Italo Rota (architect and designer)
The neat way the question is formulated hides two of the big problems of architecture today. The first is that architecture is more on form than art nowadays. Not only is it more on form, it's seen by everyone as the art of the moment, along with the cinema which is in the process of a change. Art is in trouble since it has grown over-personalized by artists and reserved for the money market. Though it went through a crisis in the Eighties/Nineties, architecture always kept an eye on art and took over the techniques of contemporary art. New architecture has become steeped in it; its technique is really one of building with space and the strategy of images.
The great difference is that by its nature modern architecture is also social art, and that gives it a great difference from art. The other big difference placing architecture on a more popular plane is it has a positive outlook on the world. At this point in time art is being highly critical about how the world is going and only reflecting its worst sides. Architecture has no problems of being glocal: being set free of national tradition and that worst of traditions - international style -, it is on its way to becoming a universal language; and that's something different from your global, local and glocal. Being universal means we're no longer a form of Esperanto but a whole new language born of diversity. Architecture today is getting that across most precisely.
What we've been saying of architecture goes for design too, though expressed in a slightly different way. Note: one talks of art design and art architecture. These are projects involving huge financial and intellectual investments as well as technical skills and craftsmanship. The product of these approaches may be the simplest of objects: chairs and tables with such a simple purpose that the crafting of them gets even more image-laden and sends the price soaring into millions of euros.