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Meaning in architecture;
288 pages. In this book, the editors, Charles Jencks and George Baird, have created a unique open forum where the diverse opinions of a number of internationally known architects and critics are presented and challenged. Fully illustrated with black and white photographs and diagrams.
- GenresArchitecture
288 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1970
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About the author
Charles Jencks
93 books59 followersCharles Alexander Jencks (born 21 June 1939) is an American architecture theorist and critic, landscape architect and designer. His books on the history and criticism of modernism and postmodernism are widely read in architectural circles. He studied under the influential architectural historians Sigfried Giedion and Reyner Banham. Jencks now lives in Scotland where he designs landscape sculpture.
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February 21, 2021
This book contains about a dozen essays from various writers, each attempting to explain how we gain meaning from architecture. The fascinating thing about this book is its use of sidenotes. The authors make rebuttals and counter-rebuttals to each other's essays in a way that adds a multivalent aspect to the book and a tone of collegial bickering. Semiotics appeared to be the book's flavour or main-theme, and some were for and against the idea of using semiotics as a framework for assessing architecture. In other words, authors were split between the 'converts' or 'pessimistic' 'deniers'. [As far as I can tell in my research so far, semiology did not last more than a few decades but remains a useful frame of reference.]
The first chapter, by Jencks on semiology, is strong and challenges the very nature of meaning, suggesting that it is simultaneously embedded and collapsing-collapsible. He writes that everything (even 'nothing') has meaning but, meaning is both fixed and fragile, predetermined and yet ready to be altered. Picasso's Bulls Head statue is a bull's head, yet, the tension comes from the 'inevitable' 'threatening' presence of the bike pieces, which refuse to be ignored. The sculpture is clearly both bull and bike, and this double meaning, both trying to be present and denied, is 'inescapable'.
The Bulls Head is similar to the bunny-rabbit or face-vase gestalts. Gestalts are simultaneously fixed and fluid images - you see what you see… until you see it differently. Wittgenstein referred to this as 'seeing as', and Jenck's example is a compelling one – perhaps even more so than the ones above because they sometimes need to be explained. Picasso's work is three dimensional, immediate, and self-explanatory. In architectural terms, the Sydney Opera House or Ronchamp could be comparable – 'I see a scrum of nuns' vs 'I see sails' vs 'I see shells' – all these meanings are present and not, depending on the viewer. Picasso's intent was deliberate, but perhaps not all architecture is. Perhaps Picasso is only playing with a single image whereas, the Opera House is more complex and therefore likely to generate more complex associations and inferences.
Jencks refers to a schematic ladder or pyramid, when he explains why we can all 'see' the same thing differently. He outlines how the eye takes in the information, and this view alone might be altered by angle, motion, height. Then he refers to the associations we make with what we have seen, which again is shaped by our upbringing and what we determine to be interesting or relevant, then our emotions play a further role in altering those perceptions of that vision. When Mumford condemns the pyramid builders as bureaucratic subterfuge, his view becomes darkened and diminished. For others, the pyramid might glow with associative power. Later in the same chapter Jencks refers to a 'semanitc iceberg' or a 'frozen map of one's current attitudes'. I think this is a stronger image than the ladder-pyramid, possibly because it also invokes the ubiquitous image of the Freudian subconscious. Now we can remodel Jenck's first idea by saying that we all see the same tip (albeit from different angles), whilst everything below water is vastly different, based on expectations, education, emotions and so on. In other words, when we look at a building, the building's form is literally the tip of the iceberg, whilst beneath the surface undertows push and pull us in unpredictable and personal directions that generate unique, rather than universal, meanings.
Since, as Jenkcs points out, we can not get rid of preconceptions (those Freudian undertows). There can be no removal or meaning, no blank slate, and therefore no universal code or meaning extrapolation, no absolute truth. As he points out, the move from a Newtonian world model to an Einsteineinan one was inevitably 'a traumatic affair'. Plato's realm of ideal forms is no more, and in fact, never could be.
There is also the suggestion that there are two poles of looking; univalence and multivalence. The first he suggests is the realm of science, an intense, single-minded focus on one thing. Architecture sits at the other end, triggering imagination, restless, multiple associations, and free thought. In other words, an intense stare versus a glancing around, a microspcic versus a telescopic, or a laser versus a lighthouse. Scientists might disagree, but it does help explain the power of metaphor to open your mind and free your thoughts. [Johnson wrote something to the effect that a metaphor 'yokes' two ideas together. A truly vivid metaphor, on the other hand, does not tether the mind it cuts it loose.]
The essay on urban semiology by Francois Choay is also fascinating. She shows that the circular, mobile and precarious villages in South America are more grounded than our concrete monoliths that dig deep into the earth. Moreover, she notes that when Europeans came to convert them to Christianity, the first thing they did was rearrange their circular town into a rectilinear plan. They thereby stripped the village of its familiarity, but more importantly, of its symbolic associations, history, traditions and significance. [It's a chilling thought that resonates when you consider our original custodians. They too touched the earth lightly yet have a far greater connectedness to the land. It makes us our insistence on 'putting down roots' as we put fences up, seem immature and naive.] We're still 'developing' 'underdeveloped' countries too, using Western town planning devices to strip the old ways away, removing symbolic systems and meanings. Even in our own towns we alter the associative value of buildings and monuments. As she mentions, the Portes St Denis and St Martin are no longer the 'gateways' to Paris. Instead, they have become the civic centres of their local districts and their festivities. Prior meaning is 'obsolete' and replaced with new ones, [functional significance is replaced with symbolic importance]. Choay notes that modern cities can not change at the same pace as other social aspects (such as fashion, art, language). As such their 'openness to meaning' risks them getting out of step with the current collective meaning, and even potentially losing their meaning. Morevover, she notes that the city was a safe place in pre-industrial times, a refuge for man against nature, a victory. Since then, it has become its own 'mysterious wilderness' that 'threatens' our existinece, what Corb called 'a flourishing cancer'. As such, she shows that a semiological review of cities is possible but ends her essay with a sense of fatalism; it is what it is, with only a hint that we might alter the rules of the game to 'mime' and 'pretend' to 'recover'.
Dorfles' article is against trying to reduce architecture to semiotics, stating that a brick is not a phoneme, and buildings should not be assessed like language. He also explains that context matters a 'gothic' window is a different thing in a medieval church to one installed in a non-medieval home. I also like his reference to architectural drawings being equivalents of the real thing, but not 'flesh and blood' like the real thing. As he says, it is a very different experience to read sheet music instead of hearing it played. I suspect he was something of an 'outlier' when semiotics was gaining popularity, but I also think he is right; a brick is not a phoneme, and an arch is not a morpheme.
Broadbent's article similarly suggests he disagrees with a simple semilogical approach, getting very technical about Saussure's investigations. He is essentially saying that 'language' is collectively agreed and socially used, as per 'style' in architecture, whereas 'speech' is akin to the individual use of language, i.e an individual interpretation of that style. You can wear any hat, but only one at a time, so your preference dictates whether it is a bowler or a beret, but it is the collective style that will most likely influence your ultimate choice.
Baird's article prompted me to realise that parole or 'speech' could itself have a double meaning. A speech is a loud, proud, proclamation, made at a lecturn or on a soapbox. It is a statement of conviction, a public announcement of your position. But 'speech' is also just chit-chat, the intimate dialogue between two people, the articulation of our innermost thoughts raised just above a whisper. As such, a building-as-speech becomes a personal opinion made permanent in stone and steel, thrust inescapably upon us by the architect to the viewer, but also affords a moment in which we can sidle up to it and have our own communication, touching stones, glancing down vistas, cranking our neck or bending our knees as we move around and through it. The pictures we see in books or the opinions of critics act like the former, but experience is a far more intimate form of dialogue. He also had a useful way of explaining the transfer of 'information' that is useful in understanding how metaphors work: "…'information' occurs as a function of 'surprise' within a matrix of 'expectancy'. In order to register, a message must be somewhat surprising, yet not utterly unexpected."
Banham's article was cranky and reproduced a decades-old paper, whilst Pawler's was super-contemporary. And so on and so forth, all the while, the banter in the footnotes (between Europe and America, the younger and the old guard) played out with polite vitriol. I think the last word on this book on architectural meaning should go to Broadbent, upon which I wholeheartedly agree: "It seems to me that, anyway within the limits of the social contract, the most important meaning in architecture is the meaning it has for you."
Norber-schultz's essay "meaning in architecture," was for me, the one which most showed its age. By a quick clauclation, he would have been 50ish when he wrote this essay, yet there is something simplistic and naïve in his tone. It mentions 'poverty and homelessness being nearly solved. He suggests that the emphasis on understanding (ie cognitive education / thinking) is somewhat overrated. More useful however, is his definition of meaning: "As a work of art architecture concretises higher objects or 'values'. It gives visual expression to ideas which mean something to man because they 'order' reality. Only through such an order, only by recognising their mutual dependence, for things become meaningful.' He says that the order in which we prioritise our values displays who we really are. It could be a handy way of demonstrating the shifts in architectural ideology in general and metaphorical significance in particular.
Jenck's essay on "History as Myth" is also very insightful, essentially pointing out that history is written by those in the present, with today's minds. As such, their personal, cultural or social upbringing will alter their view and writing, and as such, you have to read it with that in mind. Pro-this or anti-that is still valid, but more as a snapshot of the writer's time rather than the architect's time. If Gaudi is considered 'good' or 'bad' we can see whether the writer, or even his time, was pro or anti-Expressionism, and so on. Gaudi and his buildings change not at all in the telling or retelling. He also advocates a certain 'letting go' – trying to see Brutalism as honest and strong, or Corb's work as 'clean and rational', not because it necessarily is, but because its creators believed it to be so. If architecture is moralistic, then it should be viewed through the moral sense of those who created it, not your own. Moreover, we can read each era as both an affirmation and a denial of the one that came before it; both precedent and referent. Suger's glowing edifices were a reaction against Bernard's aesthetics but also a reflection of his mysticism of light. He concludes his essay with: "Architects make architecture, historians make history and what they both make is myth."
A fascinating book, even if, or especially because, it is very much of its time.
The first chapter, by Jencks on semiology, is strong and challenges the very nature of meaning, suggesting that it is simultaneously embedded and collapsing-collapsible. He writes that everything (even 'nothing') has meaning but, meaning is both fixed and fragile, predetermined and yet ready to be altered. Picasso's Bulls Head statue is a bull's head, yet, the tension comes from the 'inevitable' 'threatening' presence of the bike pieces, which refuse to be ignored. The sculpture is clearly both bull and bike, and this double meaning, both trying to be present and denied, is 'inescapable'.
The Bulls Head is similar to the bunny-rabbit or face-vase gestalts. Gestalts are simultaneously fixed and fluid images - you see what you see… until you see it differently. Wittgenstein referred to this as 'seeing as', and Jenck's example is a compelling one – perhaps even more so than the ones above because they sometimes need to be explained. Picasso's work is three dimensional, immediate, and self-explanatory. In architectural terms, the Sydney Opera House or Ronchamp could be comparable – 'I see a scrum of nuns' vs 'I see sails' vs 'I see shells' – all these meanings are present and not, depending on the viewer. Picasso's intent was deliberate, but perhaps not all architecture is. Perhaps Picasso is only playing with a single image whereas, the Opera House is more complex and therefore likely to generate more complex associations and inferences.
Jencks refers to a schematic ladder or pyramid, when he explains why we can all 'see' the same thing differently. He outlines how the eye takes in the information, and this view alone might be altered by angle, motion, height. Then he refers to the associations we make with what we have seen, which again is shaped by our upbringing and what we determine to be interesting or relevant, then our emotions play a further role in altering those perceptions of that vision. When Mumford condemns the pyramid builders as bureaucratic subterfuge, his view becomes darkened and diminished. For others, the pyramid might glow with associative power. Later in the same chapter Jencks refers to a 'semanitc iceberg' or a 'frozen map of one's current attitudes'. I think this is a stronger image than the ladder-pyramid, possibly because it also invokes the ubiquitous image of the Freudian subconscious. Now we can remodel Jenck's first idea by saying that we all see the same tip (albeit from different angles), whilst everything below water is vastly different, based on expectations, education, emotions and so on. In other words, when we look at a building, the building's form is literally the tip of the iceberg, whilst beneath the surface undertows push and pull us in unpredictable and personal directions that generate unique, rather than universal, meanings.
Since, as Jenkcs points out, we can not get rid of preconceptions (those Freudian undertows). There can be no removal or meaning, no blank slate, and therefore no universal code or meaning extrapolation, no absolute truth. As he points out, the move from a Newtonian world model to an Einsteineinan one was inevitably 'a traumatic affair'. Plato's realm of ideal forms is no more, and in fact, never could be.
There is also the suggestion that there are two poles of looking; univalence and multivalence. The first he suggests is the realm of science, an intense, single-minded focus on one thing. Architecture sits at the other end, triggering imagination, restless, multiple associations, and free thought. In other words, an intense stare versus a glancing around, a microspcic versus a telescopic, or a laser versus a lighthouse. Scientists might disagree, but it does help explain the power of metaphor to open your mind and free your thoughts. [Johnson wrote something to the effect that a metaphor 'yokes' two ideas together. A truly vivid metaphor, on the other hand, does not tether the mind it cuts it loose.]
The essay on urban semiology by Francois Choay is also fascinating. She shows that the circular, mobile and precarious villages in South America are more grounded than our concrete monoliths that dig deep into the earth. Moreover, she notes that when Europeans came to convert them to Christianity, the first thing they did was rearrange their circular town into a rectilinear plan. They thereby stripped the village of its familiarity, but more importantly, of its symbolic associations, history, traditions and significance. [It's a chilling thought that resonates when you consider our original custodians. They too touched the earth lightly yet have a far greater connectedness to the land. It makes us our insistence on 'putting down roots' as we put fences up, seem immature and naive.] We're still 'developing' 'underdeveloped' countries too, using Western town planning devices to strip the old ways away, removing symbolic systems and meanings. Even in our own towns we alter the associative value of buildings and monuments. As she mentions, the Portes St Denis and St Martin are no longer the 'gateways' to Paris. Instead, they have become the civic centres of their local districts and their festivities. Prior meaning is 'obsolete' and replaced with new ones, [functional significance is replaced with symbolic importance]. Choay notes that modern cities can not change at the same pace as other social aspects (such as fashion, art, language). As such their 'openness to meaning' risks them getting out of step with the current collective meaning, and even potentially losing their meaning. Morevover, she notes that the city was a safe place in pre-industrial times, a refuge for man against nature, a victory. Since then, it has become its own 'mysterious wilderness' that 'threatens' our existinece, what Corb called 'a flourishing cancer'. As such, she shows that a semiological review of cities is possible but ends her essay with a sense of fatalism; it is what it is, with only a hint that we might alter the rules of the game to 'mime' and 'pretend' to 'recover'.
Dorfles' article is against trying to reduce architecture to semiotics, stating that a brick is not a phoneme, and buildings should not be assessed like language. He also explains that context matters a 'gothic' window is a different thing in a medieval church to one installed in a non-medieval home. I also like his reference to architectural drawings being equivalents of the real thing, but not 'flesh and blood' like the real thing. As he says, it is a very different experience to read sheet music instead of hearing it played. I suspect he was something of an 'outlier' when semiotics was gaining popularity, but I also think he is right; a brick is not a phoneme, and an arch is not a morpheme.
Broadbent's article similarly suggests he disagrees with a simple semilogical approach, getting very technical about Saussure's investigations. He is essentially saying that 'language' is collectively agreed and socially used, as per 'style' in architecture, whereas 'speech' is akin to the individual use of language, i.e an individual interpretation of that style. You can wear any hat, but only one at a time, so your preference dictates whether it is a bowler or a beret, but it is the collective style that will most likely influence your ultimate choice.
Baird's article prompted me to realise that parole or 'speech' could itself have a double meaning. A speech is a loud, proud, proclamation, made at a lecturn or on a soapbox. It is a statement of conviction, a public announcement of your position. But 'speech' is also just chit-chat, the intimate dialogue between two people, the articulation of our innermost thoughts raised just above a whisper. As such, a building-as-speech becomes a personal opinion made permanent in stone and steel, thrust inescapably upon us by the architect to the viewer, but also affords a moment in which we can sidle up to it and have our own communication, touching stones, glancing down vistas, cranking our neck or bending our knees as we move around and through it. The pictures we see in books or the opinions of critics act like the former, but experience is a far more intimate form of dialogue. He also had a useful way of explaining the transfer of 'information' that is useful in understanding how metaphors work: "…'information' occurs as a function of 'surprise' within a matrix of 'expectancy'. In order to register, a message must be somewhat surprising, yet not utterly unexpected."
Banham's article was cranky and reproduced a decades-old paper, whilst Pawler's was super-contemporary. And so on and so forth, all the while, the banter in the footnotes (between Europe and America, the younger and the old guard) played out with polite vitriol. I think the last word on this book on architectural meaning should go to Broadbent, upon which I wholeheartedly agree: "It seems to me that, anyway within the limits of the social contract, the most important meaning in architecture is the meaning it has for you."
Norber-schultz's essay "meaning in architecture," was for me, the one which most showed its age. By a quick clauclation, he would have been 50ish when he wrote this essay, yet there is something simplistic and naïve in his tone. It mentions 'poverty and homelessness being nearly solved. He suggests that the emphasis on understanding (ie cognitive education / thinking) is somewhat overrated. More useful however, is his definition of meaning: "As a work of art architecture concretises higher objects or 'values'. It gives visual expression to ideas which mean something to man because they 'order' reality. Only through such an order, only by recognising their mutual dependence, for things become meaningful.' He says that the order in which we prioritise our values displays who we really are. It could be a handy way of demonstrating the shifts in architectural ideology in general and metaphorical significance in particular.
Jenck's essay on "History as Myth" is also very insightful, essentially pointing out that history is written by those in the present, with today's minds. As such, their personal, cultural or social upbringing will alter their view and writing, and as such, you have to read it with that in mind. Pro-this or anti-that is still valid, but more as a snapshot of the writer's time rather than the architect's time. If Gaudi is considered 'good' or 'bad' we can see whether the writer, or even his time, was pro or anti-Expressionism, and so on. Gaudi and his buildings change not at all in the telling or retelling. He also advocates a certain 'letting go' – trying to see Brutalism as honest and strong, or Corb's work as 'clean and rational', not because it necessarily is, but because its creators believed it to be so. If architecture is moralistic, then it should be viewed through the moral sense of those who created it, not your own. Moreover, we can read each era as both an affirmation and a denial of the one that came before it; both precedent and referent. Suger's glowing edifices were a reaction against Bernard's aesthetics but also a reflection of his mysticism of light. He concludes his essay with: "Architects make architecture, historians make history and what they both make is myth."
A fascinating book, even if, or especially because, it is very much of its time.
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