jargon is good because details are important
There's a reason that architects, like scientists, have their own jargon. In fact, we share a lot of jargon with a wide variety of engineers, fabrication and production technicians, material testers and chemists, safety and control experts, and other specialty consultants in the overall design, construction, and fabrication industries.
Jargon can be used to shorten conversation, and I find there is benefit in using it to discuss with a higher level of detail and appreciation. There's a very unique feeling that is generated when you understand the small parts of a thing and conceptualizing its overall purpose and character. It leads to a deeper consideration and appreciation for a thing.
Here's an experiment. Look at your index finger and, compared to the size of the finger, conceptualize the relative sizes of your finger to the following:
1) your brain
Your brain is one of the most complex organs that scientists don't fully understand. It is capable of creating your entire experience through signals, sense organs, systems management, conscious motor functions, memory recall, and feedback loops.
2) the sun
A piece of the universe so hot, it is blowing up. It is literally an infinity of chemical reactions due to pressure. BUT it is also so heavy, and the gravitational field so great, it doesn't all escape at once and kill all life contained on our planet in an instant. Although if you consider the complexities of the universe, its quite possible this is what happened to Mars. (aiming for the drama, here).
3) fingerprint skin cells
Your body creates a unique signature, entirely (from our records, at least) different from every one else's. It also (!!) doesn't always resemble families or even cultures similar to yours. The cells that make up your fingerprint have physical relationships to each other make this unique personal signature and they replace themselves in the same shape when they die.
Mind blown yet? The world is a beautiful, wonderful, and abundant place, we just don't always take time to remember that ever single one of us know this :)
Now, pause and consider for a moment that every brick on that nice house down the road from you is going to be ever so slightly different due to manufacturing inconsistencies or color variation of that specific mix. That is the type of appreciation that architects are expected to have of the industry and the designs we deliver.
To describe these types of things, architects might talk about the tectonics in buildings.
Tectonics is defined as "the science or art of construction, both in relation
to use and artistic design." It refers not just to the "activity of
making the materially requisite construction that answers certain needs,
but rather to the activity that raises this construction to an art form."
Robert Mauldin, Tectonics in Architecture: From the Physical to the Metaphysical
In creating building elements, we complete a visioning session or creative work session with clients to create a bridge of understanding between their environment, feelings, and lifestyle and our assumptions of form, style, scale, and responses to the user.
It is this study that initially sets the architect apart from the layperson in expertise and judgement. To bring to fruition a design that was a long time in the making, through every trial and error, creates an internal sounding board for personal decisions. It, essentially, becomes a "trained" feedback loop that can process things like finishes, colors, and sizes of brick and visualize them in comparison.
Recognizing how a brick type's texture will impact a design is important. It is why we now have strip malls and shopping centers that attempt to use textured brick to break up their beige-y concrete jungles with some interest. Understanding that a client needs durable materials and a large-scale master plan is getting at the same issue without going down the easy road of blindly following our predecessors.
Addressing the process of construction based on the material selections and wall type is a huge player in the architect's ability to defend the design through the construction and finding continuity between the client's first design workshop and the ribbon cutting at the end.
Sources:
https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/78804
