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W riters that interpret Le Corbusier’s and Botta’s work in terms of what it refers to, see architecture as an assim ilation of elements outside itself. They look rather at what meanings are attached to buildings, than at how relations are formed to create meanings. As it was suggested, these interpretations often take two directions: one sees architecture as an interaction of formal and figurative themes, while the other as an interaction of formal and functional themes.

As it was also suggested these approaches usually draw an analogy betw een architecture and language. T his analogy for Peter Collins is founded on the fact that they both have functional and em otional significance that develops through time^^. They are both characterised by the notion of gram m ar, the notion o f distinction between vocabulary and syntax, and the notion of ornamentation and structure.

L inguistic analogy is based on Saussure’s distinction between langue and parole. It is also based on the notion o f the ‘arbitrariness of the sign’^^. Saussure suggested that the linguistic sign takes its m eaning from social convention and not from reason. It was, thus, liberated from the problem o f causality and determ inism . Departing from the linguistic model, a sem iotic theory was established attem pting to interpret various social phenomena. An area in research and architectural practice opened in recent years concerned with the ‘architectural sem iotics’ and transposing linguistic m odels to architecture. These m odels provide a way to justify design decisions that are not founded on pre - established m eanings and social purposes.

A t the level o f theory there have been various linguistic directions, the m ajority o f which, as Donald Preziosi points out, assume that architecture exists as a ‘lexical label or certain arbitrarily restricted artifactual portions of the built environm ent...’^^. Thus, architecture is often described as a system of signs which is delivered by word-like elements. This is demonstrated by C olquhoun’s distinction between m eaningless form and m eaningful figure or by M ario G aldesonas’ description o f the Renaissance architecture as ‘an apparently finite and stable number of forms and their correlated m eaning w ithin a

P e te r C o llin s . ‘C h a n g in g Ideas in M o d ern A rc h ite c tu re ’. 1 7 5 0 -1 9 5 0 ’. F a b e r & F a b e r, L o n d o n 1965, p.p. 173- 1 8 2 .

^ ^ F e rd in ard d e S au ssu re. ‘C o u rse in G en eral L in g u istic s’, trans. by W ad e B ask in , N ew Y ork, M c G ra w -H ill, 1966.

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closed system ’ Although Galdesonas distinguishes between a ‘syntactic’ structure of language, dealing with its syntax, and a ‘sem antic’ structure, dealing with its meaning, his particular definition is from the point o f view of word - like elements.

As the discussion of theorists like Colquhoun, von M oos, Tzonis, L efaivre and T revisiol showed, architectural semiotics often looks not at the architectural syntax but at arbitrarily selected portions, like individual architectural entities, or fragments o f a canon, or prom inent building types that identify a building form with a specific function or meaning.

Another example o f a theory based on linguistic analogy is Bruno Z evi’s review o f m odem architecture as lan g u ag e in w hich configuration o f certain individual elem ents changes from C lassicism to M odernism ^'^. Charles Jenks’ ‘The Post Modern Language o f A rchitecture’^^ and R obert V enturi’s ‘C om plexity and Contradiction in M odern A rchitecture’^^ are also exam ples o f the sam e assumption. Venturi stresses that architecture is a process o f accommodation o f sem antic com plexities enhanced by am biguities and contradictions. Past styles are available for re-use as conventional elem ents that become vital through distortion, so that old and new meanings coexist and reinforce each other.

Venturi, Scott Brown and Izenour extended this idea further taking the emphasis from the ambiguous and ‘difficult w holes’ to the idea o f the ‘decorated shed’. According to this idea, the arehiteets’ attention should shift from space and strueture to symbolic content^^. The road from architecture to content lies in m aking concrete the internalised value systems of the users.

A t the level o f architectural practice, this approach enabled the questioning o f m odernism w ith its insistence on functionalism on the one hand, and the break up o f the traditional system o f cultural signs on the other. It gave rise to different ways o f responding to the linguistic analogy ranging from Charles M oore’s and Robert Venturi’s use of ‘isolated lexical figures’ to Aldo R ossi’s and G iorgio G rassi’s use o f ‘archetypal’ forms as the most representative of the collective experience of architecture.

Mario Galdesonas. ‘From Structure to Subject: The Formation of an Architectural Language’, introduction to Peter Eisenman’s book, ‘House X’, Rizzoli International Publications, Incl. 1982, p. 7.

B ru n o Z ev i. ‘T h e M odern L an g u a g e o f A rc h ite c tu re ’. U n iv ersity o f W as h in g h to n P re ss , 1978 8 5 C h a rle s Je n k s. ‘T h e P o st-M o d ern L an g u a g e o f A rc h ite c tu re ’

R o b e rt V e n tu r i. ‘C o m p le x itv and C o n tra d ic tio n in A rc h ite c tu re ’. N ew Y o rk : T h e M u s e u m o f M o d e m A rt, D o u b le d a y & C o., 1966.

R o b e rt V e n tu ri. D en ise Scott B ro w n and Steven Iz en o u r. ‘L ea rn in g from L as V e g a s ’. M IT P re ss, 1972. A lan C o lq u h o u n . ‘E ssav s in A rch itectu ral C ritic is m ’. T h e M IT P ress, 1985, p. 198.

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It is beyond the scope of this research to give an extensive account o f linguistic analogy as well as o f its application in architectural practice. H ow ever, a basic criticism is attem pted, to dem onstrate the difficulties inherent in this approach.

Roger Scruton suggests that language and architecture have gram m atical constraints and intention in com m on^^. ‘The relation of words to their meaning is not natural but intended...’. Besides, ‘Buildings, like linguistic utterances, are in all their particulars intentional and m ust be seen and understood as such’. How ever, the form er is preoccupied with semantics that becom es acceptable by its reference to ‘truth’. The latter is not concerned w ith sem antics because there is no clear cut relationship betw een the expression of a function or an idea and the true possession o f them. A ccording to Scruton ‘to denote a function is not the same as to possess a function’.

In-spite o f his linguistic approach to architecture, Colquhoun attempts to show its limits, by pointing to changes in the semantic values of architectural qualities from one culture to the other^^. He suggests that architectural signs are ‘m otivated’ rather than arbitrary. W hereas in language change is unintentional, in architecture is always intentional. W hat is interesting in language is the m eanings attached to phonic objects as opposed to architecture where is the objects themselves^

V on M oos also points at the importance o f the formal param eters in Le C orbusier’s work. He stresses the vague and flim sy nature o f the functional symbol suggesting that Le C orbusier’s form s were incapable o f signifying specific functions.

T revisiol’s account o f Botta also oscillates between linguistic interpretations and architecture’s capacity to be preoccupied with its own structure. As he says the geom etrical sim plicity o f B otta’s draw ings dem onstrates the ‘possibility - the necessity even - o f architectural independence’^^.

G ald eso n as’ identification o f architecture w ith a set o f form s that carry certain m eaning is also contradicted by an observation sim ilar to C olquhoun’s. The relationship o f architecture to language is

R o g e r S c ru to n ‘T h e A e sth e tics o f A rc h ite c tu re ’. M eth u en & C o. L T D , 1979, p.p. 158-178. A la n C o l q u h o u n . Ib id ., p. 130.

^ ^ H o w e v e r, C o lq u h o u n ’s o p p o s itio n to se m io tic s fo c u s e s o n S a u s s u r e ’s n o tio n o f th e s y n c h ro n ic a n a ly s is o f la n g u a g e a n d serv es th e p u rp o se s o f sh o w in g th e cu ltu ral stre n g th o f fig u re s in a d iac h ro n ic c o n te x t. C u ltu ra l m e a n in g is g iv en to fig u res by so c iety and th ey have to be e x a m in e d w ith in a d iac h ro n ic c o n te x t in w h ich they c h a n g e in a w ay th at ‘th e form o f o n e sy stem b e co m es th e c o n te n t o f th e n e x t h ig h e r s y s te m ’, Ibid. p.p. 129-

1 3 8 .

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im precise because architectural signs are not fixed and socially acceptable facts. The sam e form s m ight have different meanings in different periods^^.

G aldesonas’ analysis o f Eisenm an’s houses points at the distinction betw een a ‘syntactic’ and the ‘semantic structure’. The former concentrates on the properties o f forms, whereas the latter on notions outside these forms. In his criticism o f E isenm an’s work G aldesonas points at his shift from an architecture o f pure syntax and ‘com position’ characterising his early work to an architecture o f the

semantics o f syntax and ‘decomposition’ characterising House X, (illustration 1.30).

In the former, a formal domain is structured according to certain rules and prescribing a certain course of action. In the latter, shapes and forms are fragments that represent the elements o f a Cartesian system and o f a formal unity no longer present in his work. The form er addresses the user’s capacity to read visual configuration. The latter sym bolises through fragm ents that there is no unity betw een design and interpretation.

T hus, Galdesonas dem onstrates that syntax opens to intelligibility w hereas sem antics opens to sym bolism . The form er dem onstrates how m eaning is possible, the latter, in E isen m an ’s w ork, sym bolises that m eaning is im possible. Thus, i f m eaning is p o ssib le through syntax, then the understanding o f architecture cannot be simply based on the semantic level o f description.

For Bill Hillier and Julienne Hanson architecture is similar to language from the point o f view o f ‘being creatively used for social purposes, and of permitting a rule governed c r e a t i v i t y D e f i n i n g architecture as a morphic language Hillier and Hanson attem pt to incorporate both syntax and m eaning into a single theoretical framework. M eaning does not derive from extrinsic associations but from syntax itself.

T hus, the search for m eanings rather than stressing signification should stress the prim acy o f significance^^. Signification is concerned with what architecture stands for outside itself, ‘m uch in the way that a word used in the proper place and in the proper gram m atical context can convey a meaning which is outside language rather than integral to it’^^. Significance refers to architectural form ‘compared to other architectural forms in the context o f all architectural form s’. As Hillier suggests a theory of

A la n C o lq u h o u n . ib id ., p. 10.

B ill H illie r. Ju lien n e H a n s o n . ‘T h e Social L o g ic o f S p a c e ’. C a m b rid g e U n iv e rsity P re ss, 1984, p. 49.

‘C o m m o n sen se w ou ld su g g e st th at a th eo ry o f th e social s ig n ific a tio n o f a rc h ite c tu re can b e b a se d on a th eo ry o f its sig n ific a n ce in its e lf in th e first place. W e m ust, if you lik e , h a v e a th e o ry o f how a rc h ite c tu re can m ean a n y th in g at all before w e can have a th eo ry o f w h at arch itectu re m ig h t actu ally m e a n ’. B ill H illie r. 'Q u ite U n lik e th e P le a s u re s o f S c ra tc h in g ’. 9H , 1985, p. 66.

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intelligibility should be based on how architecture is capable o f having m eaning at all rather than on

what meanings it carries.

The problem w ith the linguistic analogy is that shifting from the object o f know ledge to its interpretation, from significance to signification, it fails to account for the ways this object is shaped. As the discussion of Le Corbusier and Botta showed, architecture is a com plex system o f relations that determ ines not only how it becomes intelligible but also how it is constructed during a com position process, (Baker). Focusing on fragments o f this system one cannot illuminate any o f the above. One can only give a vague idea about a truss, a tympanum, a window or simply the building’s overall shape.

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ARCHITECTURE AND ITS ANALOGY TO M ATHEM ATICS AND GEOM ETRY -