In the world of architecture, especially in academia, there is an alternate language that differentiates the neophytes from the virtuosos. Architectural rhetoric often exploits common English for its own purposes, but words are just as easily created from scratch. This transition can be quite confusing, and those outside the architecture circle have an even greater disadvantage. Many times, interlopers are baffled when they stumble across a design review because they come in thinking that they will hear about buildings and leave pondering the existential nature of phenomenological paradigms. The kicker is that the architects were talking about buildings the entire time.

While architecture students may laugh at the cryptic jargon imposed on them throughout school, I find it incredibly frustrating that architects are unable or unwilling to speak clearly about their studies to those outside of the discipline. Architectural lingo began as an attempt to succinctly describe the physical world, but it has since mutated into an incestuous conglomeration of esoteric terminology.

Sure, many subjects need their own jargon to describe things unique to their field, but architecture affects us all. Experts should speak about it frankly and candidly. Even professional architects have trouble relating their ideas to clients. So in my final column for the Daily, I will attempt to bridge this language gap by defining some of the key words found in ArchiSpeak. Here goes nothing.

Space: To the surprise of many, architects don't think they construct buildings. They're thinking about creating space, the interior volumes that people simply call "rooms." Buildings are merely the inconvenient consequence of space-making.

Aperture: A wall with windows sounds so banal. A mass punctuated with apertures seems formally intriguing. Hint: They're the same thing.

Spatiality: The shape of a room. Architects have a penchant for adding the suffix "ality" to every word they use, even though a shorter word may suffice. It gives architectural discourse a certain amount of complexiality.

Built Environment: When everything around you is manmade, you are within the built environment. When everything around you is natural, you're probably much better off.

Urban Fabric: Not to be taken literally - don't think Jeanne-Claude's orange curtains in Central Park. Urban fabric describes the nature of a city due to the relationships of its constituent buildings. Basically, it's what you see when you walk down the street.

Materiality: What a building is made of, except more abstract. See concrete, think monolithic expression of solid planes.

Intentionality: An architect's intent is what they tried to do, and their intention is what they tried to accomplish. Their intentionality is what they were thinking about when they intentionally obscured their original intent in order to achieve what they intended. It usually has something to do with spatiality.

Glazing: Why not just say windows? Perhaps architects think that the allusion to donuts will make their designs more appetizing.

Fenestration: Doors and windows. It's not exactly thrilling, but the term defenestration refers to the act of throwing someone out of a window.

Building Membrane: Architects also like to take terms from other disciplines and use them as their own. Obviously taken from biology, a building's membrane is the skin of its structure, or the outer walls.

Architectonic: Even though the definition of tectonics already relates to building and construction - the science or art of constructing materials - architects like to include the prefix "archi" wherever possible just to make sure everyone knows that they are still important.

Stereotomy: Involves the carving out of space from a solid. Ever wonder what turns a pumpkin into a Jack-O-Lantern? Now you know.

Orientated: A pretentious alternative to "oriented." It's one of my pet peeves. I looked them up in the dictionary, and they mean the same thing. Why use extra syllables?

Sexy: What architects like to say about anything that they think looks good, or well, sexy. Anything and everything. A model of a building can be "sexy." A drawing of a building can be "sexy." I guess we need to get out of the studio more.