture is likely to please the Matthew Yglesiases of the world."
• "One unwelcome trend in architecture is the inclusion of dual use cocktail spaces as a central function of museum spaces."