This paper was first presented at the Cozde~nce 'Design
methodology and related research in design', (Radziejowice,
Poland, Sej~.tember 1977). It was published in Rlementy
Logiki, Semiotyki i metodologii projektowania (edited by
D Miller, A Str=Jecki and myself) by the Institute of Philo-
sophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw
in ] 979. I am pleased to allow the article to be republished
in Design Studies. I would however like to make the follow-
ing comments to put the paper in context for the readers
and especially to clarify the use and meaning of the
terms 'design ', 'language' and 'semiotic studies' in the paper.
The expression 'semiotics of design' has two
meanings and because of ambiguity in the notion of 'design'
it is necessary to differentiate them. In its first meaning,
the 'design' is understood as the result of a process of
mental activity called design. Ideas, planning and the like
come into this definition. In the second meaning, 'design'
is understood as an artefact (for instance bridges, buildings
and cars) made by a designer in practice, on the basis of
'design' in its first meaning.
Architectural
objects and their
design as a subject
for semiotic
studies
GEOFFREY BROADBENT
Portsmouth Po/ytechnic, School of Architecture, King Henry I Street,
Portsmouth P01 2D Y, UK.
After an exposition of the basic notions of semiology this
paper reviews designed objects (here architectural products)
in terms of these notions.
Attempts have been made to discover by empirical
studies what meanings people attach to built forms. The
way in which forms are put together by the designer is
treated as related to the syntax of language. Here, a number
of theoretical studies are discussed. Reference is made to a
limited application in practical design.
It is argued that the aspects of meaning and syntax
cannot be completely separated. Because of this there is a
case for examining the semantic dimension in more detail.
Further, since some architects have found one or more of
the semiotic approaches of value in design generation, there
is ground for believing that semiotic approaches have applica-
tion throughout the whole of designing.
Semiotic, in the sense used here, is concerned with the
general theory of signs, of how one thing 'stands' for
another. There have been several attempts to develop such
theories, of which the two best known are those of
vol 1 no 4 april 1980 0142-694X/80/040207-10 $02.00 © 1980 IPC Business Press
Those involved in the design activity, whether
acting in a team or not, do their designing using personal
languages which externalize their mental activities and
communicate their ideas to others. Such languages by which
design, in its first o f m y two meanings, is formulated, can
be the subject o f semiotic study.
The present paper does not concern itself with
this issue but rather with the second meaning of design
semiotics; the semiotics of the rr~n-made artefacts about
us. In this respect, artefacts can come to have very broad
meanings; even climate consciously changed by man is an
artefact. Artefacts are not only, more or less, useful things,
but also pieces of information - 'signs' of man's culture.
The 'signs' form, so to speak, a kind of language with its
vocabulary, grammar and the like. The language of cultural
signs formed by designs of m y second meaning can also be
the subject 'for semiotic studies'; it is with this topic that
Geoffrey Broadbent's paper concerns itself.
Wojciech W Gasparski
Ferdinand de Saussure, 1 a Swiss philosopher who lectured
on the subject at the University of Geneva between 1902
and 1906, and Charles Sanders Pierce, an American
surveyor whose voluminous Collected Papers2 contains
many cryptic and ambiguous references on the subject.
Both fundamentally were philosophers of language, interest-
ed above all in meaning but they both felt that principles
extracted out of language, could be generalized for anal-
ysing the process of signification in other fields. It is worth
quoting what they both say. As Saussure put it in the lec-
tures which formed his Course in general linguistics
Language is a system of signs that express ideas, and is therefore
comparable to writing, to the deaf-mute alphabet, to symbolic
rites, to codes of good manners, to military signals, etc. It is
simply the most important of these systems. A science that
studies the life of signs in society is therefore conceivable: it
would be part of a general psychology; we shall call it semiology
(from the Greek semeion 'sign'). Semiology would teach us
what signsare made of and what laws govern their behaviour.
Since this science does not yet exist, no one can say quite what
it will be like, but it has a right to exist and it has a place staked
out in advance.
Pierce on the other hand put it:
I hope to have shown that logic in its generalacceptation is
merely another word for semiotics, a quasi-necessaryor formal
doctrine of signs. In describing the doctrine as 'quasi-necessary'
or formal, I have in mind the fact that we observethe nature of
such signs as best we can, and, on the basis of fine observations,
by a process which I do not hesitate to call abstraction, we are
led to eminently necessaryjudgements concerning what must be
the nature of the signs used by the scientific intellect.
Current interest in the subject really developed in the
1950s after Claude Levi-Strauss, 3 the French Anthropologist
had pointed out that certain phenomena in social anthro-
pology could best be understood in terms of conceptual
structures developed by Saussure in his Course - most
particularly his distinctions between diachronic linguistics;
which is concerned with changes in languages over time
and synchronic linguistics which is concerned with the
structure and inter-relationships between languages at a
particular moment in time. The latter, in fact, became the
foundation for that whole French-based exercise in cultural
investigation known as Structuralism in which everything
from mathematics, the biological sciences, psychology,
207
language, the social sciences, philosophy, history, myth Table 1. A r c h i t e c t u r e impinging o n the senses
literature, to travel guides and strip-tease were stretched over
the same intellectual framework. 3 , 4 - 7 Thehum= senses Dislmce Skin Chent~ Deep
which ore senses semms senses senses
But somehow design never quite fitted into this
off~ed
structuralist ethos which seems in any case to be fading
away. The extensive territory it occupied during the 1960s
seems now to have been taken over in many cases by
semiotic which has been developing not only from differ-
ent aspects of Saussure's course, particularly from those
concerned with the nature of 'sign' but, more particularly,
.u,,
them: :[i
from Pierce's more extensive analyses of different kinds of
signs. The First Congress of the International Association Otherpeople's
for Semiotic Studies, held in Milan in 1974, attracted over speed1 • x •
expression x •
6 0 0 people, representing over 30 disciplines - wider in
(Jle~ure x • x • • X • •
range than even the literature of structuralism. posture x • X
mov~'118~ X • X X • X
The most comprehensive definition of what semiotic
skin x x X X X X •
contains probably was attempted by Pierce's pupil Charles eyes x
Morris e who saw it as concerned with three inter-related
matte rs:
Artefocts:
• Pragmatics which, he said, 'is that portion of semiotics grophic x •
tOOlS, w e o p ( x l s x • x • • X • • X X •
which deals with the origins, uses and the effects of signs furniture x x X X X • • X X X
within the behaviour in which they occur'. mod~ines x x x • • X • • X • •

• Semantics which 'deals with the signification of signs poi~ng,smpt x x • • • • • • X

buildings x x x X X • • X X X •
in all modes of signifying', and music • x
• Syntactics which 'deals with the combinations of signs
without regard to their specific significations or their
Noturol Phenomena:
relations to the behaviour in which they occur'. climote x x • X X X X X X
biok~icol x x x • • • X
We shall look at each of these in turn, drawing the various topogrophi¢ol x • x • • X X
concepts from appropriate sources and considering their
relevance for design. direct percel)tion
indkl~t perception (eQ. L i p r e o d i l ~ of speech)

PRAGMATICS
I should point out that as a designer, my particular orienta-
tion is towards architecture which is why, on the whole,
my examples will be taken from that field. There is another
reason, however, for concentrating on this area. Not
surprisingly, the conventions set up for language analysis
have not always been appropriate for analysing other sign
systems. Language always operates in time within a single
sensory dimension. We see the written word, we hear the
spoken one. But the designed environment, including
architecture, impinges on many of the senses simultaneously.
I have tried to indicate this, within a context of natural
and designed objects, in Table 1.Two things follow from
this:
• That the sense of seeing is stimulated by a greater range
of phenomena than any other sense.
• That 'artefacts' and 'climate' stimulate a wider range of
sensory receptors than other phenomena.
It is not surprising therefore that buildings which, in
addition to being artefacts, serve also (as we have seen) to
control the physical climate, should offer a particularly
wide range of sensory stimuli.
We may be able to develop a semiotic for each
of these, setting up models according to our predilections
but it will not be adequate unless it takes into account
all the sensory modes by which buildings stimulate people.
Certain clues are available from Zoosemiotics 9 although
like all forms of ethology, it affords the possibility of
drawing too facile analogies between human and animal
behaviours; but let us assume for the moment that we
want, if possible, to develop it from existing semiotic
methods. And let us further assume that functional models
of language and architecture will provide the most reason-
able basis for cross-comparisons even though (as we have
seen) most of those available seem hardly relevant to the
purpose.
The next question, of course, is how the senses
are affected by the various stimuli. No one, so far, has
improved on Shannon's concept of an information channel,1°
although I have elaborated it a little for our purposes
(Figure 1).
The message source in this case is presumed to be
someone's brain whilst the destination, of course, is someone
else's. The source chooses particular signifiers within a
context which consists of:
• certain predispositions, possibly innate, including a
propensity to communicate
• the repertoire of signs built up on the basis of a lifetime's
experience
• the source's perception of the current situation.
These are all true whether the source is writing a sentence,
designing a chair or playing a musical instrument, although
in the case of natural phenomena the source, by definition,
is n o t some human brain.
Koenig applied the information channel into
architecture by analysing the whole system of architectural
communication as follows:
• Sender: the architect or architectural team.
• Codes and lexiques: the functional, legal, structural and
economic rules according to which a building is designed.
• Signal: the sum of drawings, models and written specifica-
tions of an architectural design.
• Channel: the construction-site.

208 DESIGN STUDIES

• Physical signal: the material building resulting from the
design signal.
• Noise: the environmental disturbance of perceiving, and
the physical disintegration of the architectural sign
complex.
• Receiver: the human being, his sense organs.
• Significant aspect of the message: architectural space,
including its qualifying objects.
• Codes and lexiques of the receiver: functional, legal,
structural and economic expectations.
• Semantic noise: the prejudice of the receiver.
• Receiver as a collective: the city as a system of communica-
tions.
• Meaning (significant) aspect of the message: the original
function which the architectural object denotes and the
second function which it connotes. (translation, Dexter 11 )
This is an interesting, if somewhat too literal an interpretation,
although Koenig's emphasis on semantic problems in the last
three items has many implications, but we really are looking
for something more fundamental.
When I send you messages, the transmitter consists
of my body, or any part of it capable of generating signifiers.
These include:
• the mechanisms which produce speech
• the hands which can make gestures, hold a pencil, pen
brush, press keys, turn knobs, pull levers, brandish tools,
weapons etc.
• the facial muscles, especially those around the mouth
and eyes;
• the limb and body muscles responsible for expression,
gesture, posture, movement and those which signify
arousal ;
• the skin which may flush, perspire, emit chemical signals;
Chonnel
Jklformalion source~ l n f o r m a ~ o n
IE,~o, I J ~
I 2 5 4
1 The information source (e.g. a human brain) wishes to pass a
message to the information destination (e.g. another human
brain) so as to modify the latter's behaviour.
2 This information consists of ideas, thoughts, concepts (signifieds)
about people, objects or things (referents), which have to be
codified into words, images, symbols (signifiers) selected from
those available in the language. Sometimes no precise signifier
exists, i.e. one which denotes the referent directly: the
message has to be codified in terms of analogies, metaphors etc.
selected by the information source for their connotations. This
may introduce distortions (semantic noise) into the coding process.
3 The encoded message Jsthen transmitted by some appropriate
medium - speech, writing, drawing etc. according to the nature
of the communications channel. The transmitter converts the
message into a signal.
4 The channel may take any form which is capable of conveying
information: radio, TV, a book, a letter, a drawing etc. Strictly
speaking it is the medium used in conveying the signal from
transmitter to receiver; a pair of wires, coaxial cable, band of
radio frequencies, beam of light, marks on surface of paper
etc. Whatever channel is used, the signal may be perturbed by
Figure 1. Complete information channel with sources o f noise, etc., p l o t t e d in (based on Shannon and Weaver ~° also Broadbent ~ )
vol 1 n o 4 april 1980
• the eyes, and especially the pupils which according to
emotional state may dilate, change colour, etc.
I have voluntary control over some of these, such as the
mechanisms which produce speech and I shall describe their
output as symbols. But I cannot control pupil dilation,
flushing etc. - I shall call such phenomena signals. Natural
phenomena too are signals in this sense. Symbols (or signals)
emitted by these means will be transmitted along the
communications channel and may stimulate certain of your
sensory receptors.
Yet when the functions of language are considered
in more detail some surprising parallels emerge between
them and the functions of designed objects. Robinson 12
collates Bales 13, Erwin TM and Firth is (in Hymes16),
Halliday 17 and others, together with an analysis of the
speech event itself by Jakobson. le His 1 4 - i t e m taxo-
nomy for the Functions o f language is grouped under
the headings of function, described technically and by an
everyday name, its focus as a verbal act, its 'primitive'
forms both in general and in particular and some basis for
evaluating its success. Certain of these need not concern
us here, but we can use the others as a basis for comparing
the functions of language with the functions of the
designed environment (Table 2).
Once we allow that language has these pragmatic
functions, items 1 - 5, 7 - 9 of Robinson's taxonomy,
then the parallels become clear. At this level we don't
even have to translate linguistic concepts metaphorically
into the designed environment; their application is
obvious and direct.
There has, of course, been a considerable amount
of empirical work in this pragmatic area by physiologists,
psychologists, sociologists and architects using their methods
destination]
[Ioe~ I I
5 6 7
mechanical noise - a term which betrays the origins of informa-
tion theory in telecommunications, where it refers t o the clicks,
bumps and hisses of a telephone channel. But it can be applied
t o any disturbance in any channel; smudged lettering, tea-stains
on a drawing etc.
5 The receiver performs a reverse function t o the transmitter; it
decodes the signal and reconstructs the original message f r o m it.
6 if the original signifiers carried largely denotational meanings,
communication will be accurate -- provided that the signal was
not perturbed t o o much by mechanical noise as it passed through
the channel. But if it contains $ignifiers with connotational
meanings - analogies, metaphors and so on, then it is likely
that the decoding will result in meanings which are rather
different f r o m those the source intended. The decoder will draw
on his own experience o f connotational meanings and this will
introduce perceptual noise.
7 The destination's behaviour will change as a result of receiving
the message -- if only t o the extent of rejecting it. But if the
change is other than that desired by the message source, the
latter will have failed t o communicate.
209
Most of it has taken one of the following forms:
• Attempts to correlate the performance of specific build-
ings in spatial, environmental and other terms with the
user's verbal response to those buildings. Pioneered by
Wells and then Canter of the Pilkington Research Unit
at Liverpool 1¢J and the Building Performance Research
Unit at Strathclyde, and discussed extensively by the
latter in various publications. 2°
• Attempts to establish user attitudes to possible built
forms at urban, whole buildings or individual room
scale by measuring verbal response to photographs,
drawings, models and so on. Pioneered at Strathclyde
under Canter's direction by Lau, Wools and others.
A great deal of work in these areas has been published in
various journals and conference proceedings, such as
those from Dalandhui; Kingston, Lund, Sheffield and
Surrey, not to mention the annual meetings of the
(American) Environmental Design Research Association
(EDRA). There is a vast literature in the subject by
now, of which the most accessible summaries probably
are those by Proshansky, Ittelson and Rivlin 21 , Craik 22,
Altman, 23 Canter and Lee. 24
Such works cover the whole range of people's
physiological, psychological and social reactions to
buildings; some of it naturally is concerned with what
buildings mean to people or, at least, with what they
-
say they mean.
A range of techniques has been used in this
research, such as Osgood's Semantic Differential,
which enables one to plot, with some accuracy, the
meanings people attach to concepts in a three~limensional
'semantic space'. Hershberger 2s tried to establish a basic
set of scales for use in environmental research whilst
Acking 26 and Honikman 27 devised such scales and put
them to different uses. Acking projected slides of interiors
to his subjects and asked them to mark each room against
his concept scales. He then analysed these scales and
measured feelings of comfort and security, estimations
of social status, physical appearance, degree of originality
and so on. Honikman also asked his subjects to look at
pictures of rooms and to rate them against scales: bad/good,
dirty/clean, dark/light and so on.
One problem with Semantic Differential, as many
see it, is that the scales in use are set up by the experimenter.
This raises the obvious problems of any social survey; that
the scales themselves may suggest things to people which
otherwise they might never have thought of. At the same
time, they may ask people to think of things (including
buildings) in ways which they find quite impossible. It was
to answer such objections that George Kelley developed
his Repertory Grid technique (1963) - originally for the
investigation of what people thought about other people.
He asked each subject to write onto cards the names of
certain very familiar people: father, mother, sister, brother,
favourite teacher, most hated teacher and so on. Then he
worked systematically through the cards - grouping them
into threes and asking his subject to name any quality
shared by two of the people which the third one did not
share. They thought of 'constructs' such as friendly, helpful,
intelligent and so on. Having thus listed the 'constructs' by
which his subject thought about people, Kelly then asked
further questions by which the subject 'ranked' the con-
structs in order of importance for him - is it more import-
ant to be 'friendly' than 'intelligent' and so on. Honikman 2e
and others have adapted this technique to establish the
210
constructs against which people 'construe' the built environ.
ment or, in this case, photographs of rooms.
One subject construed the photographed living
rooms against a range of constructs such as inoppressive/
oppressive, spacious/crowded, informal/formal, fireplace/
no fireplace, books/no books and so on.
There is a fundamental problem, however, in
applying the results of such research. Suppose we could
establish, for a particular population, that a particular
room type, house form, or whatever actually was over-
whelmingly more popular than another, should we then
build only that type? Of course not, if we did that it would
become so boring that people no longer preferred it, Yet
Semantic Differential and Repertory Grid techniques may be
useful for quite different purposes, in establishing the degree
to which architect and client, student and teacher, or even
architect and psychologist, agree or disagree on fundamental
issues concerning architecture. Chris Abel 29 has done a
certain amount of work in this area already with architectural
students and teachers, attempting to relate students' archi-
tectural constructs to the designs they actually produce and
the tutor's constructs to the ways in which they criticise
those designs.
SYNTAX
Morris's syntactic dimension of course is concerned with the
structures of sign-systems; with the ways in which their
various parts relate physically to each other. Saussure actually
has a very neat way of describing relationship between the
semantic (he calls them 'associative') and syntactic (the
adjective is 'syntagmatic') dimensions:
From the associativeand syntagmatic point of view a linguistic
unit is like a fixed part of a building, e.g. a column. On the one
hand the column has a certain relation to the architrave that it
supports; the arrangement of the two units in space suggeststhe
syntagmatic relation. On the other hand, if the column is Doric,
it suggestsa menial comparison of this style with others (Ionic,
Corinthian, etc.) although none of these elements is present in
space: the relation is associative.
Obviously the column/architrave relationship is a structural
one and words are related in sentences by equivalent
structural rules. Saussure himself has a lot to say about that;
at worst the analysis of sentences to reveal their underlying
structure becomes the kind of parsing into nouns, verbs,
adverbs and so on which bored us all to tears in language
lessons at school.
Some linguists, such as Pelc have developed the
study of syntax into the most tortuous kind of exercise in
symbolic logic but the subject as a whole received a
tremendous boost in the middle 1950s from Naom
Chomsky who looked beyond this 'surface structure' of
sentences to the 'deep structures' from which he saw they
were generated.
Chomsky first sprang to the world's conciousness
with the Syntactic Structures 3° of 1957, revising his initial
thesis, to a considerable extent, in the Aspects.. 3 t of
1965. He suggests that each of us possesses a basic under-
standing, which may be inborn, of certain fundamental re-
lationships between ourselves and the world outside ourselves
which, in Aspects particularly, he describes as deep structures.
He makes no attempt to define these clearly, suggesting
merely that they are 'structures generated by the base
component'. Base components, in his sense, consist of the
words and the rules by which sentences can be generated
we shall consider some examples shortly.
DESIGN STUDIES
 A sentence such as: q'he boy sees the girl' operates 'correct' results. Chomsky's algorithm is precisely of this
at several levels. It indicates that the boy is a sentient being kind and its operation, in generating our initial sentence is
with eyes; that he can perceive the world around him, and as follows:
that at this moment he can see a girl, perhaps the only girl
Rule applied
in his field of vision.
The deep structure, then, consists of a fundamental Sentence 1
relationship between the boy and the girl which, in Chomsky's NP + VP 2
terms, I have expressed by means of a surface structure, T+N+VP 3
consisting, in this case, of four words; a pattern of sounds or the + N + Verb + NP 4
letters. According to Chomsky, deep structures are converted the + boy + Verb + NP 5
into surface structures by transformational rules; we under- the + boy + sees + NP 6
stand these instinctively and they give us the competence to the + boy + sees + T + N 2
generate sentences which are grammatically correct. These the + boy + sees+ the + N 4
transformational rules are based on the ways in which the + boy + sees + the + girl 5
sentences are constructed into phrases; Chomsky would
write them for the above sentence as follows: Having written algorithms for the generation of such kernel
sentences, Chomsky suggests the possibility of writing furthel
• Sentence NP + VP (Noun Phrase + Verb Phrase) algorithms for transforming them into:
• NP T+N (The+Noun)
• VP Verb + NP The passive: the girl was seen by the boy
• T the the negative: the boy did not see the girl
• N Boy, girl, etc. the interrogative: did the boy see the girl?
• Verb sees,etc. the affirming: the boy did see the girl
The relationship between deep structure and surface the predictive: the boy will see the girl
structures therefore can be represented as in Figure 2. and so on,
The same deep structure naturally can generate a wide These algorithms form his transformational rules.
range of sentences.Take a simple example as given in Figure 3. At most, Chomsky's algorithms generate or trans-
Our original sentence expressed a fundamental relationship form individual sentences; there is no suggestion as far as
between 'the boy' and 'the girl'; each of these sentences I know, that they be used to write books or even paragraphs.
also expressed a fundamental relationship between some And similarly, algorithms have been written for the design
person - He, She, I and You and the world within which of architecture, or rather for parts of architecture designing
we all exist. Charles Fillmore's Case grammar 32 is an with the help of a computer: these include the structural
attempt to describe a set of concepts and to identify the frame, heating, lighting, and ventilation services, and even
types of judgement at this fundamental level of which the drawing of perspectives. 34
human beings are capable. But for our purposes, it will Over half of the algorithms written in this field
be sufficient to quote Onions 33 who believed that only have been concerned with pedestrian, vehicular or services
five basic sentences are necessary. Every sentence we circulation, with pipework and drainage layouts and with
generate may be represented by one of these, or by some space allocation problems; in other words, with the planning
variation on it: of buildings.
He waits I recorded some of this work, and the basic
He is a Frenchman approaches to it, in Design in architecture 35 whilst March
He eats ortolans and Steadman, 3s Hawkes and Mitchell 37 and others have
He gives me some suggested how this whole approach can be generalized. The
He pleases me. latter suggest that all built forms whether existing or under
design, can be described in terms of geometrical elements,
Onions may be right, but if he is, the problem still arises as that these elements will have certain geometric and topo-
to how we operate transformations on them of the kind logical attrit~utes, that there will also be geometrical and
Chomsky describes. topological relations between them. This will be true what-
Chomsky's aim, although not clearly stated, was ever the level of detail with which one is concerned and
to write algorithms for the generation of sentences; fixed also the levels of generality whether one is concerned, that
sets of instructions which automatically would lead to is, with describing a single building or with some kind of
basic form within which many variations can be developed.
Senleme Deep structure They then go on to suggest that five main ways

/\ of representing built forms have been found to be the most

useful. These are:
NP VP ~ rules
• Using regular grids or lattices.
• Using grids or lattices with variable dimensions.
T N V NP • Using points in three-dimensional space.
• Using points in space located by some system of co-
/\ ordinates (point-vector representations).
• Using dual graphs; in which the spaces within one such
T N
the boy sees the girl Surfoce structure system become the points with another.
(Bose slrir~) • Using Smith diagrams in which, say, the walls of a plan
Figure 2. ReJatJons~p between deepstruoture and surface are represented by points in an electrical network whilst
structures. the rooms are represented by the links between them.

vol 1 no 4 april 1980 211

 NP Phase marker
/\
N V
He
She sils
Bosic ~rmgs
1 speok
You listen
Figure 3. Deep structure can generate a wide range o f sentences.
I mention these not to complicate the issue further but
merely to indicate that if one wants to play syntactic
games, then there are some very sophisticated techniques
available. Yet sophisticated as they are, they still do not
extend the two basic ways available to us for manipulating
space which are:
• Taking small units and clustering them together accord-
ing to whatever system of rules we choose for our
clustering syntax.
• Taking a large volume of space and dividing it up, pro-
gressively, again according to whatever system of
syntactic rules we choose to adopt.
One of the nearest sets of clustering rules probably is that
devised by Hillier and Leaman 38 who take a 'space' as that
which is bounded by 'walls'. These can be solid or perme-
able - that is, open to the next space. Their syntactic rules
are concerned with the number of adiacent spaces to which
a particular space can be connected - 1,2, 3 or 4 - with
which a particular space may share a common bounding
wall - 1,2, 3 or 4 - the maximum which is possible topo-
logically. Even with rules of this simplicity, they are able
to generate a vast range of possible building clusters -
detached, semi-detached, terrace and so on, and to match
them with the 'reality' of settlement patterns through
history. By adding further rules, such as one which states
that, whereas each space may be bounded by four others,
each also must be accessible from the exterior of the
complex, they generate another whole range of possibilities,
many of which also are matched by examples from history.
Mitchell, Steadman and Liggett have explored
the other possibility; taking a 'given' space and dividing it
up into every possible permutation of 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6
individual spaces.
Obviously it is one thing to pursue such spatial
manipulations at this level of abstraction, quite another to
appty them into design. Yet in one case, at least, some
similar manipulations have been applied into architectural
design, by the Taller di Arquitectura of Barcelona. Anna
Bofill and Jose Augustin Goytisolo have demonstrated the
efficacy of such studies at two levels of operation; at the
level of individual activity-space and at the level of com-
plete urban form. They have pursued a continuous develop-
ment of the minimal space required for one, two, three or
more people to wash, cook, eat, sleep and so on, thus
building up a vocabulary - somewhat on the lines of
Christopher Alexander's 'patterns' of activity-volumes
which can then be clustered together in various combina-
tions to generate an infinitely developing range of apart-
ment forms, from the most conventional to the most
extraordinary. In one case, for instance, the developed
form is a single-person apartment in which, among other
212
things, the bath is open to the living room. This was
derived in the first place as merely another possibility
within a wide-ranging permutation but once it had been
derived, it was then built as a prototype apartment form
at Walden 7, a recent development in Barcelona where it
proved surprisingly popular.
Such applications of syntactic manipulation,
arising out of architecture itself of course are perfectly
reasonable, but others have developed syntaxes of a much
more abstract kind - developed in fact out of Chomsky.
One should record that Chafe 39 and others have found
Chomsky's analysis sadly lacking. Even though the whole
enterprise is supposed to be an exercise in syntax, nothing
could be more fraught with meaning than his deep
structures, if he actually said what they were, but that is not
quite the point. The point is that in addition to those who
have looked at architectural syntax in a generalized way,
some architects have-tried quite deliberately, not only to
analyse architecture from a Chomskian point of view, but
even to use his concept of deep structures, developed by
generative and transformational rules into surface structures,
as the basis of an actual design process.
The most prominent of these is Peter Eisenman.4°
Eisenman has demonstrated the possibilities in a series of
house designs (he is now up to house 10f) together with
descriptions of his processes by himself,4° Gandelsonas,41
Tafuri 42 and others. As Gandelsonas puts it:
One of the most interesting and original aspects in the w o r k o f
Eisenman is the discovery o f the possibility o f modifications
within architecture which are the result o f a shift f r o m the
semantic t o the syntactic. By 'paralysing' the semantic dimension,
the syntactic dimension is seen in a new light . . .
In a typical case (House 12) Eisenman starts with a cube
of space. This can be subdivided, of course, by means of a
grid (Eisenman chooses one which divides it into 3 x 3
squares) a total of 9 compartments in all on each floor. The
grid can be defined by a system of columns, a system of
wails, or both. Eisenman examines both possibilities and
then various ways in which they can be interrelated.
In one case, for instance, he divides his cube
diagonally and runs parallel cross walls along his grid line
to meet this diagonal. He then looks at the 'negative' spaces
set up by these walls and gradually elaborates a complex
system of spatial division, the various parts of which, event-
ually, are dedicated to the various activities of living.
There is no question, in Eisenman's case, of trying
to generate the plan-form out of 'need' - he pursues instead
a line of abstract perfection into which the physical realities
of living eventually will have to be fitted. In House 6 this
pursuit of an abstract 'structure' goes so far that the master
bedroom, for instance, contains a long slot in the floor as
part of its abstract pure form, with the (single) beds arranged
on either side. Presumably the inhabitants are expected to
lead such disciplined lives that they never expect to risk life
(and limb) by trying, impulsively, to cross the gap.
Eisenman, of course, is by no means the first
architect to have developed a syntax of this kind. Sir Edwin
Lutyens, no less, worked with an Armature o f planes 43 which
his son describes as follows:
A building is made up of solids and v o i d s . . , w h i c h . , , are
geometrically related . . . To state this relationship it is first of
all necessary t o visualise s p a c e . . , as divided along three planes,
mutuahty at right angtes, into a number of cubical cells. One
series of planes is vertical . . . The t w o other series of planes
are vertical, at right angles to one a n o t h e r . . .
This visualisation o f a space divided in all directions becomes an
DESIGN STUDIES
 'armature of planes', or foundation of three-dimensional relation- us o f t h e o t h e r , there is n o t h i n g we, or Eisenman, can d o
ships. It should be thought of not as a grid or frame of three a b o u t it. He c a n n o t succeed in his aim o f designing
intersecting sets of l i n e s . . , but as almost invisible 'lines of
an architecture o f pure syntax.
cleavage', the whole being like a glass cube made up of smaller
glass cubes. But let us suppose f o r a m o m e n t t h a t he could.
Then what? Again there are examples f r o m linguistics o f
It seems t o me, however, t h a t all these attempts t o w i t h d r a w
w h a t happens w h e n s y n t a c t i c a l l y 'correct' sentences are
f r o m the semantic dimension, t o design an architecture o f put together w i t h no regard at all for the semantic
pure s y n t a x , are d o o m e d t o failure. For the fact is, as
dimension. C h o m s k y cites t w o of the most revealing,
Jencks so clearly points o u t , people will read meanings in
one of w h i c h is: Curious green ideas sleep furiously.
building whatever the architect intended. T h e y cannot help
In each case, adjectives, noun, verb and adverb
it; indeed the only w a y , as we k n o w f r o m the psychology
are put t o g e t h e r w i t h perfect p r o p r i e t y yet the result,
o f perception, the only way any o f us can encompass
literally, is nonsense. H o w can it be possible t h a t
something new is t o compare it w i t h our past experience
architecture put together b y precisely analogous processes
t o see w h e r e it 'fits' in our personal scheme o f things
can make more sense than that?
compared w i t h the things we k n o w already.
No one w i t h the scantiest k n o w l e d g e o f Le Corbusier,
w i t h the w h i t e - w a l l e d villas which he, and others, b u i l t in the
SEMANTICS
1920s can possibly help recalling these when faced w i t h one If the semantic dimension cannot be avoided, then of
o f Eisenman's w h i t e - w a l l e d constructions. The one 'reminds' course we should l o o k at it more closely. It happens

Table 2. Functions of language (from Robinson 12)

Function Destination of verbal act Basis of evaluation Designed equivalent

1. Avoidance of other
problems
2. Conformity to norms
3. Aesthetic delight
4. Regulation of encounter
5. Performatives such as
promising betting, etc.
6. Regulation of own actions
by comment, encourage-
ment, etc.
7. Regulation of others by Receiver's
comment, encouragement,
etc.
8. Expression of feeling
9. Expressing of personal
characteristics personality,
social edentity.
10. Marking of roles within
relationship
11. Discrimination organisation, Correspondence of verbal act
storage and transmission of to nonverbal world
information concerning the
non-linguistic world in the
spheres of logic, science,
ethics, meta-physhics, etc.
12. Instruction
13. Inquiry
14. Meta-language functions
All those taking part
Subscribing to rules
Enrichment of receivers
experience
Interaction between participants Was contar:t make? L3id con-
versation flow; was it suitably
terminated ?
Physical or other action with
which verbal act is associated
Self (messagesource)
Self
Destination
Emitter and receiver
Receiver, who is being taught
Acquisition of knowledge by
emitter
Linguists
Has uncomfortable silence or Filling a gap in the environment perhaps
other problem been avoided? with e routine solution so as to avoid the
responsibility of creative design.
Have the rules been followed. Routine solution to a problem.
Was the corpus of speech re-
cognisable as belonging to a set
form?
Is the result beautiful, moving "Good" design.
etc.?
Planning routes, barriers, etc., so that
people can find their way around easily.
Has the act itself been Signs, notices etc. which confirm those
performed? facts about an environment which could
have been deduced from the environment
itself, e~. that a building is a church.
Is performance improved by
verbalising? Is one's mind
changed or induced?
Have others obeyed, been Planning of building in such a way that
dissuaded, made to laugh, etc? user's behaviour is controlled by impli-
cation, e.g. by planning of circulation
etc., or directly as in the case of a prison.
Do you feel better for
swearing, expressing affection,
etc .?
Has the desired impression been Direct expression of what the environ.
conveyed? ment is for, etc.
Have roles been defined accord-
ing to accepted formulae?
Is the argument true, valid?
within the agreed universe of
discourse?
Has he learned?
Has a gap in his knowledge
been filled?
Have we learned something new Have we learned something new about
about language? the environment.

vol 1 n o 4 april 1980 213

however that one of the basic concepts was anticipated
by none other than Vitruvius 44 himself who wrote:
• . . in all matters, but particularly in architecture, there are
those t w o points: the thing signified and that which gives it
significance. That which is signified is the subject of which
we may be speaking; and that which gives it significance
is a demonstration of scientific principles.
Saussure's concept of a sign is exactly like this. He thinks
of it as a two-part entity, consisting of a signifier and a
signified, formally united by social contract. The signifier
in this case consists of some material representation - the
speech-sounds, marks on paper and so on from which,
maybe, a word is formed whilst the signified consists of
the concept to which that word refers.
Initially, the relationship between word and
concept was quite arbitrary. There was no particular
reason why the English should call a certain animal 'bull',
the French call it 'boeuf' whilst the German call it 'ochs'.
A particular animal which happened to be grazing on the
Franco-German border might well be called by all three
names, simultaneously. But because the relationship
between signifier and signified initially was arbitrary it
must be respected by everyone. No one can change it
unilaterally; a social contract now exists between all English
speaking people that we shall use the word 'bull' whenever
we want to refer to that particular animal; if one of us used
some other word, or coined a new word for the purpose,
no one could understand him; he would have broken the
social contract. Let us note in passing that with a few
exceptions, no such social contract exists to the meaning
of architecture, this is a fundamental difference between
architecture and language.
Others since Saussure have developed his concept
of sign in various ways. Ogden and Richards 45 for instance
felt his two-part entity to be by no means adequate; they
took his signifier (they called it symbol) and his signified
(which they called thought or reference) and added a third
element the referent which is the actual object, person or
event to which one is referring, hence their semiological
triangle in Figure 4•
This has gained a certain currency in linguistic
circles but Hjelmslev46 felt that it also was inadequate. He
postulated the sign as a four-part structure which takes the
following form (I have plotted equivalents in the Saussurean
and the Ogden/Richard's schemes):
Ogden &
Hjelmslev : Saussure: Richards:
form signified referent
Plane of content: substance thought
Plane of expression: substance reference
form signifier symbol
There may be advantages in splitting the concept which links
signifier and referent in this way because it allows for a pro-
cess of encoding between one's immediate thought about the
object and the way one chooses to refer to it by means of
words or other signifiers•
It should be pointed out that certain theorists
including Eco47 are by no means happy with this extension
of Saussure's sign to include the referent• They point out,
rightly, that there is no necessary relationship between a
signifier, a signified and a referent. A particular sign vehicle
(signifier) may signify a fictitious object (such as a unicorn)
or merely a set of abstract thoughts (signifiers) for which no
object exists• Eco concludes from this that the object of a
sign-system is its 'content', rather than some particular
214
referent, and that this 'content' is a kind of 'cultural unit'
rather than an actual object. He gives several examples of
content to which we may well subscribe even though the
evidence for physical objects associated with them at best is
tenuous• These include Napoleon's death (for which we
have to rely on the testimony of historians) Alpha Centauri
(astronomers), transubstantiation in the Christian liturgy
(theologians)•
So far, so good, but then he gives a final example:
'Take the term dog. The referent will certainly not be the
dog x standing by me while I am pronouncing the word'•
For anyone who holds to the doctrine of reference the
referent, in such a case, will be all existing dogs (and also
all past and future dogs). But 'all existing dogs' is not an
object which can be perceived with the senses. It is a set,
a class, a logical entity.
But one of my colleagues actually calls his dog
"Dog' - for which it must certainly be the referent. Eco's
problem can be solved quite simply by taking his referent
as a 'thing'. Provided one uses, say, the Oxford dictionary
definition of 'thing': What is or may be an object of percep-
tion, knowledge, or thought (my italics)•
Of course there is more to it than that, but even
the most extreme of metaphysical philosophers now admit
that a real, physical world does exist and whatever else sign
systems may or may not do, they aren't much good if they
don't refer to it.
Ogden and Richards are quite specific. The referent for
them is 'a thing'• It is 'not an active person' nor is it the
package of ideas about 'things' in general which Eco suggests
it should be. In terms of the way the brain works, it hardly
matters whether the 'thing' is a 'real' object in the physical
world or something we dreamed about. We shall subject it
to processes of thinking, in just the same way, however our
ideas of it actually arose in the brain so let us agree with
Ogden and Richards that the referent is a thing, but whilst
realizing that a thing can be real or imaginary.
As for Eco's insistence that rather than being dog
x, the referent should be 'all existing dogs' - this merely
confuses two perfectly ordinary terms; coterms in linguistics;
connotation and denotation. Eco does this quite wilfully.
He says: 'The difference between denotation and connota-
tion is not (as many authors maintain) the difference between
"univocal" and "vague" signification.. • What constitutes
connotation as such is the connotative code which establishes
i t . . . ' Those 'many authors' whom Eco dismisses probably
would accept Pei's much simpler definitions:
denotation The meaning which a form has for all who
use it (the intrinsic meaning of water)•
connotation The spatial shades of meaning (based on
emotional or other factors) that a form has for its individual
user (the evil connotation of profits for labour leaders, as
against its favourable connotations for management...)
thought or reference
(Saussure's s~nified)
symbol referent
(Soussure's signifier) (the ot)ject, person or evemt to which one is referrir~j)
Figure 4• Semiological triangle.
DESIGN STUDIES
So whilst one need not necessarily dismiss Eco's Theory as
does his Times Literary Supplement reviewer (1977) as 'a
more or less gratuitous expression of an Italian esprit de
systeme', it is much too interesting and stimulating for that,
one cannot accept his dismissal of such patently useful
concepts, nor his attempt to complexify what can be fairly
straightforward.
Peirce's semiotic is much more complex than
Saussure's semiology. At one time, Peirce identified 59,049
(31° ) different classes of sign which he later considerably
reduced in number. There are scattered references to them
in various of his collected papers 2 but they are difficult to
quarry out. The papers themselves are often confused,
ambiguous and self-contradictory; in addition to these,
Peirce presents us with two other difficulties. First he was
an inveterate 'trichotomizer' grouping everything taxono-
mically into sets of threes and secondly, he constantly flouted
Saussure's social contract, coining a new word or term for
every concept which occurred to him. He wrote, for instance
of firstness, secondness and thirdness; abstractives, con-
cretives and collectives, of Phemes, Semes and Delemes;
of potisigns, Actisigns and Famisigns, of quatisigns, sinsigns
and legisigns. Of all his trichotomies, however, that which
classifies signs into Icons, Indices and Symbols has proved
to bethe most fruitful. He defines them as follows:
An icon is a sign which refers to the Object that it denotes
by virtue of certain characters of its own and which it possesses
just the same, whether any such object actually exists or not.
A symbol is,
a sign which refers to the object that it denotes by virtue of a
law, usually any associations of general ideas, which operates to
cause that symbol to be interpreted as referring to that object
An index is a sign or representation,
which refers to its object not so much because of any similarity
of, or analogy with it, nor because it is associated with general
characters which that object happens to possess,and because it is
in dynamical (including spatial) connection, both with t h e
individual object on the one hand and with t h e senses or memory
of the person for whom it acts as a sign.
Peirce's icon, therefore, is an object which exists in its own
right but which has certain elements in common with some
other object and can therefore be used to represent that
object. Maps, photographs and algebraic signs are icons in
this sense, so are architect's drawings. Unfortunately, though,
Peirce's definitions of icons are so ambiguous that a genera-
tion of semioticians is still concerned with trying to unravel
what he actually meant by an iconic sign: Eco, 48 Volli, 49
Maldonado,5° Broadbent sl and others have contributed to
this particular debate.
Peirce's index is rather more straightforward; it is
a sign which indicates some particular object or circumstance,
in terms of a physical relationship. A pointing finger indicates
which way to go, the pole star indicates North, a weather
vane indicates which direction the wind is blowing from,
and so on.
Most large buildings contain indices of this kind
(in the form of notices and it could be argued that a building
which fits exactly around a set of functions, such as a nuclear
power station, is an 'index' of those functions. Peirce's
symbol is even more straightforward: it is a sign which
'carries' some general meaning, thus a badge symbolizes the
fact that someone belongs to an organization, a railway
ticket symbolizes the fact that they have paid to travel.
Ordinary words, in Peirce's terms are symbols in this sense.
vol 1 n o 4 april 1980
A church obviously symbolizes Christianity - Peirce's
symbol has the specific quality that whatever relationship
exists between the symbol itself and the entity which i t
symbolizes, has to be learned, both by the user of symbols
and those to w h o m its meaning is important. In this sense it
closely resembles Saussure's sigr~ a signifier and a signified
w i t h a learned relationship between them.
Buildings again can be symbols in Peirce's sense.
The gothic cathedral obviously is a symbol of the Christian
faith; most of us in the Western cultures have learned the
essential relationship between a building of that form and
the religion which it symbolizes; we even share a social
contract as to conventional church form. As for buildings
as indices; one can think of many art galleries, museums,
exhibition pavilions and even houses, such as Le Corbusier's
Maison la Roche 1923 which are planned about a set
route.
Such buildings indicate to us which way we should
go in moving around them so certainly they are indices. The
'functional' building also was intended to be an index,
indicating by its form the functions which it houses.
Occasionally, it was successful, as in the case of
certain power stations but most so-called 'functional'
buildings are merely symbols of modernity. As for buildings
as icons, any drawing, model or photograph of a building is
an icon in Peirce's sense, but the building itself also may
be an icon; if it 'reminds' us of something else. I have
described elsewhere certain buildings which were designed by
visual analogy - with forms from nature, as in the case of
Le Corbusier's crab-shell roof at Ronchamp or the hands in
prayer which suggested the roof-form of Wright's Chapel at
Madison, Wisconsin (1950); with modern painting as in the
case of de Stijl architecture and so on (1920s). Such build-
ings obviously can be iconic signs of the forms from which
they were derived, one of the clearest, obviously is the
poultry stand on Long Island, to which Robert Venturi
has drawn attention, (1973) shaped like a duck.
But also I showed that there is another kind of
architectural icon - that is the kind of likeness between
buildings which depends on some underlying structure,
rather than on simple, observable, visual likeness. The
clearest example of this, probably, is that suggested by
March and Steadman who took three Frank Lloyd Wright
plans (the Life house, the Ralph Jester house and the Vigo
Sundt house) and showed that despite the obvious differences
in the appearances of their plans (the first is based on rectan-
gular geometry, the second on circular and the third on
triangular) there was nevertheless a pattern of relationships
between living rooms and terraces, terraces and pools, bed-
rooms and bathrooms and so on which underlay them all.
In t;lis sense, each was an icon for the other.
It should be clear therefore that in thinking of
architectural design, the whole range of semiotic studies :
pragmatic, syntactic and semantic, is of very considerable
relevance. Not only does it help us to understand how
architecture 'works' as a series of sign systems but there are
indications already that some architects have found some
semiotic approaches of considerable value in the generation
of their own designs. Insofar as certain aspects of metho-
dology, in particular those which determine the ways in
which design-forms are actually conceived, are of universal
application throughout the whole of designing, I have no
doubt that these semiotic 'tools' will be equally valid in other
fields of designing. But their actual relevance can best be
judged by others with greater expertise than mine in those
particular fields.
215
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9 Venturi, R, Scott Brown, D, Izenour, S Learning from
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