In its most general sense, formalism works in architecture as it does (or doesn’t) in other artforms. Thus, architectural formalism suggests that the sum total of aesthetic properties of an architectural object are or arise from formal properties, such that our aesthetic judgments are warranted based on experience and assessment of just those properties. As architectural objects are typically non-representational and designed with manipulation and relation of forms as a primary task, it is natural that their formal properties be seen as playing a central role in our aesthetic appreciation of them. The question posed to the traditional (“hard”) formalist is whether those properties are unique or at least dominant drivers of aesthetic properties and judgment, a question underlined by important roles of history, styles, and other contexts in our grasp of the architectural enterprise and individual architectural objects. Our aesthetic judgment of I. M. Pei’s Louvre Pyramids is surely to some degree in reaction to their “pure” form but—for the aware spectator—perhaps just as much in reaction to their relationship to historical context (the Giza pyramids as emblematic of pyramidal form in architecture, and of monumental architecture altogether) or setting (in contrast to the ornate neo-Baroque Louvre buildings that surround them, but in keeping with traditional French emphasis on geometric form in design).