The following passage is adapted from a biographical essay on a twentieth-century architect.
"The architect’s journal was less a record of blueprints than a cartography of his changing obsessions. In his early years, he spoke of stone and steel as if they were willing co-conspirators in his quest to pierce the skyline. His drawings from this period exhibit a fierce ambition; columns are rendered as clenched fists holding up the weight of tradition. Yet, by the middle of his career, a quieter philosophy began to color his prose. The rigid boundaries of his drafting table could no longer contain his ideas, which had begun to run like water into the cracks of the city’s social history. He ceased trying to conquer the sky and instead sought to weave his structures into the existing urban fabric. In these later pages, he describes the neighborhood not as a grid of concrete, but as a living tapestry of voices, where each doorway serves as a punctuation mark in a long, unwritten sentence. His final entry warns his apprentices against the danger of building monuments that are merely glass cages—structures that capture the light but suffocate the soul of the street."
Based on the passage, match each figurative expression (on the left) to its correct contextual meaning (on the right).
- "clenched fists"An expression of aggressive defiance directed against established historical architectural conventions
- "run like water"A description of the fluid, organic expansion of design concepts into the non-physical, social dimensions of a city
- "punctuation mark"A representation of a localized structural element that defines and organizes the ongoing narrative of community life
- "glass cages"A metaphor for buildings that are visually spectacular but isolate occupants and stifle the natural vitality of the street