  “The Architectural Work” is perhaps the most interesting of the three major essays in the Ontology of the Work of Art, for it suggests how Ingarden’s examination of works of art may be broadened out to form the framework for a general theory of social and cultural objects and their relations to the more basic physical objects posited by the natural sciences. The architectural work might seem to pose the crucial objection to Ingarden’s view that works of art are ‘purely intentional objects’ having at least a foundation of their existence in the intentional states of their makers and viewers: “After all, the Notre Dame of Paris appears to be no less real than the many residential buildings that stand in its vicinity, than the island upon which it was built, the river that flows nearby, and so on” [255]. Nonetheless, even in this case, Ingarden argues, the architectural work is not a mere independent ‘real’ object, although it is founded on one (the ‘heap of stones’ forming its physical basis). For its existence as an architectural work requires not only its creation by an architect (rather than its coming into existence as a mere natural formation), but also requires the ‘reconstructive acts of the viewer’ taking up a certain attitude towards the real object and helping co-constitute its aesthetic and even its sensible properties. The work of architecture is thus a doubly founded object, which “refers back not only to the creative acts of the architect and the reconstructive acts of the viewer, but also to its ontic foundation in a fully determined real thing shaped in a particular way” [Ontology, 263].