Date T T H FebruarySeminar 1 Group 4Seminar 1 Groups 5 & 6 (Part Time) Lecture 4 Theories of Meaning in Architecture 19 FebruarySeminar 1 Group 7Seminar 1 Group 8Lecture 5 Theories of Mind, Body and Soul 26 FebruarySeminar 1 Group 6Seminar 2 Groups 1 & 2 Lecture 6 Theories of Nature and Place 5 MarchSeminar 2 Groups 3 & 4 Lecture 7 Theories of Gender and Society 12 MarchSeminar 2 Groups 5 & 6 (Part Time) Lecture 8 Theories of Construction and Making 19 MarchSeminar Groups 7 & 8Lecture 9 Theories of the Digital and Virtual
Theories of Meaning in Architecture
Semiology: the science of signs Signifier/Signified Context/Metaphor Langue/Parole from Charles Jencks ‘Semiology and Architecture’ in Charles Jencks and George Baird, eds. Meaning in Architecture, 1969
Signifier/Signified The signifier is a representation for an idea or thought which is signified. In language, the sound would be the signifier and the idea the signified, whereas in architecture, the form would be the signifier and the content the signified.
Context/Metaphor There are two basic ways a sign achieves meaning - both through its relation to all other signs in a context or chain, and through the other signs for which it has become a metaphor by association, or similarity. The synonyms for context are chain, opposition, syntagm, metonymy, contiguiity 3 relations, contrast: for metaphor they are association, connotation, similarity, correlation, paradigmatic or systemic plane.
The Semiological Triangle
Langue/Parole All the signs in a society taken together constitute the langue or total resource. Each selection from this totality, each individual act, is the parole. Thus the langue is collective and not easily modifiable, whereas the parole is individual and malleable.
System and Syntagm from Roland Barthes, Elements of Semiology,1964
Sign systems, by Charles Jencks
The Doric Order as System and Syntagm
From Roland Barthes, Mythologies, 1958
Metaphor: Personification of the Orders by John Shute after Vitruvius
John Simpson, The Queen’s Gallery, 2002
Metonymy: The Semiotics of the Tassel Alan Powers, Building Design, May 2002
Pre-modern meaning
Historians reconstruct meaning: Erwin Panofsky
Porta Palio, Verona and Rustic Gate from Serlio
The European Gate from Peter Davidson and Alan Powers, Five Gates for England, 1996
Henri Labrouste, Bibliotheque Ste Geneviève, Paris, 1848 Elevation and section
E. Gunnar Asplund, Stockholm City Library, 1930
E. Gunnar Asplund, Mercury in Stockholm City Library, 1930
Everything in the world is a product of the formula (function times economy) All art is composition and therefore unfunctional All life is function and therefore inartistic Hannes Meyer 1928 below: Trade Union College, Burnau, by Meyer & Wittwer, 1930
From Wiseman and Groves, Levi-Strauss for Beginners, 1997
Robert Venturi, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, 1966
From Venturi, Scott-Brown and Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas, 1972
‘Information/Herladry’ from Learning from Las Vegas
1977
The symbolic death of Modern Architecture
‘Killing the Father’
‘Gay Eclectic’ - semiological anaylsis
Who lost the meaning of modernism? Above: Barcelona Pavilion, Mies van der Rohe, Left: drawing by architects, and right: as redrawn for The International Style, 1932 Below: Tugendhat House, Brno, 1930
From Terence Riley and Barry Bergdoll, eds. Mies in Berlin, 2002
Walter Benjamin ‘The Arcades Project’
Playing with meaning and history: Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities, 1974
Michael Graves, 1969
Peter Eisenman House III for Robert Miller, Lakeville, Connecticut, 1971
Daniel Libeskind on the Jewish Museum
Daniel Libeskind, Study for the Jewish Museum
‘Void-voided void’, The Jewish Museum
The Jewish Museum, completed building, exterior
Private Eye on Libeskind, 2002