There is a romance to the start of a building's construction. The structural skeleton becomes a modern day ruin--both archaic and abstractly sculptural. One always wishes building would stop. Abandon the site and leave these bones poetic. Construction of course proceeds to a utilitarian end.

There is another point however during construction when another layer unfolds.  The walls or window mullions appear and the surroundings--the views--lock into place.  It is startling how surroundings that were always there suddenly "pop" into a hyper-relationship with the interior space. The building stops being the Thing and instead transforms into a mechanism for truly seeing one's surroundings.

Japanese architecture often celebrates this sense of heightened awareness more than western designs. Great buildings negotiate this connection to context with their duty helping visitors see and feel where they are far more than focus on the architect's hand. For me, it is architecture's true SuperPower.