The text description of building by mimetic words is a frequently used form of communication for Japanese architects to express their architectural design intent. The mimetic words describe a material building vividly and sensually as if it gains its own life and express connotative meaning of architecture that the architect imbues through the depicted building posture and gesture. The objective of this paper is to identify material aspects of architecture rhetorically characterized by mimetic word expressions used in the explanation of works of architecture through the text description of buildings in a monthly Japanese architecture magazine, Shinkenchiku.<br> The flow of this research is as below:<br> 1. Extract sentences which contain mimetic word expression used by architects to explain their design from Shinkenchiku published during 1950 - 2010.<br> 2. Extract Subjects, Mimetic words and Regulating verbs. Subject refers to a building itself or a physical constituent of architecture depicted by a mimetic word in the sentence. Mimetic word is defined as a sound-symbolic word that describes Subject in the sentence. Regulating verb is a verb of the Subject, a word grammatically forming the main part of the predicate of the sentence, to describe an action, state, or occurrence of the Subject together with the mimetic word.<br> 3. Classify mimetic words by the sound-symbolic meaning, then cross-reference them with subjects and regulating verbs respectively to analyze and derive semantic tendencies when they are combined.<br> 4. Map out material aspects of architecture rhetorically characterized by mimetic word expression with a matrix in which the horizontal axis is the tendency of meaning by the combination of the mimetic words and the subjects, and the vertical axis is that of the mimetic words and the regulating verbs.<br> As a result, four semantic tendencies are found from the analysis of the combination of mimetic words and subjects: (1) Primary building component's behavioral gesture characterized by the visual configuration, (2) Environmental design element characterized by the elastic appearance, (3) Fluid environmental element that relates to the production of a space, and (4) From a part to the whole of a building grasped as grain by zooming. From the analysis of combination of the mimetic words and the regulating verbs, four semantic tendencies are found: (A) Fine-tuned movement, (B) Deviation from a steady state, (C) Manipulated joint, and (D) Correlation actualized by sharpness. In the end, 24 typical material aspects of architecture expressed in mimetic word descriptions are identified through the mapping.<br> In summary, with mimetic word expressions, architects characterize the quality of architecture which is difficult to measure and describe by a single conceptual term with their sensibility through the sound-symbolic word in the text description of buildings. It recognizes architecture as a dynamic conglomeration of multiple assets and meaning ascribed to the material properties of the building constituents by assuming a human body positioned within architecture through which embraces real environments in and around which the building is set. Through the research of the mimetic word expressions, this paper revealed a lateral thinking of architects enabling the production of continuous and inclusive architecture of everyday.