Architectural Failure. Failed architecture is not a straightforward subspecies of failed art or failed artifacts. Architectural objects may rate as aesthetic disasters yet in some overall sense as successes, unlike non-architecture art objects. And architectural objects may cease to function—or never have functioned at all—yet count as overall successes, unlike a range of (though not all) non-architecture artifacts. Another feature of architectural failure—in keeping with general design phenomena—is that architectural objects may count as successes or failures depending on different states of affairs, context, or remarkably small differences.  Thus, a given architectural object may be a failure as an active and integral built structure but not as a ruin (or vice-versa). This suggests that background intentions may matter at one early stage, and less so at later stages in the life of a built structure—and that failure may have one criterion for architectural abstracta and other criteria for counterpart concreta. Further, among architectural objects with standard, closely related variants, some may fail while others succeed—perhaps because of a minor distinction such as a garishly painted exterior. A viable account of architectural failure accommodates such features or else devolves failure to the level of some single dimension of architectural objects, such as their putative nature as art objects (failed or otherwise).