The everyday is saturated with meaning. If we were to look closely, we would find resonance in the things that surround us-ephemera in an ever-evolving culture. Yet beyond those things subject to the vagaries of time and fashion rests the archetypal. Mark Kidel's fascinating five-part series, Architecture of the Imagination, looks deeply at the overlooked, an unexpected array of cultural artifacts all taken from the structures that surround us: the door, the staircase, the window, the bridge, the tower. In lyrical detail, art critics, folklorists, architects, cultural historians, and psychologists (notably James Hillman) describe the ways in which these prototypical elements of architecture contain a symbolic dimension. Drawing heavily on the arts and cinema, each of five episodes investigates a separate architectural element, illustrating its profound influence through a sumptuous selection of objects and images: a Piranesi staircase, the tower in King Kong, a Vermeer window, the bridge on the River Kwai. Kidel's thought-provoking work raises many deceptively simple questions-what occurs when opposing shores are joined by a bridge? does the panorama exist without the tower? is a threshold merely a breach in a wall?-whose answers are rich, astute and often remarkable. After viewing Architecture of the Imagination, you'll realize that we build symbologies not shelters.-Steve Seid