Familiar binary categories of architecture such as Western/regional, high style/vernacular and modern/primitive are crucial in guarding its disciplinary boundaries. In the first part of my article, by analyzing a number of paradigmatic architectural texts, I argue that notions of lack and excess are instrumental in maintaining the largely superimposed binary constructions of West/non-West and architecture/nonarchitecture. Then, through a particular reading of a non-Western site, I explore ways of rethinking the categories of architecture and non-Western beyond such binary oppositions.