Semiotics is the science that studies the different systems of signs that allow communication between individuals. Their modes of reception and functioning, in this way we can say that the semiotics of Architecture studies the symbols and the architectural language that buildings manifest or want to transmit.
If semiotics, beyond being the science of recognized systems of signs, is really to be a science studying all cultural phenomena as if they were systems of signs—on the hypothesis that all cultural phenomena are, in reality, systems of signs, or that culture can be understood as communication—then one of the fields in which it will undoubtedly find itself most challenged is that of architecture.
– UMBERTO ECO, Semiotician and Architectural critic (Rethinking Architecture)
Most architectural objects do not communicate and are not designed to communicate but designed to be functional use.
Architecture as communication
There are many architects who visualize themselves more as communicators concerned with the meanings their designs might have to people who experience their buildings.
Architects who are interested in how their buildings are interpreted should first ask themselves if assuming buildings communicate to people is a realistic expectation to place upon the interpreter passing by or through architecture.
A phenomenological consideration of our relationship with architectural objects tells us that we commonly do experience architecture as communication, even while recognizing its functionality.
The architectural sign
Roland Barthes says that
‘as soon as there is a society, every usage is converted into a sign of itself’
To use a spoon to get food to one’s mouth is still, of course, the fulfillment of a function, through the use of an artifact that allows and promotes that function; yet to say that it ‘promotes’ the function indicates that the artifact serves a communicative function as well: it communicates the function to be fulfilled.
The spoon promotes a certain way of eating, and signifies that way of eating, just as the cave promotes the act of taking shelter and signifies the existence of the possible functions; and both objects signify even when they are not being used.
Need > >Satisfaction >> Convention
With this semiotic framework, one is not obliged to characterize a sign on the basis of either behaviour that it stimulates or actual objects that would verify its meaning: it is characterized only on the basis of codified meaning that in a given cultural context is attributed to the sign vehicle.
That a stair has obliged me to go up does not concern a theory of signification; but that
occurring with certain formal characteristics that determine its nature as a sign vehicle
(just as the verbal sign vehicle stairs occurs as an articulation of certain ‘distinctive
units’), the object communicates to me its possible function—this is a datum of culture,
and can be established independently of apparent behaviour, and even of a presumed
mental reaction, on my part.
Characterization of Sign and Symbols
Charles Jencks models of sign and symbols
Any architecture form can be symbol, reference , referent
Architectural Representation from Semiotics Point of View
Architects do not build buildings, they make the drawings and models from which buildings are made. The medium in which each work is intimately tied to the thing that is produced, they are inseparable Architectural representation is the description, expression or determination of role by phrases, words, characters or symbols which are able to make a mental picture
According to the Ferdinand de Saussure’s theory, it can be considered that in different built architectural space, their corpus is the signifier and the space created is the signified which totally forms an architectural sign and what distinguishes these sign from one another is the difference in their semiotic aspects that makes the sign distinction while interacting with each other
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FUNCTION AND SIGN THE SEMIOTICS OF ARCHITECTURE by UMBERTO ECO.pdf
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