FORM AND MEANING

Architecture as a set of abstract relations and as a field of embodied experience,

looking also at the ways in which these fields relate to cultural meaning. Often expressed as
a split between the conceptual characteristics of buildings and their physical and cultural
dimensions. This split has found multiple expressions in binary relations, like mind and body,
mental and physical, form and function, form and meaning.
The relationship between the two sides has been regarded as defi nitive: form is seen
as an expression of essence, historical period or function (forty 2000: 289–90).
The abstract forms of modernism dissociate architecture from ‘fi gures’, carrying meaning by
cultural association (colquhoun 1985: 190). Alternatively, meaning is socially constructed
rather than described by forms in any determinate way (tschumi 1999: 201).
At the end of the twentieth century turned from the form-function relation to the relation
between form and meaning.
Tschumi argued that architecture cannot be reduced to notions of conceptual order
and functions, but should be addressed by the movement of bodies in space, together with
the actions and events that take place within the social and political realm of buildings (1999:
3).
Form-function relation is frequently coupled with a reaction to the notion of order,
order is not responsible for meaning, as this is produced by the social processes of
interpretation. Order is abstract, objective, or universal leading away from the cultural,
subjective, experiential and idiosyncratic qualities that give space the distinctive character of
place. Order had been seen as reductive and exploited by dominant forces of production and
consumption, promoting an illusion of transparent meanings (lefebvre 1991: 28).
Social meaning has been freed from function, the proliferation of forms and digital
technologies of modelling provide evidence that architecture is not freed from the abstract
relations through which forms are handled.
The relationship of space to human experience. It is argued that geometrical and
spatial relations can reflect how buildings embody social knowledge or generate a rich
potential for social meaning.

GEOMETRY, SPACE AND CULTURAL MEANING

‘There is no space without event, no architecture without a program’. Few theorists dare to
explore the relationship between architectural abstractions and places that confront spaces,
actions, the movement of bodies and events (1999: 141). Programme and order are notions
that could not be dispensed with but questioned, deconstructed and reinterpreted.
La villette destabilizes functional conventions through concepts derived from cinema,
literary criticism and other disciplines (193). It is composed of ‘repetitions’, ‘distortions’,
‘superimpositions’ and ‘programmatic instabilities’ that challenge and push the notion of
order to the edge. It is ‘antifunctional’, ‘abstract’, ‘infinite’, ‘anti-contextual’ and anonymous,
leading to infinite interpretations (195). If meanings are multiple and socially constructed, the
design is a testimony that there is not a deterministic relationship between form and function.
By assigning meanings to a geometrical concept from the ways in which it has been
interpreted in architectural discourse and architectural contexts tschumi performs a process
of signifi cation. The purpose is to show that content is never transparent (201), but the
attached meanings draw attention to the fact that, seen in isolation from architectural signifi
cation, the grid is purely abstract and logical.
 Social meaning is in the semantic potential of abstract structures and their capacity to
question contextual histories, architectural theories and existing styles. Abstract geometrical
entities with social life, and that of theory with building. No causal relationship between form
and social meaning exists is that buildings can accommodate programmes conceived for
different purposes (114). Whether buildings can house different activities over time, but
whether the physical factors related to one mode of living are compatible with another, and
what kinds of spatial or social changes are essential for a transformation of use. As example,
the renaissance interior created close interaction among people transgressing class
separations. The english house, on the other hand, was founded on the distance between
social classes and the restriction of social encounters (1997: 88). So, the two domestic settings
would not allow an interchange between the different living modes without spatial changes
being necessary to sustain the cultural pattern.
The theoretical paradigm of functionalism derives from the wrong assumption that
architecture is some kind of machine for social engineering. The implication is that specifi c
social outcomes can be achieved by manipulating architectural forms (1996: 301). For hillier
a building does not impinge directly on human behaviour, while the relationship between
architecture and society passes neither through forms nor functions, but through the realm
of space and the variable of spatial confi guration. Configuration is the social information itself
governing what happens in the building. The building as a material entity is not culture, but
by being a realization of the underlying structures of society, it is the means ‘by which the
society as an abstract structure is realized in space-time and then reproduced’ (1996: 310).
Buildings can receive information from society through spatial confi guration, but also
transmit effects back to society through the same means.
 Conservative mode to reproduce existing social relationships and categorical
differences.
 Generative mode, creating a potential for social encounter.

Returning to the comparative analysis of buildings examined in the previous chapter, i can
suggest that the museums that are characterized by a strong correspondence of geometric
relations, spatial relations and the concepts used to organize the exhibition are based on a
conservative mode. They subordinate all levels of properties to a single conceptual idea to
construct a semantic expression of structure, ideology and educational content. They embody
and refl ect the conceptual ordering of the building and the collection as an overly structured
Message. In contrast, museums that are not organized by a correspondence among these
systems of relations demonstrate a generative mode, releasing a rich potential for social
information, so the space generates diverse patterns of contact with the art work and social
awareness.
space is the primary factor related to how spatial continuities and discontinuities are
negotiated in a layout by people. However, the way in which it relates to geometry can inform
the cognitive aspects of buildings and how visitors approach the collections. When spatial
connections are intensifi ed through geometrical axes and punctuated by art works, they
construct static views of synchronic visibility and suggest frontal positions. Space as a
predictable fi eld that conditions movement at the small and large scale. If geometric and
spatial relations do not correspond tightly, the organization of the building is not pre-empted
or explained by the representational factor of geometry. Geometric and spatial elements do
not relate to each other in a coherent way but interact as they inform the experience.
 in the former, form and geometry are embedded and refl ected in space as a mode of
conceiving spatial relations and exhibition messages that construct a shared way of seeing.
By not expressing a conceptual organization, the latter generate a rich social potential and
individual ways of seeing.

Issue
The lack of a conception of the non-discursive properties of confi guration is what led
theoretical and architectural investigations at the turn of the century to reject the
functionalist doctrines (hillier 1996: 301). The social failures of modernism and the
consequences of the form-function paradigm in the social realm have confi rmed the central
importance of studying the confi gurational properties of buildings to see how they work and
carry out the programme of social activities and movement (376). The lack of a conception of
confi guration leads to a division between the conceptual properties of geometry and the
experiential dimensions of buildings. In the absence of a notion of spatial confi guration, space
is not seen as having relational logic as opposed to geometry that clearly has abstract
relations. Tschumi’s notions of the pyramid of concepts and the labyrinth of experience are
characteristic expressions of this split between abstract and experiential.

Spatial experience
Spatial experience is also governed by conceptual properties captured by geometry
and the pattern of integration. By organizing geometrical characteristics and spatial confi
guration architecture constructs a relationship between conceived and perceived aspects of
space. Architecture is ordered neither in the abstract logical realm of concepts nor in the
empirical realm of the senses and social activity. The conceptual and the perceptual aspects
of architecture pass through spatial properties, geometric properties and their
interrelationship. This interrelationship is defi ned as the different degrees of geometric
control on the variance of visual fi elds observed by movement. It co-ordinates visual
perceptions, experiential and social patterns in space and time, and synchronizes perceptual
fi elds, gradually offering a prescribed or a varied experience.
The confi gurational analysis of space is essential to avoid the assumption that
buildings as conceptual structures are purely abstract, while as experiential realms they are
social and sensual. Assigning multiple meanings to geometrical forms by a process of
association does not equal the way in which social activities and spaces are experienced inside
buildings. The absence of the conception of spatial confi guration can lead alternatively to the
functionalist assumption that there is a one-to-one match between social realities and
geometrical concepts. Since social intentions are placed in the design they must somehow
find their way into the real building. And so, meaning is socially constructed or based on
abstract notions of form – are symptomatic of a belief that theoretical and geometrical ideas
equal the world as we encounter it in everyday reality and social life.
The signifi cance of spatial configuration is describing how people experience and
manipulate space in buildings and cities. Space syntax turns away from the geometrical and
formal dimensions of space. The intention is,
 Develop abstract theoretical propositions so as not to restrict the generation of ideas
during the early stages of the design;
 Provide analytical and predictive models that can be used to improve the social
performance of buildings and urban areas during the stages when designs are refi ned
rather than generated
 Social meanings in buildings pass through the medium of confi guration, but confi
guration is not the only knowledge we need to recognize meaning in architecture. As stated
before, geometry and its relationship to spatial confi guration are also sources of content. A
relationship of correspondence between the two levels of properties stabilizes and represents
space as a strong geometrical and cultural message. Conversely, a lack of correspondence,
coupled with the generative potential of space, can suspend cultural messages and generate
Unpredictable meanings.
Geometry can bear upon the cognitive, aesthetic, semantic and social aspects of
architecture. But it is also the medium through which buildings are visualized and explored in
the design process. Geometric properties work as repre sen ta tions used to generate spaces
and forms, explore and resolve their logic at the conceptual level and the would-be
experiential level. They are also models of thought diagramming abstract propositions about
spatial, social and conceptual entities. The power of geometry to articulate spatial relations
and theoretical speculations interfaces the design of buildings with concepts both internal
and external to architecture and its social programme. The power of geometrical shapes to
link ideas across fields to their capacity to travel between ‘the visible and the invisible, the
corporeal and the incorporeal, the absolute and the contingent, the ideal and the real’. In
architecture their task is to convey shape from one state to another, and as such they are
‘changeless in themselves and volatile in relation to everything else’.
morphological analysis should encompass the study of geometry, spatial confi
guration and their interrelationship, as factors that are all crucial for understanding
architecture and cultural meaning. An approach that explores geometrical ideas only is
limited to a study of form like the classical theories of mathematics and proportion. spatial
confi guration and use patterns excludes the organizing powers of geometry. morphological
analysis is not suffi cient to capture the full spectrum of knowledge needed by designers to
engage with architecture as a creative activity. buildings are not just morphological entities,
but also theoretical explorations in the realm of the imagination. They produce interventions
in the real world as well as theoretical propositions with the view to create a new reality.
study of architecture requires the analysis of morphological properties of the geometric and
spatial kind, it is also clear that this is inadequate to provide a complete understanding of
architecture as innovative activity.