What draws the line between sculpture and building?

Author: Intelligence_06

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I was reading the materials the school gave out during this summer and apparently they classified the great pyramids of Giza as building but the Sphinx as a sculpture. Similarly, they classified Eiffel Tower as a building but the Statue of Liberty and Mount Rushmore as sculptures. 

If I seal every tomb chamber from every pyramid, would that make them non-buildings? If I build free warehousing inside the statue of liberty, would that make it a building?

The Eiffel Tower is unusable as a building except a few decks below and a nearly-inaccessible-unless-with-great-sums-of-money apartment at the top with no one living in it usually as of now. How much of a building really is it?
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@Intelligence_06
The architecture is built, while the sculpture is sculpted.
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@IlDiavolo
By that definition, the statue of liberty should be classified as a building as it is built from shipped copper panels, not carved from a copper mountain on the liberty island.

What do you think? I mean, I am not a professional to define, it is perfectly fine if somehow the curriculum changes the statue of liberty to a tower and the Eiffel tower a tower-shaped sculpture. Nothing more than that it looks off.
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@Intelligence_06
Well, it's obvious that for that scale the statue of liberty had to be constructed piece by piece and then assembled, but it was conceived initially by a sculpting process at a model scale and by a sculptor, so it's a sculpture in every sense of the word.

As to the Eiffel tower, at first sight it looks like a tower (never a sculpture ), but I guess it's considered a building because there are uses in some decks, like stores and other stuff. I really don't know much about it, but if it has spaces in it to be used, then it's a building.
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@IlDiavolo
but it was conceived initially by a sculpting process at a model scale and by a sculptor, so it's a sculpture in every sense of the word.
So is every single building, every brick is essentially carved out of some marble mining site either by machine or by our working hands. Also, every building is also sculpted in its concept stage, at least for the landmark ones, because you know, you need planning for such grandeur structures.

What is the fundamental difference between the statue of liberty and for example the Empire state building?

I really don't know much about it, but if it has spaces in it to be used, then it's a building.
True, but then you would be calling a telephone pole a building because people can go up there and while not recommended by any means sleep there in a sleeping bag. Heck, you would be calling Mount Rushmore a building if you use up all the rock space in the mount, for example.

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So, the question: If a mountain is completely carved from inside out from the foot of the hill to the tippy top leaving just a structurally sound(and possibly reinforced) husk that you can go on, what is it?
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@Intelligence_06
And then there are installations, monuments and constructions et al.
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And what exactly differs the three?

I am not nitpicking. I just wanna know.
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@Intelligence_06
And what exactly differs the three?
Inexact thoughts.


Though with regards to the question.

Buildings have a functional intent and sculpture has artistic intent.

Though for sure, language can accommodate the two, together in the same sentence.


Monuments, such as the Eifel Tower or Statue of liberty are perhaps representative structures.

Statues generally represent figures.

An art installation is what it is......Three dimensional constructed art within a specific space.

Though for sure also, language would be able to accommodate all of the above into one sentence.

Try it on the Egyptian Pyramids for example.


Though when it comes to interpreting a narrative, if one has a reasonable command of the relevant language, the one will probably tend to to make appropriate differentiations between the various objects.
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@zedvictor4
Try it on the Egyptian Pyramids for example.
The Pyramids have little to no room in it for anything more than a single Pharaoh, so I think it makes zero sense to call it a building. Heck, I think calling it a tower is giving it too much credit. I think it isn't a sculpture either as it looks way too sleek that it is more of a monument thing. There is a reason that it is puzzling to us modern educated people, because in our belief system, no one will just take large hunks of rocks from somewhere else and build a larger pyramidal hunk of rock that serves unknown purposes especially when technological advancement still hasn't progressed to such a stage.

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@Intelligence_06
I agree.

I personally wouldn't regard the Pyramids as sculptures

Though the monumental Pyramids were built and installed, with a both representative and functional purposes in someone's mind.

And formed from rock, sculpted into cuboid blocks.

So each block falls within the semantic remit of sculpture.


Have a nice day I_06.
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@Intelligence_06
So is every single building, every brick is essentially carved out of some marble mining site either by machine or by our working hands. Also, every building is also sculpted in its concept stage, at least for the landmark ones, because you know, you need planning for such grandeur structures.
I think you're missing the point about "sculpting". As Zed said, sculpture has an artistic intention. I don't think a brick has an artistic meaning at all, but everything is possible nowadays with the stupid contemporary art (which is very woke).

True, but then you would be calling a telephone pole a building because people can go up there and while not recommended by any means sleep there in a sleeping bag. Heck, you would be calling Mount Rushmore a building if you use up all the rock space in the mount, for example.
You're trying to force anything to be a building assuming unlikely things. Consider the purpose to define whether it's a scultpure or a building, as Zed said. The pyramids are buildings because it's a mausoleum which is considered a building because there lives a person (a dead one, yes, but at the end it's a person in our mindset).
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What draws the line between sculpture and building?

I would say a sculpture has no intended use other than to be looked at. A building is built for a predetermined  specific purpose. Or one could say  a sculpture is made for form and a building is built for function. One could go on and nit pick by saying the Gate Way  Arch has an elevator in it  to take people to the top but it is irrelevant because the arch itself serves no functional purpose other than to be looked at or out of.

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@Intelligence_06
What sodalite basically said, but think of sculptures and buildings as bimodal (an hourglass shape). They can certainly share traits. 
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@Reece101
Is there something that is both?
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@Intelligence_06
Yes, the Taj Mahal. But with that said it's function was primary and its form was secondary. Function cant follow form.  Function will always dictate form. Unless of course there is no function needed. The Gate way Arch is a perfect example. In order to have an elevator, everything had to be built around it, thus dictating its form. 

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@sadolite
Function cant follow form.
Depends how you look at it. When architects were first creating structures, especially early religious ones, did they have acoustics in mind? Or did they just stumble upon function? If so In that case, function has always followed form. I see function and form as both sides of the same coin.
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@Reece101
Form always gives way to function. The acoustics were most likely not even thought of at the time. A cave has acoustics.
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What draws the line between sculpture and building?
If you have to ask, you will not understand when told 

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"If you have to ask, you will not understand when told "

I agree, argument for the sake of argument. It's like asking what a woman is. I got sucked in and answered anyway.