React Native is an open source framework released by Facebook in 2015 that allows building native mobile apps using React. It uses JavaScript to render components and runs these components on both iOS and Android platforms. The architecture runs JavaScript code on a virtual machine and uses an asynchronous bridge to communicate with native components, allowing truly native UI and performance. It uses CSS flexbox for layout and styling components within JavaScript rather than globally. This provides benefits like deterministic resolution, no dead code, and leveraging React's proven virtual DOM. Getting started requires Node.js, watchman, and the React Native CLI to generate projects that can be run from Xcode or Android Studio.