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Semiotics of Architecture

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Pellegrino P (2006), Semiotics of Architecture. In: Keith Brown, (Editor-in-Chief)

Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics, Second Edition, volume 11, pp. 212-216.
Oxford: Elsevier.
212 Semiotic Anthropology
Parmentier R J (1985). ‘Signs’ place in medias res: Peirce’s
concept of semiotic mediation.’ In Mertz E & Parmentier
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on
rs
Semiotics of Architecture
Pe
P Pellegrino, University of Geneva, Geneva,
Switzerland
ß 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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or
Two definitions of architecture are conceivable: the
one from the architect, for whom the architecture is
the conception of a measured structure inscribed in a
th
monument, a conception appealing to models and
rules of composition, to a knowledge transmitted by
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masters; and the other from receivers of the architec-
tural project, clients and users, for whom an archi-
tecture is a building in its material reality, an
instrument (Prieto, 1975) with functions, endowed
with usefulness, which corresponds to needs of
spaces and conforms to usages determined by a social
system.
These two definitions bear therefore on two differ-
ent objects, a knowledge applied in a project for the
first, an instrument responding to needs for the sec-
ond. They are complete only if the first includes the
second, if the conception of the architect takes for
a goal the needs of the users of the building in project,
and reciprocally if the second seizes the first, if
needs of users are open to possibilities provided by
Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics (2006), vol. 11, pp. 212–216
Sahlins M D (1985). Islands of history. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press.
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Herzfeld M & Posner R (eds.) Iconicity: essays on
the nature of culture. Tübingen: Stauffenburg Verlag.
359–384.
Silverstein M (1975). ‘La sémiotique Jakobsonienne et l’an-
thropologie sociale.’ L’Arc 60, 45–49.
Silverstein M (1976). ‘Shifters, linguistic categories, and
cultural description.’ In Basso K H & Selby H A (eds.)
Meaning in anthropology. Albuquerque: University of
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of sociolinguistic life.’ Language & Communication 23,
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y
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semiotic anthropology. Bloomington: Indiana University
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Urban G (1985). ‘The semiotics of two speech styles in
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Orlando, FL: Academic Press. 311–329.
Urban G (1986). ‘Semiotic functions of macro-parallelism
in the Shokleng origin myth.’ In Sherzer J & Urban G
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instruments projected by the architect (Pellegrino,
2003). This creates problems of conception as much
as of reception, that is to say semiotic problems of
communication.
Summing up modern architects’ attempts to define
functions (Le Corbusier, 1930), Umberto Eco pro-
poses to differentiate them in first, denoted functions,
which articulate the building to a usage, and second,
connoted functions which articulate it to distinctive
values of cultural systems; the emergence of events
crossing these systems continually displaces objects of
usage between first functions and second functions
(Eco, 1968).
The physical instrument conformation remaining
stable, the cultural process confers upon it a new
signified in a consumption of forms and an obsoles-
cence of values. Signifier forms are recuperated and
endowed with other signifieds. With regard to the
architecture, the physical stability refers to stability
of places that buildings occupy and of spaces that
they offer for usage.
This stability testifies to a state of the distribution of
the signifiers and, at the zero degree of the marking
of the space, fixes the empty place of the signified
(Barthes, 1967). The signifiers are understood as such

more by their correlative positions than by their
contents; they carry in an intrinsic manner a value
by offering a place for a possible signified.
But the signifier and the signified do not correspond
according to a permanent norm, as is the case in the
constitution of a lexicon; there is an open gap between
signifier forms and the forms of what is signified, a
gap that precisely is where the work of the architect
enters. This gap renders codes, according to what are
defined as the second and first functions, variable and
opened. Changing, the coded signifieds do not refer in
a one-to-one manner to stable signifiers.
One may wonder how this stability of the confor-
mation of the signifiers remains, while that of the
signifieds changes, as the first and second functions
displace; how, for example, an archeologist architect
can determine the form of a crumbled building from
incomplete fragments while not knowing the precise
location and the usage of origin.
In this case it is necessary to admit that architectural
codes are constitutive without being directly linked to
functions (firsts and seconds) admitted by the usage;
that there is a cultural autonomy of the architecture,
that the architectural conception is self-referential.
The work is generated by detaching itself from instru-
mental codes admitted by the usage; the architecture
escapes from determination by functions.
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The self-reference of the work, however, draws in
relations of homology, in a similar structural diagram
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governing plans of the expression and plans of the
content of the architecture, as in an idiolectal code
(Eco, 1968). But this homology is arbitrary; it is the
fruit of an intention, the object of the project of the
's
architect, and the partitions of the content proposed
by the architectural plan are not necessarily recog-
or
nized and resumed by the usage of the building.
Even if, as instrument, in its internal functioning, it
maintain causal necessary relations between its parts
th
(Alberti, 1485), the architectural building renders
possible, but not obligatory, operations feasible in its
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usage; projected by the architect, the shelter commu-
nicates its function of protected internal space as a
possible but not necessary function. The architect
therefore asserts its autonomy in the face of the virtu-
ality of usages of its works. He defines the autonomy
of its work not by a servile following of the habits and
desires of users of its products, but in reference to
other works that it accepts as models; models that
give it measured rules of spaces that it projects, forms
and forces to postpone in the drawing of its projects.
To assert the autonomy of its conception, the archi-
tect interprets the expectations of addressees of its
work, and classifies it according to types (Levy,
2003), but gives them a reply that is based on the
logic of the models of a learned architecture.
Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics (2006), vol. 11, pp. 212–216
Semiotics of Architecture 213
From the most ancient treatise that has reached us,
the Ten books of architecture of Vitruvius, we learn
that this science is acquired by practice and by theory
(Vitruvius, circa 80 B.C.). The practice comprises
the execution of designs whereby the matter of archi-
tectural works is given suitable form. The theory ex-
plains and demonstrates the fitness of the proportions
of the things proposes to make, the relevance of the
measurements given to the various parts of the edi-
fice planned. Architecture cannot do without either
its theory or its practice.
And theory in architecture, according to Vitruvius,
is a semiotic theory, inasmuch as in architecture, as
in any other science, two things are noticed: that
y
which is signified and that which signifies. Still more
op
precisely, it is a theory based both:
on a metasemiotic system, in which the thing
signified, the thing stated and spoken about, is the
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object of the architectural design, the building, a
tool possessing a certain utility for those who use
it;
al
and on a connotative representation, in which the
on thing that signifies in the design of the object of
architectural project is the demonstration given of
it by reasoning, supported by science.
For Vitruvius, what signifies in architecture is not the
building per se but the secondary connotative signifi-
cation that architecture gives of the connection that
the edifice may have with things other than itself:
certain items of knowledge, a branch of learning. In
architecture, the demonstration of the usefulness of
the instrument is given by a measured design that
connotes a reasoning (Table 1).
We also learn that architecture is a science that
should be accompanied by a great variety of studies
and knowledge, by means of which it judges all works
of the other arts that belong to it: to the point where
most cannot comprehend that the understanding and
memory of one man should be capable of so much
knowledge. All sciences, however, have a communica-
tion and link between them; universal science is com-
posed of all these sciences, so that it is enough for the
Table 1
214 Semiotics of Architecture
architect to know the consistencies . . . between certain
things that are common to all the sciences, one of
which helps in learning another more easily.
The connotative connection between what archi-
tectural reasoning signifies and what is signified in the
design of the edifice that it builds is thus marked in
the building as a right measurement of objects in rela-
tion to their use; architecture is then constituted by
operations of measurement, as disposition and distri-
bution, as well as the ordering, rhythm, and propor-
tion of the parts of the edifice. And the theory of
architecture is a theory of measurement (Boudon,
1975) signified in the edifices it produces.
As an instrument endowed with a usefulness, the
building is the semiotic object of a demonstrative
metadiscourse explaining intentions that preside over
partitions of which it is the object and to the articula-
tion of the variable forms of its content and its expres-
sion. This metadiscourse is contained in the forms
of the project; it disarticulates and rearticulates its
models of reference, to seize its deep semantic and to
neutralize its context, as it decomposes and recom-
poses its in a graphic reasoning (Figure 1) by putting
rs
Pe
's
or
th
Au
Figure 1 Sketches of the House VI, P. Eisenman, Cornwall,
1972–1973. (Source: P. Eisenman, 1987, Houses of cards, Oxford
University Press, New York, with permission.)
Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics (2006), vol. 11, pp. 212–216
them at stake to test its syntactic rules and transform
the context in a measured co-text (Jeanneret, 2005).
By defining itself arbitrarily in an articulation of
components of the graphic sign that its drawing han-
dles between metalanguage and connotation, the plan
of the architectural expression creates a connotative
articulation between expression and content; thus, by
the ambiguity and the contradiction (Venturi, 1966)
between its levels of shape, architecture escapes habit,
escapes from the reproduction of usage norms and the
imitation of a stylistic manner.
As monument, the building is the semiotic object
of connotation. The shape taken by the signifier
enters into measured relation with that taken by the
y
signified (Pellegrino, 2004). It represents the commu-
op
nication of a primary conception with which a sec-
ondary, sometimes contradictory one is brought into
relation, and interprets its functioning as a measuring
C
of an articulation (Table 2).
It is then the articulation of the design by the mea-
suring, presenting itself as a monument, a mechanism
al
of communication that gives meaning to the form of
on the expression as well as to the form of the content.
The intention of the architect is thus measured in a
design that contains and expresses it.
Exploiting this articulation, in opposition to the
concept of form of the modernist architects, for whom
form follows function (Sullivan, 1903), contempo-
rary architects develop an articulation of complex
form, that is to say of form conceived at several levels
of design (Muntañola, 1996).
To seize these levels of complexity, A. Colquhoun
draws attention to the concept of figure (Colquhoun,
1981), which stems from the classical tradition of
rhetoric (Fontanier, 1830). The figure is built upon
a procedure of secondariness and is designed to
persuade the receivers of the values to be adopted.
But form is conceived as an approximation as faith-
ful as possible to the referred content, which remains
unutterable, i.e., to the signified of the second level of
conception (Table 3). At the first level, the form is
conceived in an articulation inserted into a system of
potentialities; it may be symbolized and enter into
Table 2
Table 3

Figure 2 Sketches of the Bregenzona House, M. Botta, 1983.
(Source: E. Pizzi, 1991, Mario Botta, Gili, Barcelone, with permis-
sion).
rs
substitutive paradigms, for example that of orders of
Pe
columnage.
The connotation diagram is then as in Table 3,
where the form of the first level of conception is in-
serted in a constituted culture, a learned one in this
's
case; whereas at the second level, it tends to inform an
unknown, x, which is the interpretation of its use.
or
Thus contemporary architects propose to reinsert the
figure in the conception of their project, but at the
same time creating shocks and fragmenting it (Figure 2).
th
No longer seeking to produce functional form, they
also tend not to integrate fragments in a coherent
Au
system of the figure (Colquhoun, 1981) but, by play-
ing on connections, to juxtapose figurative elements
in an unexpected manner producing the meaning of
the measure (Table 4).
We may ask, then, whether what links the fragmen-
tary references one to another is the fact that they
interpret certain attributes of the second-level signi-
fier. Rhetoric helps us to find the answer (Perelman,
1989); it is a logic of the figure in which attributes
maintain measured relations with what they connote:
synecdochic relation, correspondence of the part with
the whole; relation of metonymy, connection of the
container to the content; contrastive relation, of a
part antithetical to the whole that posits it; relation
of semantic metaphor, resemblance that posits a gap
Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics (2006), vol. 11, pp. 212–216
Semiotics of Architecture 215
Table 4
in order to propose its reduction (Ricoeur, 1975);
relation of catachresis, to extend the meaning of a
part to a whole that no longer has any meaning;
y
relation of integrative analogy, in which the parts
op
maintain with one another relations similar to the
relations that the totality they constitute maintains
with another totality (Quatremère de Quincy,
1823). In these figures, the connotative drift opens a
C
gap, a reduction of the primary signifier to a few of its
attributes, to reveal a secondary signified that restores
al
meaning to the complexity of a whole. And this rhet-
oric of the project does not remain with the surface of
forms, but acts at the depth of their genesis to intro-
on
duce there, by displacement, subtraction, and addi-
tion, spatial measured components of a monument
previously ignored.
See also: Denotation versus Connotation; Figurative Lan-
guage: Semiotics; Iconicity; Paradigm versus Syntagm;
Rhetoric: Semiotic Approaches; Visual Semiotics.
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 216 Semiotics of Architecture
Perelman A (1989). Rhétoriques. Brussels: University of
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Semiotics: History
J Deely, University of St Thomas, Houston, Texas, USA
ß 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Semiotics is the body of knowledge that arises from
thematic or systematized study of the action of signs,
called ‘semiosis,’ wherever that action occurs in
the universe. If, as has been suggested in the Kassel
al
symposium opening the 21st century discussion of
semiosis as the subject matter of semiotic inquiry
(Nöth, 2001; see also Deely, 1996), the action of
on
signs is coextensive with the physical universe itself,
then the history of semiosis itself would be nothing
less nor other than the history of what has heretofore
rs
been called ‘evolution.’ Be that as it may, the history
of semiotics is quite another matter, for here we are
Pe
studying directly not the action of signs in the world
of nature or culture, but only the awareness of that
action insofar as it enters into that systematic body of
knowledge called ‘semiotics.’
's
The thinkers of the Latin Age, inspired by Aristotle,
liked to distinguish between remote and proximate
or
potentialities. Thus, awareness or knowledge of the
action of signs was no more than a remote possibility
in the long ages of cosmic semiosis (or evolution) that
th
preceded the establishment of those forms that we
call ‘conscious life,’ the animals. Even among the
Au
animals, however, prior to the human animal, called
by Aristotle z on logon E’ w n and by the Latins ani-
mal rationale, semiotics remained a remote possibili-
ty, not a proximate one. For the precursors of human
beings in the biological community, the z a logon
oukE’ w n or ‘nonlinguistic animals’ of Aristotle, the
animalia bruta of the Latins, make use of signs but
without knowing that there are signs. Zoösemiosis,
the action of signs in and among animals, gives rise
to zoösemiotics only within anthroposemiosis, the
human use of signs, not within zoösemiosis as such.
So the actual or proximate possibility of semiotics
as a distinctive branch or field of knowledge comes to
be only with the emergence on earth of animals capa-
ble not just of using signs but also of knowing that
Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics (2006), vol. 11, pp. 212–216
View publication stats
Sullivan L (1903, rev. 1918). Kindergarten chats. Repub-
lished (1976). New York: Wittenborn Art Books.
Venturi R (1966). Complexity and contradiction in
architecture. New York: The Museum of Modern Art.
Vitruvius Pollio M (2001). (Circa 80 B.C.). De architectura.
English translation. Ten books of architecture.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
there are signs. These animals, originally called, as we
y
have noted, z a logon E’ w n in philosophy, later ani-
op
malia rationalia or ‘rational animals,’ were also the
bearers of the proximate possibility of developing
semiotics as a distinctive kind of knowledge. From
C
this point of view, on Aristotle’s own terms that a
thing is best known from what it finally becomes,
the z on logon E’ w n is best described not in terms of
its subjective constitution of possibility as a ‘rational
animal,’ or even as a ‘thinking thing’ (res cogitans,
as modernity would conceive it), but in terms of
what is most distinctive about the exercise of aware-
ness in such an animal as expressing not only its
animality but also its ties to the larger world of
nature, inorganic as well as organic. So the richest
definition of the human being as z on logon E’ w n is
the semiotic animal (Deely, 2002, 2003). And the
history of semiotics is the history of the development
of the awareness among human beings that there are
signs distinct alike from objects and things to the
realization that signs in their proper being are invisi-
ble to sense and presupposed in their action both to
the constitution of objects and the exploration of
things.
In fact, the three main definitions philosophy has
given of the human being – z on logon E’ w n in the
Greek period, animal rationale in the Latin Age, and
‘semiotic animal’ today – correspond to the three main
stages in the development of semiotic consciousness,
as follows. The presemiotic stage begins with the
appearance of human beings as the original animals
capable of knowing that there are signs, preliminary
to realizing that capacity in various theoretical fash-
ions. The protosemiotic stage begins with the first
proposal of sign as a general mode of being trans-
cending nature and culture, inner and outer of con-
sciousness, in the age of Augustine. And finally, the
stage of semiotics proper begins as a proximate pos-
sibility with the establishment theoretically in the
work first of Poinsot and next of Peirce of how it
is that the being proper to signs transcends, or, in
a certain way, ‘maintains an indifference to,’ the