An Taisce supports high architectural standards in new development. There are three principles that are essential to good architecture. A building must balance all three to be a success:

·         Function: This refers to how a building is used. Whether a building is used as a house, a store, or a museum, it must accommodate practical requirements for every purpose within its walls. A building without function may be beautiful, but it's sculpture, not architecture. Artist Richard Serra, for example, creates room-sized steel enclosures that are structurally daring and mysteriously beautiful, but you can't live in one.

·         Structure: This refers to how a building stands up. Whether it consists of steel columns, wood studs, or brick walls, the framework must resist gravity and the loads placed upon it. But to be architecture, it must do more. It must create beauty from structural necessity — this is what differentiates architecture from engineering.

·         Beauty: This refers to the visual and sensory appeal of buildings. It is what Vitruvius called "delight." Architectural delight can be found in a neatly patterned brick wall, a vaulted stone ceiling, or a tiny window emitting a stream of sunlight. Beauty is the ultimate test of good architecture. Without beauty, a highly functional building is merely utilitarian without rising to the realm of architecture. It's the difference between a suburban tract house and Frank Lloyd Wright's masterpiece, Fallingwater (right).

What is considered beautiful and what is considered ugly changes over time. The Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., designed by Edward Durrell Stone, a leading architect of his day, was considered the height of architectural beauty when it opened in 1971. Today, it's ridiculed for its boxy shape, gigantic lobbies, and modernistic decorations.

Sometimes, an architectural style that was once considered beautiful will fall out of favor, only to be rediscovered decades later. In Miami Beach, the city's once thriving Art Deco hotels fell into disrepair in the 1970s and 1980s after years of neglect. After preservationists pointed out the merits of these architectural treasures, the hotels were renovated to become hip tourist destinations. Art Deco has once again become synonymous with the beauty of Miami Beach.

Truly outstanding works of architecture never fail to wow us with their spatial power. Such structures as Stonehenge in Salisbury, England (architect unknown) and the Parthenon (left) in Athens, Greece (by architects Ictinus and Callicrates with Phidias) are still admired for their monumentality even though they are thousands of years old.