Lecture 8; A Plain Man's Guide to "The
Theory of Sign"
George Baird's writing about Theory of
Signs in Architecture; Reyner Banhams,
criticized Baird: Carrying meaning to
buildings is producing.
Elitist Monumentality!
Belief is in functional Architecture is:
designed with machine-like precision around
a brief realized three-dimensionally
according to the latest technology, this
attitude towards functionalism changed and
is taken over by assigning deliberate
meaning too Architecture through Architects
like: Venturi, Charles Moore, Brent Brolin,
Charles Jencks. Bonta, Jencks, Broadbent, &
Llorens wrote about the issue!
Peirce- Semiotic – A complex Approach
Defined different classes of signs / reduced
later in numbers Most important of which:
Icons, Indices, Symbols.
Symbols; is a sign that refers to the object
by Virtue of law or association. ​e.g. badge,
railway tickets; church as a conventional
social & religious.
Indices; ​is a sign or representation which
refers to its object not because of any
similarity or analogy Nor because it is
associated with the general characters the
object possess.
e.g. Le Corbusier’s Maison La Roche –
index in functioning ways go around the
house. e.g. oil refineries; gas plants; nuclear
power stations
Icons – is a sign that refers to the object by
Virtue of certain Character of its own e.g.
maps, photographs, algebraic signs!
e.g. architectural drawings, model,
photograph & buildings – e.g. Le
Corbusier’s Ronchamp crab-shell roof;
Frank Lloyd Wright’s chapel at Madison;
analogy with painting in De stijl
Architecture; Duck-shape poultry stand in
Long island, referred to by Venturi – too
simple & direct–boring & “Metaphors” as
referred to by Charles Jencks, as anything of
Mies, unlike Gaudi’s work (e.g. Casa Battlo)
, which carries rich variety of meanings on a
number of levels. E.g. Wright’s (Life House
– Rectangular geometry; Ralph Jester House
– Circular; Vigo Sundt House – Triangular.
Ferdinand de Saussure; Swiss Philosopher +
Charles Sanders Peirce; American, set Up
general theory of signification. How a thing
stands for & reminds us of another.
Saussure–Semiology
Peirce–Semiotic (most preferred); more
complex.
Defined different classes of Signs / reduced
later in numbers, most important of which:
Icons, Indices, Symbols)
Semiotics (as a sign Itself) = Idiotic
Terminology is Confusing, complex, some
glossaries reached 1800, others contained
54000 with, but most seen irrelevant to
architectural Practice, words based on
mechanisms of language, but are irrelevant
of semiotics as a whole – Language made
the Terminology Difficult!
It made little impact on the Continent
because of lack of Parallel translations. The
nine basic Terms that one can work with are:
Pragmatic, Semantic, Syntactic, Signifier,
Signified, Referent. Icon. Index, & Symbol.
Maison La Roche, Paris, 1923:
It is not a typical house, it is a prototype for:
● Free Plan
● Standardization
● Place for equipments
● A place for industrial
● Metaphors (Machine)
Such examples were magnificent examples
of the 1920's though they were not really
functional!
All buildings symbolize & carry meaning –
create association in mind, whether the
architect wanted or not, even International
Architecture, and functionalists dreamed of
free-meaning & a machine-like
Architecture, but did not happen!
All carry meaning as much as Chartres
Cathedral! – Even Pevsner.
But how do buildings carry meaning?
This makes better understanding to
buildings, it also may help to design them in
a better way!
Through theory of Sign!
Buildings can be read as signs
Ragghianti–Italian theorist, first who
explored semiology in Architecture.
AN ARCHITECTURAL DEBATE
Interpretations
De Fusco & Scalvini ​– Equated Palladio
Rotunda – Vicenza Exterior to signifier &
the interior to signified
Vs.
Umberto Eco​–Signifier / Staircase +
Signified / Act of walking up
Ogden & Richards – any building at any
time can be signifier, signified or referent all
at the same time – E.g. Parthenon +
Acropolis
Bonto – Barcelona pavilion no longer exists
a physical thing, but as a sign of another
kind of architectural perfection
Two differentiations of language usage in
relation to signification are:
Denotation – Meaning which a form has for
all (Intrinsic).
Connotation – Shades of meaning (Based
on emotional or other factors) that a form
has for individual users.
Umberto Eco – see there is no necessary
relationship between the signifier & the
significant – (the referent object), as it may
not exist! Imaginative object or thing!
(object, knowledge, perception, or thought)
–whether imaginative or not it should be
same to mental process!
Semantics – deals with the signification of
signs in all modes of signifying, with the
ways in which they carry meaning.
Basic Concept of Saussure was anticipated
by Vitruvius
In architecture there are two points formally
united by social contract;
The thing ​signified (​Subject- concept of
reference​)
+ spaces can be clustered together.
What gives its significance (Signifier-
scientific principles, material representation)
Relationship is ​Arbitrary but must be
respected by all – it cannot be changed
socially. ​But No such social contract exists
to the meaning of architecture (A
fundamental difference between
Architecture & language)
Another approach by Hjelmslev- assumed a
four-part structure that splits the concept
which links the signifier and ​referent
allowing a process of encoding between
one's immediate thought about the object &
the way ones chooses to refer to it by means
of words (​signifiers)!
Plane of content:
Substance+form->Signified->Thought
(Referent)
Plane of expression:
Substance+form->Signifier->Symbol
(Referent)
E.g: Domingo Alvarez
Interpreted Lutyen’s “Glass Cube”; built
three meter walk-in mirror-lines glass cubes
within the larger glass cube, and illuminated
them in red, green, and blue. An experience
of inhabiting a pure spatial syntax.
E.g: March and Steadman
Describing architecture in syntactic terms;
Geometry Environment.
E.g: Hillier and Leaman
Whose architecture can be explained in
terms of the rules by which individual
E.g: Mitchell and Ligget
Rules by which the whole spaces can be
divided up; based on mathematical
possibilities!
Syntactic rules are important for the analysis
of underlying structures in architecture, but:
It should be for its own sake, on the expense
of semantics! It would be a negative
approach like functionalism!
Eisenman and Aldo Rossi​; declared an aim
to make an architecture of pure syntax with
no semantic content!
E.g: Sir Edwin Lutyens;
“Armature of planes”; building made of
solids and voids, geometrically relates to
visualise space, divided along three planes
are horizontal and vertical, divided in all
directions, a foundation of
three-dimensional relationships, thought of
as invisible lines of cleavage, like a glass
cube made only out of a glass cube!

In my investigation into house I, i have come
across a few main desires for housing: ease
not ease, icon not icon, commodity not
commodity, and appearance not process.
This section of my investigation deals with
all of these, but mostly with the fourth. Many
homes are bought or sold based on
appearance, “I’m a millionaire, I can’t live
in a trailer park!” or “that house is just
another McMansion, I want something
well-designed.” Taking the latter statement
to the extreme we come upon houses that are
in some ways unlivable but are designed to
the nines. Based on Dillion’s
recommendation i’ve focused on
Eisenmann’s variants to explore this issue
more.
Onions; All the relationships with the world
outside ourselves could be expressed in one
of the followings forms:
1. In the environment
2. Describe Characteristics
3. Physical effect on other things in
environment
4. Engages in transaction
5. Actions have emotional effect
Eisenmann used Chomsky approach to
describe his complex rules for the generation
and transformation of architectural forms
House II; cube of space, 9-grid (3*3)
compartments, grid realized by columns and
rows, parallel wall, diagonal division of the
cube within a wall system running towards it
from one side and a column system from the
other.
Then looked at the negative space left,
gradually developing complex interlocking
space, dedicated to certain living activity.
Concerned within the abstract perfection of
his system; form determined, then functions.
Eisenmann is the only architect who used
this complex system.
Outcomes of such studies cannot be built
because we can not satisfy all people’s
tastes! They only benefit the profession
(semantic differentiations) to hsow the
degree of which there is agreement or
disagreement on fundamental issues of
concern to architecture; results can be used
as constructs for design in Academia!
How can Architecture be anbalaysised
pragmatically; based on effects it will have
on people?
Physiologists + Psychologists + Physicist
work together to cover reactions to
buildings. Based on environmental control,
new architecture can be produced, e.g:
human comfort with lighting, temperature,
noise, etc…
Psychologists;
1. Verbal responses of people about
buildings, cities, rooms, etc…
2. Measure attitudes underlying what
people say: Altman, Canter,
Proshansky, Rivlin, Lee, etc…
(published works and research)
3. Osgood;s semantic differential; to
plot meaning people attach to certain
concepts in a three-dimensional
“semantic space”; Hershberger set of
scales for environmental research;
Acking and Honikmann- scale to
measure feeling of comfort, security,
social status, physical appearance,
degree of originality, bad/good,
dirty/clean, dark/light, etc…
Its scale is put by experiments; which may
suggest things to people they may never
thought of, think of building in impossible
ways. Establish constructs against people
“construe” of the built environment.
Syntax; deals with the combination of signs
without regard to their specific
significations, meaning, or their relations to
the behaviour in which they occur, ignoring
the effect those meanings have on those who
interpret them.
Concerned with the structure of
sign-systems:
The ways which words are grouped together
to form sentences, the syntactic adjective
and semantic associative, interrelate as
Saussure indicates; the arrangement of two
units in space suggests a syntactic relation,
and are mentally compared to non-present
elements in space in an associative way.
Chomsky; each of us possesses an innate
capacity for generating sentences gained
through learning experiences and exercises
in symbolic logic. Possession of certain
understandings of the world (deep
structures) inspires every sentence to its
possible absolute (uuter). Sentences are
raised to form (surface structure) by which
we express our ideas by means of generative
rules. They give a basic sentence form! That
can be transformed through rules; negative,
interrogative, affirmative, predictive!
Chomsky describes them only through
algorithms.
Pragmatics; deals withorigins, uses and
effect of sign within the behaviours in which
they occur. It looks at all ways architecture,
as a sign system, affects its users.
Architecture is a complex sign system; it
affects senses simultaneously; seeing
hearing, smelling, heating/cold, sense of
positions, movement (kinesthetics).
Some semioticians read architecture as a gardens – Stourhead in Wiltshire – tells a
visual matter ignoring other ways of story of (Henry Hoare) own life & of
carrying meaning, trivialising it. Aeneas.

Architecture means something to each of
these sense when it works in conveying
information physically, like a telephone, a
book, etc; as information channel!
It sends information which can be received
by one of the senses, then decoded
according to the observer’s experience!
Functionalist ethics are with us for so long,
and it feels Morally Right;
e.g. Le Corbusier, Gropius, Mies &
Historians such as (Sigried Giedion,
Nikolaus Pevsner, J.M. Richards) –
Architecture is not a superficial style applied
to the outside of buildings)

A perceptual matter; simulates people Functional – attached to:

differently at different levels. One may see
1. Steel + concrete frame buildings
something visually beautiful and others may
2. Simple + rectangular forms
not.
Clad in White Stucco, Grey Concrete, or
Divisions of the field:
Glass
Pragmatic, semantic, syntactic; defined by
Such examples as a sensible concepts of
Charles Morris; nesting to each other.
function, do not fit purpose, solar
heating/overheating, noise penetration,
1. Pragmatic: deals with origins, uses costs, etc. such buildings were alerted to fit
and effect of sign within the continued habitation! Only those used as
behaviours in which they occur. museums like Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye
2. Semantic: deals with the & Maison La Roche!
signification of signs in all modes of
Exemption E.g. Bill Hilliers;
signifying with the ways in which
It encloses space to facilitate /inhibit range
they carry meaning.
of activities, filter out external environment,
3. Syntactic: deals with the
consume resources, and act as cultural
combination of signs without regard
symbols.
to their specific significations
(meanings) or their relations to their
behaviour in which they occur,
ignoring the effect those meaning
have on those who interpret them;
actual structure of sign systems.

Meaning was given to buildings in the past –

E.g. 18​th century picturesque landscape