Is it a building, or a piece of architecture?

In response to Richard Meier's statement on "architecture is art," I found a video of the particular interview in which he explains the statement.

Question: Is architecture art?

Richard Meier: Architecture is art. Every work is a work of art. Architecture is the greatest of the arts, and it encompasses thinking that other arts don’t even deal with. Like relationship of the work to the individual human being – the person who uses it; the person who experiences it; the person who sees it; and how that person perceives that space. You know there’s an old adage that a sculptor can make a square wheel, and an architect has to make a round one. You have a certain responsibility not just to your client, not just to the people using the building, but to the public at large with what you do.

Question: When does a building become art?

Richard Meier: Well I don’t say all buildings are architecture, first of all. So there’s lots of buildings that have nothing to do with architecture. They have to do with economics. They have to do with an enclosure, but I wouldn’t consider them works of architecture. To be a work of architecture is creating a work of art.


This also the question of is a prison work of architecture. Obviously a prison only functions to enclose, and it is important for cost effectiveness and practicality. A prison would most likely not be considered as architecture because designed to consider how comfortable or uncomfortable the prisoners would be housed.
Another example, nobody would consider the grocery store at the gas station as a piece of architecture. It is just a building that serves to enclose.

To Richard Meier, architecture is art because
1. it deals with aesthetics
2. design is incorporating art with practicality
3. when a building is designed to be responsible to the people who are housed, and certain space is designed to have particular function due to the usage