"From Structure to Subject: The formation of an Architectural Language"
The Foundation of Language
The establishment of society can be seen as the establishment of order through conventions, or more specifically,
the establishment of a language through symbolic codes. Before order, before language, there exists a primal
chaos where there ar eno rules for marrying, building, eating; in this chaos, which preceds society, there is only
an infiniite field of potential for manipulation of the individial and collective realms from the verbal to the sexual. The systematization and institutionalization of rules in these domains, the making of rules, involves at once a repression of chaos, and an invention of sicial codes of a 'language' of kinship relations, a 'language' of myth, or a 'language' which expresses the spatial organization of a tribe.
In Architecture, two moments can be isolated in history where the foundation of a new language was preceded by a kind of ritual sacrifice. The establishment of a classical language and a theoretically organized practice of architecture
in the Renaissance implied the death of the medieval builder who, in Alberti's definition, "worked with his hands", in
favor of the new rational architect who "worked with his mind". Similarly, at the beginning of this century, the
establishment of modern architecture against nineteenthy century eclecticism, the foundation of an architecture
which "had nothing to do with the styles," in Le Corbusier's terms, sacrificed stylistic variety to a high vision
of abstraction.
We have now entered an age in which architecture has been subjected to yet another sacrifice, it's very definition
and structural aspects have been subverted and re-imagined in the virtual realm, a realm in which the abstract is
made tangible. It is again cast into a state of chaos and confusion. Within this current state of chaos and
confusion, the phenomenology of architectural musicis being born to allow us to understand how and in what forms,
when architecture does become re-constituted, what information and syntactic as well as semantic data had been gleaned. It is also a means to help understand the development and current phenomenology of electronic music into something resmembling more of a classical model. These intersections give birth to new expressions of interface, coding, an d experience. Marry this with the new perception of time and space as one entity, and you have a perfect form to occupy this new scientifically supported space. Let's think about worm holes.
In both circumstances the aim was to produce a systematic organization of the codes of architectural practice, to
define an apparently finite and stable number of forms and their correlated meaning within a closed system: that is
to create the illusion of a language. But whereas in classicism a fully constituted language in this sense can be
observed in the way in which the elements of antiquity, deployed in an entirely new way, sustained a gramatical
framework, in modernism the linguistic organization was essentially illusory. for while modern architecture
apparently promoted a new symbolic organization, it did not create the conditions for its systematic development.
Functionalism, the dictum "form follows function", said much about the origin of signs, but little about their nature;
it proposed new words but no rules for their combination, no grammatical framework for their use. Where the rules
of the language were finite, those of functionalism were in constant flux, varying in response to changing needs,
changing aesthetic preference, and individual interpretations...Ultimately, the 'functionalist' sign differed differed
little from its classical counterpart; shapes were derived not from function itself, but from other disciplinary
references...in order to suggest a functional meaning. Such a relativistic approach could neither neither
establish a finite vocabulary nor its grammar and syntax- the necessary components of a specific architectural
language.
The limitations of functionalism led to a strong reaction against modern architecture and its aspirations
toward an architectural language. This reaction has taken two entirley opposed forms, both of which propose an
extension of the traditional conceptions of language or, in other terms, of the traditional modes of generating
meaning in architecture. The first, in its most extreme form characterized by the theory and practice of Robert
Venturi, advocates a reinstatement of a multivalent and eclectic language which superficially is not unlike that
constituted by the 'styles' of the nineteenth century. This position stresses the generation of signs themselves,
understands in a critical way the nature of conventional meanings, and relishes the complexity of a plurality of
meanings however organized in the whole.
The second reaction, most clearly represented by the work of Peter Eisenmann, tries to address the more basic
questions of language, the grammatical questions. What are the limits, qualitatively and quantitatively, to the lexicon
of architectural signs; what makes certain configurations architectural; which shapes can or cannot be used? And
more important, how should they be articulated?...where in Venturi we find a reaction against the singular nature
of the architectural sign in order to see it as a more complex entity, but without concern for the underlying structure
of the language, in Eisenmann we find a reaction against the architectural sign itself, and in particular the idea
of the meaning of the sign, in order to concentrate on the generation of a linguistic structure. In the process
of establishing this structure Eisenmann sacrifices not only functionalism, but humanism itelf, attempting to create
an entirely other order, a new language.
The Concept of Structure
The model of language adopted by Eisenmann is, as is well known, structuralist: it derives from his personal reading
of the theories of Chomsky which were developed to explain creativity in language (the ability of a speaker to create
an infinite number of sentences...such a model allows him to generate systems of relations among architectural forms
hitherto precluded by the classical or modernist canon.
Chomsky's linguistic model and its relation to architecture can be demonstrated in two ways. First, it may be seen as a
natural result of architecture's concern with formal and semantic organization, that is with the arrangement of forms
and meanings, and second it may be related to the convention that has permitted generations of architectural theorists, from Alberti to Le Corbusier, to refer to the 'language' of an architecture and utilize grammatical and rhetorical categories in turn to supply terms of structure and meaning to their art.
However the analogy of architecture as language is imprecise. The conventions of a language are rigid and they are
accepted as such. In architecture rules are transitory and not mandatory. Architectural signs (doors, porticos, etc)
are different from the linguistic signs because they are not socially accepted facts. The signs and the forms they
take in relation to the structure as a whole change with taste, or dynasty as in the case with Chinese architecture.
This being the case, the expression of the architectural sign requires the definition of a formal coding system.
However, in architecture the formal system has never been defined in a rigorous and exhaustive way, as for example
has the formal system in music. Architects have always worked with fragments of systems rather than with a complete
language. In Eisenmann's architecture the process of design is a process of research into formal structures and shapes
which do not exist prior to the design. At the beginning there is an idea that is both formal and conceptual, and the
design becomes an obsessive search for the corresponding shape...the design of a structure of empty positions in which the goal is to arrive at a set of shapes, every shape acquires first a syntactic meaning in contrast to other shapes that may or may not be present in the final design.
The syntactic system then is initially defined as a structure of syntactic signs seen as an interplay of empty positions
and binary oppositions. There are two differences that distinguish these signs from classical ones. Traditionally
the architectural sign is an entity- a meaning or function which belongs to a different realm: conceptual or social
for someone. One confronts signs- shapes which do not refer to something else or to someone, but only to other shapes. Second, while the sign is traditionally a dual entity that relates a form to a meaning, or an expression to a content, the syntactic signs are signals, that is, singular entities which become signs only through their relationship to other signals. For example, a square is a shape which only becomes a sign when seen in relationship to another square or to a circle- the sign value then being equal or different. These signals have no value or syntactic meaning in themselves; their value is purely relational. The shape-signals thus acquire a syntactic meaning only when they occupy a position within the formal system.
Unlike the formation of traditional signs which are coupled with actual or virtual functions and thus read as doors,
windows, etc. they are not generated from any functional logic, and so in order to become architectural, that is
to avoid being merely sculptural, they must postulate an alternative syntactic system which still serves as a
support for such functional meaning. More important, the syntactic system incorporates the capacity to overcome the functional meaning so as to go beyond that meaning to suggest intrinsic architectural notions. At every stage there are rules that permit the selection of what can be called correct configurations and the discarding of the innappropriate ones. The aim of the process is to find a law, a general rule that will combine each of the partial moves or stages into a continuous uninterrupted sequence explanatory of the process from simple beginning to a complex end. This law of development is formal and should be independent of any functional interpretation. The functional meanings are never contained in explanatory notions. With this approach design is concerned with syntax, and not with semantics, which is assumed to be known and which is seen as just the cultural, conventional attribution of functions to forms.
The Subject of Architecture:
In Architecture, representation is, so to speak doubled. For architecture provides the real context where representation-theatrical or painterly- is made possible, is realized; at the same time it is itself a represenational art. For Alberti, it represents the underlying structure of nature mediated by musical proportional intervals and the natural processes of creation.
No comments:
Post a Comment