Aren't all buildings envelopes?

I totally agree that the building envelope can influence people on a political and social level, but I am not totally sure where the critique is on architecture. I know that this was written in the economic downturn of 2009 by Alejandro Zaera Polo, one of the founders of FOA, and I had to look back at the buildings he helped design to understand where he was coming from. Polo elevated the mundane into a transcendent experience because at every turn, many of his building show that he sought to stretch, pull, and destroy the idea of the envelope as a means to create only indoor space. In his search for form, I think that he made some amazing buildings because he was thinking about how the general public could use the envelope as well. His building are less like partition walls in a the urban fabric and more like window boxes inviting you to use them as an edge - place to gather and to stay.