Buildings as Cultural Information

I was greatly interested in our discussion today concerning buildings as cultural information, a form of realized information, which is the process of taking an abstract design and have it come to life in the concrete world. In truth, this is what buildings are...information, a design or plan that was thought of in someone's mind, namely that of an architect, which was brought to reality in the concrete world. I thought also that it was interesting how different buildings were from realizing information through reading and playing. A building is something concrete in the real world. Although we can associate books with reading and a music CD with playing, these are not the direct form of information, but objects of the action. A building is the concrete result of the thought. The actual materials imitate the design that was in the architect's head.
The story of the Freiburg Cathedral is interesting, however, because the building turned out to be a different style than the original architect suspected due to the time it took to create the building...the styles of architecture changed. This contingency, or unpredictability is something that affects the realizing of information. I would disagree that architecture 'succeeds' when it fully realizes the original intent of the architect. The cathedral we discussed succeeded in a far different manner. Just because it wasn't in the mind of the original architect doesn't mean this building didn't marvelously succeed.
It is interesting also that when we look at a building such as the Freiburg Cathedral, we are informed about something, such as styles of architecture within a certain context that makes the information even more vivid and make sense to the learner.