summarize

z = .... ­- II.a.I= 1:1 II.a.I

1:1: =

C

..... Z

II.a.I

=

II.a.I U

'.)

;: ­1:1:

TH LANGUAGE OF POST~MODERN ARCHITECTURE

PART TWO The Modes of Architectural Communication

Monsieur Jourdain, Moliere's Bourgeois Genti/homme, Below \Ias rather surprised to discover that he had been 56 SAN FRANCISCO CITYSCAPE, 1973. With various skyscrapers,

including a trussed rectangle and the triangular building, knownose for forty years - 'without knowing anything about it' affectionately as 'Pereiras' Prick' (he designed the Transamerican Modern architects might suffer a similar shock, or doubt Corporation) . 11at they've been speaking anything as elevated as

IHose, To look at the environment is to agree with their I. doubt. We see a babble of tongues, a free-for-all of per­

;onal idiolects, not the classical language of the Doric, Ionic and Corinthian Orders. Where there once were rules ()f architectural grammar, we now have a mutual diatribe between speculative builders; where there once was a

discourse between the Houses of Parliament and there is now across the Thames, the

shouting at the Hayward Gallery, which (Jrunts back at a stammering and giggling Festival Hall. It's all confusion and strife, and yet this invective is still language even if it's not very comprehensible or per­ suading. There are various analogies architecture shares with language and if we use the terms loosely, we can speak of architectural 'words', 'phrases', 'syntax', and 'semantics'. I will discuss several of these analogies in turn, showing how they can be more consciously used as communicational means, starting with the mode most

disregarded in modern architecture.

55 ADOLF LOOS, Chicago Tribune Column.

Below 57 The SOUTH BANK, London, 1976. With large chunks devoted to different functions: left to right: The Queen Elizabeth Hall, Royal Festival Hall and Shell Tower carry on their distinctive form of garbled conversation. Each chunk sends out a single, if muted, message that it is an 'important' monument of some unspecified kind.

THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

Metaphor People invariably see one building in terms of another, or in terms of a similar object; in short as a metaphor. The more unfamiliar a modern building is, the more they will compare it metaphorically to what they know. This match­

of one experience to another is a property of all particularly that which is creative. Thus when

pre-cast concrete grills were first used on buildings in the late fifties, they were seen as 'cheesegraters', 'beehives', 'chain-link fences'; while ten years later when they be­ came the norm in a certain building type, they were seen

58 in functional terms: 'this looks like a parking garage'. From metaphor to cliche, from neologism through constant usage to architectural sign, this is the continual route travelled by new and successful forms and technics.

Typical negative metaphors used by the public and by critics such as Lewis Mumford to condemn modern architecture were 'cardboard box', 'shoe-box', 'egg-crate', 'filing cabinet', 'grid-paper'. These comparisons were sought notonly for their pejorative, mechanistic overtones,

but also because they were strongly coded in a culture which had become sensitised to the spectre of 1984. This obvious point has some curious implications, as we shall see.

One implication became apparent when I was visiting Japan and the architect Kisho Kurokawa. We went to see his new apartment tower in Tokyo, made from stacked shipping containers, which had a most unusual overall shape. They looked like $tacked sugar cubes, or even more, like superimposed washing machines, because the white cubes all had round windows in their centres. When I said this metaphor had unfortunate overtones for living, Kurokawa evinced suprise. 'They aren't washing ma­ chines, they're bird cages. You see in Japan we build concrete-box bird n'ests with round holes and place them in the trees. I've built these bird nests for itinerant business­ men who visit Tokyo, for bachelors who fly in every so often with their birds.' A witty answer, perhaps made up on the spot, but one which underscored very nicelv a difference in our visual codes.

Left 58 CONCRETE GRILLS, now the sign of parking garage, were first used on offices in America in the late fifties. They work here to carry the external loads and mask the cars. While the 'cheesegrater' is now no longer perceived as a metaphor, the precast grill is on rare occasions still used for offices. Whether it signifies garage or office depends on the frequency of usage within a society.

Opposite 59 KISHO KUROKAWA, Nakagin Capsule Bui/ding, Tokyo, 1972. 140 boxes were driven to the site and lifted onto the two concrete cores. Each habitable room has built-in bathroom, stereo-tape deck, cal­ culators and other amenities for the business­ man. The metaphor of stacking rooms like bricks or sugar cubes has re-emerged every five years or so, since Walter Gropius pro­ posed it in 1922. The overtones of this are ambiguous: to some they have always suggested regimentation, to others the unity in variety of the Italian hill town. (Tomio Ohashi).

60

MODES OF ARCHITECTURAL COMMUNICATION

III One modern building, the Sydney Opera House, has provoked a superabundance of metaphorical responses, both in the popular and professional press. The reasons are, again, that the forms are both unfamiliar to architecture dnd reminiscent of other visual objects. Most of the meta­ phors are organic: thus the architect, Jorn Utzon, showed how the shells of the building related to the surface of a sphere (like 'orange segments') and the wing of a bird in

They also relate, obviously, to white sea shells, and It is this metaphor, plus the comparison to the white sails bobbing around in Sydney Harbour, that have become Journalistic cliches. This raises another obvious point with unexpected implications: the interpretation of archi­ tectural metaphor is more elastic and dependent on local codes than the interpretation of metaphor in spoken or written language.

Some critics have pointed out that the superimposed shells resemble the growth of a flower over time the unfolding of petals; while architectural students of Aus­

til tralia caricatured this same aspect as 'turtles making love'. From several points of view the violent aspect of broken and smashed up shapes is apparent - 'a traffic accident with no survivors'; while again these same views elicit possible organic metaphors 'fish swallowing each other'. Reinforcing this interpretation are the shiny, scaly ele­ ments of the tiled surface which are apparent up close. But the most extraordinary metaphor, and the one which

63 SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE, view of shells soaring and crashing, metaphors. Note the way the building glistens and takes on the again an interesting ambiguity to be set along with the other mixed cloud formations. (Australian Information Service).

THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

A well-known visual illusion brings this out even more: the famous 'duck-rabbit figure', which will be seen first one way then the other. Since we all have well learned visual codes for both animals, and even probably now a code for the hybrid monster with two heads, we can see it three ways. One view may predominate, according to either the strength of the code or according to the direction from which we see the figure at first. To get further read­

('bellows' or 'keyhole' etc.) is harder because these codes are less strong for this figure, they map less well than the primary ones at least in our culture. The general poi nt then is that code restrictions based on learning and culture guide a reading, and that there are multiple codes, some of which may be in conflict across subcultures. In very general terms there are two large subcultures: one with the modern code based on the training and ideology of modern architects, and another with the traditional code based on everyone's experience of normalised architec­ tural elements. As I mentioned, (above page 24), there are very basic reasons why these codes may be at odds and architecture may be radically schizophrenic, both in its creation and interpretation. Since some buildings often incorporate various codes, they can be seen as mixed metaphors, and with opposing meanings: e.g. the 'har­ monious, well-proportioned pure volume' of the modern architect becomes the 'shoe-box' or 'filinq cabinet' to the

61 JORN UTZON, Sydney Opera House, Australia, 1957-74. A mixed metaphor: the shells have symbolised flowers unfolding i sailboats in the harbour,. fish swallowing each other and now, because of the local code, high cost. As with the Eiffel Tower, ambiguous meanings have finally transcended all possible functional considerations and the building has become simply a national

/ .IJii#I!!r-~

,~ ~--.

"­

'~

60 The DUCK-RABBIT ILLUSION, read from left to right by duck hunters and from right to left by frequenters of the Playboy Club. Since this illusion is so well known we can now see it as a new animal with two heads. But note: you can only read it one way at a time depending on the code you choose to adopt. (E. H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion).

symbol. This rare class of sign, like a Rorschach test provokes response which focuses interest on the responder, not the sign. It could be called the 'enigmatic sign', because, like the ocean, it happily receives projected meanings from everyone. (New South Wales Government Office, London).

62 CARTOON presented by architectural students when Queen Elizabeth officially opened the building (from Architecture in Australia) .

THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

Australians apply with a certain bemused affection, is 'scrum of nuns'. All those shells leaning over, confronting each other in two main directions, resemble the head­ dresses and cowls of two opposed monastic orders, and the wildly unlikely idea that this could be a scrimmage of mother superiors dominates the possibilities. 'Wit' has been defined as 'the unlikely copulation of ideas together', and the more unlikely but successful the union, the more it will strike the viewer and stay in his mind. A witty building is one which permits us to make extraordinary but con­ vi ncing associations.

The question obviously arises of how appropriate these metaphors are to the building's function and its symbolic role. Concentrating on this aspect and momentarily dis­ regarding other things such as cost (the Australians spent something like twenty times the original estimate for their mixed metaphor) we might come to the following con­ clusion. On the one hand the organic metaphors are very appropriate to a cultural centre: images which suggest growth are particularly apt for meanings of creativity. The building flies, sails, splashes, curves up and unfolds like an animated vegetable. Fine. Perhaps if the building were renamed The Australian Cultural Centre (not the Sydney Opera House) and justified as a symbol of Australia's liberation from Anglo-Saxon dependence, (the over­

influence of Britain and America), then its inter­ pretation might be clearer. We could then see these extraordinary metaphors in their most positive liaht.as

symbols of Australia's break with colonial conformity and provinciality.

But doubts arise. We know the building was designed a European (not an Australian) as an opera house and

one that works neither economically nor functionally in the manner it was conceived. Since such knowledge is an

part of the code with which we interpret the building, our judgement cannot avoid being contaminated by this knowledge. It's rather like looking at the duck­ rabbit figure: our perception is bent and shaped by codes based on previous experience. It is virtually impossible to perceive the building without knowing about the notorious 'Sydney Opera House Case', the firing of the architect, the cost, and so forth. So these local, specific meanings also become symbolised in the 'extravagant' shells.

Several modernists criticised the Opera House for other reasons: as a piece of literal communication the building tells you little and dissimulates much. You can't pick out the various theatres and restaurants and exhibition halls beneath the shells, which is why it has been so annoying to certain architects brought up in the tradition of expressive functionalism. They expect to see each func­ tion given a clear and separate volume, which ideally speaking, is an outline of the function - such as the 64 auditorium. They would have designed the building as a series of boxy fly towers and wedge shapes (the conven­ tionalised 'word' for auditorium in modern architecture). The building violates this code, as classical architecture

often did, by obscuring actual functions behind overall patterns. The debate then becomes whether such ob­ scurantism is justified by the wit and appropriateness of the organic metaphor. I think it is, but others would deny this.

Perhaps one of them would be Robert Venturi, who also starts from the position that architecture should be looked at as communication, but comes to different conclusions from mine. He contends that buildings should look like

65 'decorated sheds, not ducks'. The decorated shed is a 66 simple enclosure with signs attached like a billboard, or the

application of conventional ornament, such as a pediment symbolising entry; whereas a duck, for him, is a in the shape of its function, (a bird-shaped building selling duck decoys), or a modern building where the construction, structure and volume become the decoration. Clearly the Sydney Opera House is a duck for Venturi, and he wishes to underplay this form of expression because he thinks it has been overdone by the modern movement. I would disagree with this historical judgement, and take even greater exception to the attitudes behind it. Venturi, like the typical modernist that he wishes to supplant, is adopting the tactic of exclusive inversion, He is cutting out a whole area of architectural com­ munication, duck buildings, (technically speaking iconic

MODES OF ARCHITECTURAL COMMUNICATION

signs), in order to make his preferred mode, decorated sheds (symbolic signs) that much more potent. Thus we are being asked, once more by a modernist. in the name of rationality. to follow an exclusive, simplistic path, Clearly we need all the modes of communication at our disposal, not one or two; and it's the modernist commit­ ment to architectural street-fighting that leads to such oversimplification, not a balanced theory of signification.

In any case, the Sydney Opera House does pose some difficult problems as a duck, because of its lack of a shared, public symbolism - a point Venturi's extreme position brings out. While the organic metaphors are suitable analogues for a culture centre. they are not reinforced by conventional signs which spring from the Australian vernacular, and therefore they have an erratic signification. Rather, they emanate from the widespread formalist movement of modern architects, a movement which might be more appropriately termed surrealist. Like a Magritte painting the apple which expands to fill a whole room the meaning is striking but enigmatic and ultimately evasive. What precisely is Utzon trying to say, beyond the primitive and exciting? Why, besides creativity, all the sails. shells, flowers, fish and nuns? Clearly our emotions are being heightened as an end in themselves, and there is no exact goal towards which all these meanings converge. They float around in our mind to pick up con nections where they will. like a luxuriant dream following overindulgence.

do however prove a general point about com­ munication: the more the metaphors. the greater the drama. and the more they are slightly suggestive, the greater the mystery, A mixed metaphor is strong, as every -student of Shakespeare knows, but a suggested one is powerful. In architecture, to name a metaphor is often to kill it, like analysing jokes. When hot dog stands are in the

of this building. The shapes follow, more or less, the volumes needed for the functions.

65 ROBERT VENTURI, The Duck versus Decorated Shed. Venturi would prefer more decorated sheds. because he contends, they communicate effec­ tively, and modern architects have for too long only designed 'ducks'. The duck is, in semiotic terms, an iconic sign, because the signifier (form) has certain aspects in common with the signified (content), The decorated shed depends on learned meanings writing or decoration which are symbolic signs.

66 SECURITY MARINE BANK, Wis­ consin, c. 1971. The symbolic shed, one part communication of status and security, the other part function, Com­ mercial pressures today naturally dis­ sociate signifier and signified in this way, although not usually so clearly. (Wayne Attoe).

64 KONSTANTIN MELNIKOV, Russakov Club, Moscow, 1928. The wedge shape plus rectangular flytower became established as the 'word' for auditorium in the language of modern architecture because

THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

108 shape of hot dogs, then little work is left to the imagina­ tion, and all other metaphors are suppressed: they can't even suggest hamburgers. Yet even this kind of univalent metaphor, the Pop architecture of Los Angeles, has its imaginative and communicative side. For one thing, the customary scale and context are violently distorted, so the

67 ordinary object, for instance the doughnut, takes on a series of possible meanings not usually associated with this item of food. When it's blown up to thirty feet and built out of wood and sits on a small building, it becomes the Magritte object that has taken over the house from the occupants. Partly hostile and menacing, it is nevertheless a symbol of sugary breakfasts and Gemutlichkeit.

Secondly, an architecture made up from such signs communicates unambiguously to those moving fifty miles per hour through the city. In contrast with so much modern building, these iconic signs speak with exactitude and humour about their function. Their literalism, however infantile, articulates factual truths which Mies' work obscures, and there is a certain general pleasure (which doesn't escape children) in perceiving a sequence of them. Contrary to Venturi, we need more ducks; modern architects haven't propagated enough.

One who tried was Eero Saarinen. Immediately after he selected Utzon's Opera House as the winner of the com­ petition, he returned to America and designed his own version of the curvilinear, shell building. The TWA ter­

69 minal in New York is an icon of a bird, and by extension, of aeroplane flight. In the details and merging of circula­ tion lines, of passenger exits and crossways, it is a particularly clever working out of this metaphor. A

70 supporting strut is mapped to a bird's leg, the rain-spout becomes an ominous beak, an interior bridge covered in

71 blood-red carpet becomes, I suppose, the pulmonary artery. Here the imaginative meanings add up in an ap­ propriate and calculated way, pointing towards a common metaphor of flight - the mutual interaction of these meanings produces a multivalent work of architecture.

67 HEN RY J. GOODWI N, Big Donut Drive-in Los Angeles, 1954. Originally there were ten of these giants, now there are, alas, three. The doughnuts sold are big.

68 DINOSAUR, Los Angeles, 1973. A curio shop which actually sells a few old bones, among other things. Los Angeles had a great deal of Pop architecture in the twenties and thirties, but most of it has been supplanted by the slick commercial symbols of chains, such as MacDonalds Hamburgers. (Environmental Communications).

MODES OF ARCHITECTURAL COMMUNICATION

69 EERO SAARINEN, TWA Building, New York, 1962. Designed after Saarinen judged the Sydney Opera House competition. Here the concrete shells are clearly recognisable as a metaphor of flight. although there are other animals suggested. (TWA).

70 TWA BUILDING. The leg of the bird is at the same time a beautiful abstraction of structural forces.

71 TWA BUILDING. The red carpet swoops over the entry space, curve and counter-curve reinforce the feeling of continuous move­ ment - all appropriate for a transportation building.

THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE ,

The most effective use of suggested metaphor that I can think of in modern architecture is Le Corbusier's .

72, 73 at Ronchamp which has been compared to all sorts of things, varying from the white houses of Mykonos to Swiss cheese. Part of its power is this suggestiveness to mean many different things at once, to set the mind off on a wild goose chase where it actually catches the goose, among other animals. For instance a duck (once aaain this

74 famous character of modern architecture) is 78 suggested in the south elevation; but so also are a

and, appropriately, praying hands. The visual codes, which here take in both elitist and popular meanings, are working mostly on an unconscious level, unlike the hot dog stand. We read the metaphors immediately without bothering to name or draw them (as done here), and clearly the skill of the artist is dependent on his ability to call up our rich storehouse of visual images without our being aware of his intention. Perhaps it is also a somewhat unconscious process for him. Le Corbusier only admitted to two metaphors, both of which are esoteric: the 'visual acoustics' of the curving walls which

the four horizons as if they were 'sounds', (respond­ in antiphony), and the 'crab shell' form of the roof.

But the building has many more metaphors than this, so many that it is overcoded, saturated with possible inter­ pretations. This explains why critics such as Pevsner and Stirling have found the building so upsetting, and others have found it so enigmatic. It seems to suggest precise ritualistic meanings, it looks like the temple of some very complicated sect which reached a high degree of meta­ physical sophistication; whereas we know it is simply a pilgrimage chapel created by someone who believed in a natural religion, a pantheism.

Put another way, Ronchamp creates the fascination that the discovery of a new archaic language does; we stumble upon this Rosetta stone, this fragment of a lost civilisation,

72, 73 LE CORBUSIER, Ronchamp Chapel, France, 1955. View from the south-east. The building is over-coded with visual meta­ phors, and none of them is very explicit so that the building seems always about to tell us something which we just can't place. The effect can be compared to having a word on the tip of your tongue which you can't quite remember. But the ambiguity can be dramatic, not frustrating - you search your memory for the possible clues.

and every time we decode its surface we come up with coherent meanings we know do not refer to any precise social practice as they appear to do. Le Corbusier has so overcoded his building with metaphor, and so pre­ cisely related part to part, that the meanings seem as if

had been fixed by countless generations engaged in ritual: something as rich as the delicate patterns of the exact iconology of Shinto, is suggested. How frustrat­ ing, how enjoyable it is to experience this game of signifi­ cation, which we know rests mostly on imaginative brilliance.

MODES OF ARCHITECTURAL COMMUNICATION

,

74-78 METAPHORS of Ronchamp, drawn by Hillel Schocken in a seminar on architectural semiotics at the Architectural Association. The mapping is amazingly literal when compared to the actual views.

I

THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE MODES OF ARCHITECTURAL COMMUNICATION

79 CESAR PELLI, Pacific Design Center, Los Angeles, 1976. A long, high building which looks like an extruded moulding, among other things, because its section is projected throughout the building and on the end elevations. This metaphor is appropriate to its function, since the building displays the mouldings of interior designers (among other products). Its blue exterior, in translucent. transparent and reflective glass, gives it a startling presence in Los Angeles; and because of its size, it is known as 'The Blue Whale'. (Marvin Rand).

Another modern building which crystallises a series of metaphors, because of its unusual shape, is Cesar Pelli's

79 Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles known locally as 'the Blue Whale'. Opposed to Ronchamp and TWA, it makes use of rectilinear forms and a curtain wall of three different types of glass, but these familiar elements none­ theless call up unfamiliar .associations because of their peculiar treatment: 'iceberg', 'cash register', 'aircraft hangar', and most appropriately 'extruded architectural moulding', (it's a centre for interior decorators and

80 designers). These metaphors can be mapped quite literally in terms

of outline shape and section; not so the 'Blue Whale' image which relates only in terms of colour and mass. And yet this is the favoured nickname, Why? Because there happens to be a local restaurant whose doorway is a large blue whale's mouth, and the building is recognised as a leviathan in its small-scaled neighbourhood swallow­ ing up all the little fish, (in this case the diminutive decor­ ators shops). In other words, two local pertinent codes, the large scale and the connection with the local restaurant, take precedence over the more plausible metaphors of the building, the aircraft hangar or moulding - a good example of the way architecture is even more at the mercy of the perceiver than, say, poetry.

Architecture as a language is much more malleable than

Opposite 80 PDC metaphors seen in a seminar on architectural semiotics, UCLA, 1976, drawn by Kamran. The metaphors were voted on by the class and placed in the following order of plausibility: 1 aircraft hangar, 2 extrusion or architectural moulding, 3 station or terminal building, 4 model of a building, 5 warehouse, 6 blue ice-berg, 7 prison, 8 a child's building-blocks or puzzle. The fact that so many metaphors turned out to be actual building types (e.g. 'station or terminal') shows that the PDC recalls other architecture quite strongly.

the spoken language, and subject to the transformations of short-lived codes. While a building may stand 300 years, the way people regard and use it may change every ten years. It would be perverse to rewrite Shakespearean sonnets, change love poetry to hate letters, read comedy as tragedy; but it is perfectly acceptable to hang washing on decorative balustrades, convert a church into a concert hall, and use a buifding every day while never looking at it, (actually the norm). Architecture is often experienced inattentively or with the greatest prejudice of mood and will - exactly opposite to the way one is supposed to experience a symphony or work of art.1 2 One implication of this for architecture is that, among other things, the architect must overcode his buildings, using a redundancy of popular signs and metaphors, if his work is to communicate as intended and survive the trans­ formation of fast-changing codes.

Surprisingly, many modern architects deny this most potent metaphorical level of meaning, They find it non­ functional and personal, literary and vague, certainly not something they can consciously control and use appro­ priately. Instead they concentrate on the supposedly rational aspects of design - the cost and function, as they narrowly define them. The result is that their inadvertent metaphors take metaphorical revenge and kick them in the behind: their'buildings end up looking like metaphors of

THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

81 MANUFACTURERS HANOVER TRUST, New York, 1970, This kind of building on Park Avenue and elsewhere is often satirised by cartoonists such as Steinburg and Kovarsky, who will represent it as grid paper, bank account statement, or any number of economic graphs which rise and fall.

81 function and economics, and are condemned as such. The situation is bound to change, however, as both social resea'rch and architectural semiotics demonstrate the interpersonal, shared response to metaphor. This is much more predictable and controllable than architects have thought; and since metaphor plays a predominant role in the public's acceptance or rejection of buildings, one can bet that architects will see the point, if only fot their own prosperity, Metaphor, seen through conventional visual codes, differs from group to group; but it can be co­ herently, if riot precisely, delineated for all these groups in a society,

Words Underlying much of what I have been saying so far is the notion of cliche - the fact that the architectural language, like the spoken one, .must use known units of meaning. To make the linguistic analogy complete, we could call these units\ architectural 'words', There are dictionaries of architecture which define the meanings of these words: doors, windows, columns, partitions, cantilevers, and so forth. Obviously these repeated elements are a necessity of architectural practice. The building industry standardises countless products, (there are over 400 building systems in Britain), and the architectural office repeats its favourite details,

As in language, yesterday's creative metaphor becomes today's tired usage, a conventional word. I have men­ tioned that the wedge shape became a sign of auditoria, and that concrete grills - the cheesegrater metaphor-

became, largely, the sign of a parking garage ('office' is the secondary usage). Yet there is a crucial difference be­ tween the 'words' of architecture and of speech. Consider the case of the column. A column on a building is one thing, the Nelson Column in Trafalgar Square another, the column smoke-stack at Battersea Power Station in London a third, and Adolf Loos' entry for the Chicago Tribune Column a fourth. If the column is a 'word', then the word has become a phrase, a sentence and finally a whole novel. Clearly architectural words are more elastic and polymorphous than those of spoken or written language, and are more based on their physical context and the code of the viewer for their specific sense. To determine what 'Nelson's Column' means you have to analyse the social-physical context, (Trafalgar Square as a centre for political rallies'), the semantic overtones of Nelson, ('naval victories,' 'historical figure' etc.), the syntactic markers, ('standing alone', 'surrounded by open space and fountains'), and the historical connotations of column, ('use on temples', Three Orders', 'phallic symbol' etc.). Such an analysis is beyond the scope of this book, but an initial attempt has been made for analysing the column in general, which shows how fruitftll this can be. 11 We can make a componential analysis of architectural elements and find out which are, for any culture, dis­ tinctive units.

Modern architects have not always faced up to the implications of cliches, or traditional words. They have, by and large, tried to avoid the re-use of symbolic signs (the technical term for meaning set by conventional usage)

82- 86 The COLUMN as a 'WORD', seen in different contexts, changes its meaning. At ST MARTIN-IN-THE-FIELD, London, 1726, it is seen on a portico with other columns of the same order clearly signifying 'colonnade', 'entrance', 'public building' as well as historical associations. The NELSON COLUMN, Trafalgar Square, 1860, shifts the semantic overtones towards commemoration, 'victory', 'politics'. 'standing alone' etc, The COLUMN-SMOKE­ STACKS at BATIERSEA POWER STATION, London, 1929-55, have entirely different associations, because of their syntactic properties. They are placed above a massive base on four' corners (incidentally this is now the sign of power station). and so the build­ ing looks mildly like an overturned table. Smoke belches out the top

MODES OF ARCHITECTURAL COMMUNICATION

- which has no capital or entablature - so the 'fluted columns have been violated'. Adolf Loos' CHICAGO TRIBUNE COLUMN, a competition entry for a newspaper, was a double pun on the word column ('newspaper column', 'tribune', the name of the newspaper), Loos felt that the Doric Order was a most basic statement of archi­ tectural order and therefore fitting for a monument. Finally, the KENTON COUNTY WATER TOWER, Ohio, 1955, again shows the polyvalent aspect of this vertical shape, how it can be used. on elevator shafts, chimneys, rocket launchers and oil derricks, Because of the column's positive associations with antiquity, it is often used as a disguise for such 'practical and prosaic' functions.

THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE MODES OF ARCHITECTURAL COMMUNICATION

87 ,88 LE CORBUSIER, Pessac Housing, before and after, 1925 and 1969. Ground floors were walled up, pitched roofs were added, the ribbon windows were divided up, terraces were turned into extra bedrooms, and a great number of signs which connoted 'security', 'home', 'ownership', were placed allover the exterior, thus effectively destroying the Purist language. (Architectural Association, Philippe Boudon).

because they felt these historical elements signified lack of creativity. For Frank Lloyd Wright and Walter Gropius the use of historical elements even signified lack of integrity and character. An architect who used the symbolic sign was probably insincere and certainly snobbish - the Classical Orders were a kind of pretentious Latin, not the everyday vernacular of industrial building and sober utility. From these latter building tasks a universal language, they hoped, could be constructed, a sort of Esperanto of cross-cultural usage based on functional types. These signs would be indexical (either directly indicating their use, like arrows, linear corridors). or else iconic, in which case the form would be a diagram of its function (a structurally-shaped bridge, or even Venturi's duck). Modern architectural words would be limited to these types of sign. .

The only problem with this approach is, however, that most architectural words are symbolic signs; certainly those that are most potent and persuasive are the ones which are learned and conventional, not 'natural'. The symbolic sign dominates the indexical and iconic, and even these latter depend somewhat on knowledge and convention for their correct interpretation. There was thus a devastating theoretical mistake at the very base of the modern language. It couldn't work the way the architects hoped because no living language can: they are all based mostly on learned conventions, on symbolic siuns, not ones which can be understood directly, without

A good example of architects' mistaken attitude towards the symbolic sign is their treatment of the pitched roof, which conventionally signifies 'home' in Northern 87 countries. The modern architect disregarded this custom 88

'I I U nctional and aesthetic reasons, to create roof gardens, " space, rectilinear form (Walter Gropius gave six mal reasons for designing flat roofs). Not surprisingly

flat-top buildings were regarded as alien, as in­ :Ire, even unfinished and 'without a head'. The houses

!1 i been decapitated. Many of the inhabitants of Le I,·,busier's Pessac felt his stark white cubical forms

i(ed a proper sense of shelter and protection, so they I,,·rtened the ribbon windows, added shutters and more

,dow mullions; they articulated the blank white sur­ DS with window boxes, cornices and eaves; and some on the old Bordeaux sign of protection, the pitched

I' )f. In short, they systematically misunderstood his ',rist language and systematically redesigned it to in­

, ,rporate their conventional signs of home. I n spite of the many flat-roofed housing estates today, 'Itain unreconstructed people still go on in their in­

,migible way thinking that pitched roofs mean shelter ,nd psychological protection. Many studies have shown

and a major building society in England, recognising i lie fact, has taken as its symbol an archetypal couple \/iJlking arm in arm under a pitched-roof umbrella. Since

•;lis sign exists and since repeated usage will always reate the symbolic sign, the modern architect might hange his attitude towards these conventions. He ugard them as powerful meanings to be used normally in i straightforward way, if only to catch the attention of an dudience he wants to convert.

If one wants to change a culture's taste and behaviour, ,)r at least influence these aspects, as modern architects [laVe expressed a desire to do, then one has to speak the common language of the culture first, If the language and 'nessage are changed at the same time, then both will be systematically misunderstood and reinterpreted to fit the conventional categories, the habitual patterns of life. This is precisely what has happened vv.ith modern housing estates. Pruitt-Igoe and Pessac are the two most cele­ brated' examples. A more promising approach for the modern architect, or social interventionist, would be to study the popular house in all its variety and see how it signifies a different way of life for different taste cultures and ethnic groups,

Broadly speaking, these groups are classified in socio­ economic terms by sociologists and market researchers, even though there is a lot of overlap and borrowing between groups, and there are other forces at work. 12 The class influence on taste is only one of several influences. It seems to me more exact to speak of semiotic groups than class-based taste cultures, because those groups which share preferences of meaning have a life and continuity of their own, which is only lightly coloured by socio­ economic background. Basically, semiotic groups are in different universes of signification and have different views of the good life. I will mention three versions of the popular house which spring from these different groups.

1 The ideal of many working-class families is to buy a detached, small house, a bungalow roughly similar to others in an area they know. The values expressed in these houses are security, ownership, separation (a free-stand­ ing building), and a kind of conservative anonymity (represented by conforming more or less to the norm of the area). Levittown in America, and the Ideal Home Exhibition in Britain, as well as most buildings in both

'10 countries, cater to this semiotic group. It could be called conservative or conformist. sensible or petit-bourgeois,

89 'POPULAR BUNGALOW', Wales. 1975. Speculative builders have dominated this market since Levittown set the lower middle­ class standard. Obvious signs are always incorporated which vary in their sources: Georgian bay window versus rustic stone chimney; plastic shingle versus cottage sign; display of car versus front garden; detached from the group, yet in the style of the neighbour­ hood. These minor contradictions display just the right blend of personality and conformity.

90 The ETON HOUSE. Ideal Home Exhibition London, 1974. The facial metaphor is often present at the Ideal Home Exhibition, with two or three examples strictly symmetrical about the front door ('mouth'). Various signs of status are tacked on (such as the fibre­ glass, Adam detailing), but the snobbism is more apparent than real. it is not meant to convince the neighbours that you sent your son to Eton, but simply to distinguish the building from 'council housing'. This is perhaps the strongest social motivation, the distinction between 'us' and 'them' (those 'controlled' by the government). Hence the Ideal Home styles are relatively permissive, including Swiss Chalet and American Ranch House. In fact for 1976, the Ideal British Home was Colonial, an unforeseen consequence of 1776.

91 KEVIN FISHER, English Popular House Analysis, 1976. This synthesis of several reigning trends in the market shows how eclectic and permissive the popular English house is becoming. A pastiche of Japanese, American and English, modern and traditional, urban and rural. Few architects would dare use such a language be­ cause of its impurity, so the market remains open to the speculators. It is of course possible to use any language to send any message.

THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

depending on which values are stressed and who is doing the valuing, because all these aspects are very clearly signified in the language. The archetype is a two-storey house with a central doorway, a symmetrical displacement of windows on either side, a chimney and pitched roof ­ all of which vaguely resembles a face with two eyes (top windows), nose (entrance portico) and mouth (doorway).

The band of planting in front of the house could be the shirt collar or moustache, symbolic 'moat', or 'forest', depending on what other signs are stressed. Since this group often wants to signal its new-found independence, meanings tend to support the old Anglo-Saxon maxim,

'every man's home is his castle' - and the castle may be defended by a picket fence or garden gnomes. There is 8 stately avenue winding to the front door - the curved pathway, past sylvan forests - bushes.

2 The next semiotic group tends to take the previous values for granted, since it hasn't just left what is regarded as the teeming city. In America this group might be called middle-class fastidious, since the clipped lawns and status signs of colonial provenance (nearly always false) harangue the passerby like some Bicentennial orator in a fit of nationalism. Indeed, cleanliness and caution, hard

92 ,93 LUCI LLE BALL'S House, Beverly Hills, c. 1955. Movie Star House tourism has been a mass industry since the twenties, and maps are thank­ fully provided for visiting anthropologists. The habitat and layout of these houses is so conventionalised as to constitute a norm: first a public street and sidewalk, then a layer of manicured verdure dis­ creetly signifying privacy, then the rambling house in one of five acceptable styles; the garage to one side. Behind this the tennis court, swimming pool and shrine room where the star's previous triumphs are shown to invited guests. This screening room often doubles as an exercise and game room, since physical fitness and relaxation are the two major drives of this tribe. The 'California Colonial' of Lucille Ball's house, with its raised eyebrow dormers, is the most popular style, followed closely by pseudo- Tudor. (Carol Barkin and Stephanie Vaughan).

....ork and discretion, prosperity and sobriety - all the IlI1d!Jes of WASP success - are there to brand this as the uillmate bourgeois dream. The only problem with this "ilssification is that the appeal of these values reaches much further than the middle class.

For instance, the reigning style of movie star houses, those of Beverly Hills and Bel Air which sell from a quarter of a million dollars to three million, fall in this ul\egory. The movie stars clearly aren't middle-class, even .1 their tastes look it and they've come from this back­ wound. Are they slumming, or have they just adopted a previously existing semiotic tradition and then amplified

'1.1.95 JIMMY STEWART'S House. Bev­ "!ly Hills, c. 1940. A very fastidious mixture "f Tudor and Japanese architecture with SWISS accents. The clarity of outline, the hLlck and white alternatives, the very ·;tudied informality of massing and planting ',,,nd out a clear message. Such houses, "ften exposed in films, have confirmed if not , ",ated the American Dream House. Similar "xamples can be found outside every major , Ily from Boston to Los Angeles, and since the norm is so invariable it almost consti· Ilites a 'language without speech'. Put .mother way one could say that the language !tself does the talking and the designer is a mouthpiece of this language. (Carol Barkin ,1Ild Stephanie Vaughan).

MODES OF ARCHITECTURAL COMMUNICATION

it? Often they are called the 'aristocracy of America', because their values and way of life have become the standard of emulation for the mass of America. Films, and countless sightseeing bus trips going past the stars' houses, (a minor industry since 1922), have made these buildings the most influential in popular taste. They tend to be in one of six styles: 1 Southern Mansion, 2 Old English, 3 New England Colonial, 4 French Provincial/ Regency, 5 Spanish Colonial, or 6 Contemporary/ Colonial Hybrid. These are also the six reigning styles of the popular suburban house. A close investigation will reveal that most of these houses are Ersatz. That is, few of

THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

them are serious, scholarly revivals, there is almost no pretence to historical accuracy or serious eclecticism. The styles are notional, signs of status and historical roots ­ but signs meant to remind you of the past, not convince you that the building is living in the present. There are

96- amusing cases when the signs become the whole building 98 itself.

3 Another semiotic group distinguishes itself from the previous one by inverting these signs and values. A studied casualness is preferred to fastidiousness, a kind of seedy, unselfconscious comfort is preferred to blatant

order and rectitude. The down-at-the-heels aristocrll and the intellectual, the drop-out and left wing socialite all unite against what they take to be the vulgarity of lhe previous group's 'good taste'. Even the modern archilect unites with them on this score.

Thus we find the emphasis on nature and naturalnell. the building isolated and hidden in the actual woods, (•• opposed to bushes), which are not manicured to ne., perfection. They are allowed to grow almost freely, JUI' cut back at certain points to reveal a gable here, a roof there, as if by felicitous chance. In fact it is our old friend the picturesque tradition, the celebration of the carefuliV

96 ,97 DISSEMINATION of the Movie Star Language, Gay Eclectic House, in the lesser side of Beverly Hills, conversion c. 1975. Analysis by Arloa Paquin. In this area interior decorators and others have started to convert their 1930 bungalows. Starting from a 20ft stucco box, they add on a false brick front (in this case), with carport, grillwork and 'false' shingles and Mexican beams. Some of these distortions of the code are amusing. Others are creative, most are cloying; but the language is at least being used (instead of entirely dominating the speaker).

MODES OF ARCHITECTURAL COMMUNICATION

98 'HEDGE HOUSE', Beverly Hills, California, c. 1965. There is nothing much left of the old modern architecture which the owner disliked and covered with various 'natural' signs of planting. These clipped bushes, manicured to fit in the remaining fascia, heighten the act of entry and 'protect' the doorway. They have become conven­ tional signs mandatory for all movie star houses.

MODES OF ARCHITECTURAL COMMUNICATION

careless and studied accident, in a variety of new clothes. These may be the white modern architecture of the , 920s, (Le Style Corbu has actually become a popular status-badge when handled by Richard Meier), the stick-and-shed style of the 1960s, or the House and Garden style of the last seventy years, represented on a collective level by such resorts and communities as Port­ meirion and Port Grimaud.

Portmeirion is a misplaced Italian hill town set on the lush Welsh coast, surrounded by two miles of rhodo­ dendron and other exotic overgrowth. Every vista is carefully composed as a landscape, each path wanders perfectly around every rock outcrop, each bush and flower relates miraculously to near and far buildings, and space ebbs and flows like water into small contained pools and dramatic, open cascades. Trompe /'oeil, phoney windows, buildings shrunken to five-sixths of their normal size, eye traps, calculated naivities, whimsical conceits (a sail boat is turned into concrete and thence into a re-

wall) - this sort of easy-going wit has proven

100 SIR CLOUGH WILLIAM-ELLIS, The Pantheon, Portmeirion, 1926-66. A picturesque massing of foliage, and eclectic fragments cannibalised from destroyed monuments. Here an English lantern surmounts a Florentine dome painted day-glo green, which is on top of pink-Palladian walls, which is behind an actual Norman Shaw fireplace (through which you enter I).

101 PORTMEIRION, view into Battery Square, showing seaside architecture and Italian campanile. This stage-set architecture has, not surprisingly, been used in several films and commercials. This was the first creation of a formula that was later applied, in a cheap­ ened version, to communities such as Port Grimaud, and ride-through parks such as Disneyland.

popular with writers and tourists. The builder, Sir Clough William-Ellis, has cannibalised old buildings and pre­ served parts of them in his new confections.

This care for the old and traditional is very apparent and one may take it as a characteristic sign of this semiotic group, The ancient is valued not so much for itself, but as a sign of continuity between generations and a con­ nection with the past. While the first guess is that such values and understatements appeal only to elite tastes, this does not turn out to be true. For instance, 100,000 visitors

Opposite 99 RICHARD MEIER, Douglas House, Harbor Springs, Michigan, 1971-3. The villa in nature, enclosed, protected, and yet standing out as a man-made element. This Italian tradition, taken over equally by Le Corbusier and the upper classes, contrasts the raw and the cooked, the untouched and the finished. Here Meier uses a Corbusian syntax to represent the interior space, which is layered both horizon­ tally and vertically through four storeys. (Ezra Stoller).

THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

come to Portmeirion every year, this sophisticated version of Disneyland; and millions visit country houses in England, mostly because of their rich historical associa­ tions.

These three semiotic groups, the conservative, the fastidious and the 'natural', hardly exhaust the plurality of taste cultures which exist in any large city. In America there is also the Main Street tradition, which Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown have analysed as a series of signs, and England has its counterpart in the High Street.

Venturi, Scott Brown and their team have been instru­ mental in Cjllling attention to this wide area of symbolism,

102 and have put on an exhibition 'Signs and Symbols of American life', which has presented some of the images that make up a popular language. Their own design, where possible, incorporates these signs, usually in an ironic

103 and esoteric way. While many critics deplore their work 104 as unnecessarily banal, or ugly, or condescending - that is,

anything but popular - their deadpan approach is not necessarily a bad thing. After all, an architect may use a language without sending the customary messages, and if he wants to signify 'the ugly and ordinary' with this

Street section from an exhibition 'Signs of Ufe: symbols in the American City', Renwick Gallery, Washington DC, 1976. Public buildings, state capitols, courts in a ciassicising style are mixed with the commercial vernacular. This exhibition documented popular

language he has a perfect right to do so, The , justify their approach as social criticism: they want

express, in a gentle way, a mixed appreciation for American Way of Ufe, Grudging respect, not total ceptance. They don't share all the values of a co society, but they want to speak to this society, even partially in dissent. Also their sensibility is through through modernist, their training has been in the langu91 of Le Corbusier and Louis Kahn, so they cannot use popu­ lar signs in a relaxed and exuberant way - on a level with the Las Vegas sign artists whom they admire. But hoW could they? It takes years, perhaps a generation, to master the unselfconscious and conscious use of a new

,language, and so these architects are, to use a phra .. borrowed from the Futurists, 'the primitives of a new sensibility' .

We may expect to see the next generation of architectl using the new hybrid language with confidence. It will look more like Art Nouveau than the International Style, incorporating the rich frame of reference of the former, ita wide metaphorical reach, its written signs and vulgarity, its symbolic signs and cliches - the full gamut of archi­ tectural expression.

symbolism in three major areas: the house, the main street, and the commercial strip. The 'lessons' that these designers drew favoured symbolic instead of sculptural architecture, 'decorated sheds' instead of 'ducks'. (Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC).

103,104 VENTURI and RAUCH, Tucker House, Katonah, New York, 1975. The exterior exaggerates elements of the popular code ­ the overhanging eaves and picture window while the interior uses the white, planer International Style as a backdrop for Kitsch and other objects. Actually, the fireplace with its round mirror is a miniature of the house, a very witty comment on the traditional idea of aedicules, miniature models and dolls houses, (Stephen Shore),

Syntax Another aspect architecture shares with language is more mundane than metaphors and words. A building has to stand up and be put together according to certain rules, or methods of joinery. The laws of gravity and geometry dictate such things as an up and down, a roof and floor and various storeys in between, just as the laws of sound and speech formation dictate certain vowels, consonants and ways of speaking them. These compelling forces create what could be called a syntax of architecture - that is the rules for combining the various words of door, window, wall, and so forth. Most doors, for instance, follow the syntactical rule requiring a floor, necessarily flat, on both sides. What happens when this rule is constantly broken? The fun-house at the Amusement Park - which takes advantage of the fact that the nervous system uncon­ sciously knows the syntactical rules and enjoys having them broken from time to time. Delirious word-salads, the speech of schizophrenics and poetry, all distort con­ ventional grammar. It is obviously one of the defining characteristics of all sign systems used aesthetically.

MODES OF ARCHITECTURAL COMMUNICATION

How

mp·

thl.

Se­ dis­

of

I

THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

They call attention to the language itself by misuse, exaggeration, repetition, and all the devices of rhetorical skill.

Michael Graves speaks about 'foregrounding' the elements of architecture by turning them on their side, extending them out from their usual, functional context and painting them like a Juan Gris Cubist composition. His houses are poetic distortions of a Cubist syntax, whose only fault, in terms of communication, is in the choice of a limited syntax and undercoding. You need a reader's guide to appreciate the fact that a blue balustrade is a

109- column lying down. The Handmade Houses of the West 111 Coast use a much more accessible syntax in a similar way.

Shingles, wood siding, different types of standard win­ dows tipped on their sides, placed at the corner of the building, roofs pitching at odd angles, logs used without finishing - these syntactical tricks have a richer resonance of meaning, except, of course, for those trained in synthetic cubism. Again it is a matter of coding and rich­ ness of coding which is at stake, not an absolute dif­ ference in meaning.

The syntax of architecture has preoccupied the modern movement to the point of obsession, which is one reason it will not be emphasised here. Starting with nineteenth-century theorists, Viollet-Ie- Duc, Semper and Choisy, this interest was soon idolised and became the dominant meaning of architecture. It's as if all that architecture suddenly had to talk about was its construc­ tional process, the way it was put together. Louis Kahn wrote about THE FORM of building as if it were the Architectural Saviour which would rescue him from all other concerns.

Peter Eisenman produces beautiful syntactic knots which dazzle the eye, confuse the mind, and ultimately

105 EZRA EHRENKRANTZ, SCSD (Schools Construction System Development), California, 19605. The syntax of architecture obvious­ ly relates to functional concerns, as this drawing shows. Six major elements: 1 mixing boxes, 2 rigid ducts. 3 flexible ducts, 4 outlets, 5 lighting, 6 roof plenum, show the air-conditioning requirements. These were combined with roof. floor and a partition system to give a flexible syntax that could be changed in several ways. (Drawing by Mary Banham from The Architecture of the WeI/-tempered Environ­ ment by Reyner Banham.)

Opposite above 107 BOOTMOBILE, Los Angeles, 1976.

Opposite below 108 HOT DOG STAN D, Los Angeles, c. 1938. Reinforced WI'" additional signs such as oozing mustard, 'Tail-o-the-pup' etc. Thll architecture would appearto be unambiguous, yet at the Architectur.' Association in London, where I teach, it is classified in the allde library as a 'hamburger stand'. Once again, visual codes are main" local. See page 46.

signify for him the process that generated them. enticing; how banal. The spirit of process is supposed to lift you heavenwards so you overlook the prosaic as tions. Once again, as with Mies, the analogy of beautifully consistent form is meant to stand for the missing value •• transport the mind above ordinary concerns. But Architectural Ascension is not quite miraculous enough; there is no lift-off, that is, syntactically speaking. mantically, (a mode of communication Eisenman dains), his buildings convey the sharp white light of rationality and the virtues of geometrical organisation: the exciting 'bridges to cross', surprising punched-out 'holes of space', the framed 'vistas', the Chinese puzzle structure. So far as one can recognise these semantic

. meanings and connect them with other associations, (Protestantism, the white architecture of the twenties), then these buildings have a wider meaning. In other words, the pure realm of syntax is only relevant perceptually when it is incorporated into semantic fields.

Semantics In the nineteenth century, when different styles of archi­ tecture were being revived, there was a fairly coherent doctrine of semantics which explained which style to use

106 HANDMADE HOUSE, West Coast. c. 1970. Traditional wooden construction and ready-made windows and doors are displaced from their u:;ual syntactic position to, again, call attention to them­ selves: 'The Window Building'. (From Handmade Houses, A Guide to the Woodbutcher's Art, by Art Boericke and Barry Shapiro, 1973. The owner and place are not identified).

MODES OF ARCHITECTURAL COMMUNICATION

~:'\ ' ,'~

')~'I'" \il/! above IOU MICHAEL GRAVES, Benacerraf House addition, Princeton, 10tl'l A Cubist syntax is used to call attention to itself. This heighten­ ...." III our perception of doors, stairways, balustrades and views from • '''''>ILl! is complex and masterful. It is so rich here that one forgets ." n.,i< what the functions are (actually an open terrace above, and a ,t1oYIOom and breakfast room below). Note how the structure, ",111"ll1nes unnecessary, is pul/ed away from the wall. Railings and ,,,I (lut wall planes also serve to define a net of rectilinear space. ,,,.. front balustrade is, conceptually, a column lying on its side ­ a "'dV on syntactical meaning, as is the whole addition. (Laurin t,4,Cracken.) See page 64.

Opposite below left '!O MICHAEL GRAVES, Hanse/mann House, Fort Wayne, Indiana, 1%18. The entrance to this house is heightened, literally by being 'n",,,d, and metaphorically by the foreground stair, the direct frontal "pproach, and various articulations over or near the actual doorway. I htls the act of entry, a procession across a bridge and then through i1 !>I!ries of layered spaces, is given an almost sacred significance, V,ows of trees and sky are also heightened by frames, or curved .,,!fIts. The curved railing, the extended three columns and the d,agonal (stair) all call attention to syntactic features.

I ipposite be/ow right 111 MICHAEL GRAVES, Snyderman House, Fort Wayne, Indiana, 1'172. The intersection of two related syntaxes, Corbusier and Ilationalist, set up actual semantic meanings: e.g. 'a war between a Mondrian and a Juan Gris', 'a stucco building trying to spring out ,,1 a prison cage', 'a collision of two ships', 'scaffolding' etc, This ,dilboration of a 1920s syntax is Baroque in every way but the

curvilinear.

112, 113 PETER EISENMAN, House III for Robert Miller, Lakeville, Connecticut, 1971. Several of the drawings which generated the house show the main oppositions between two grids at 45" (step 6), .1 conceptual cage of boxed space (step 7), a column grid (step 3), and wall planes in 'shear' (step 5). Bridges and open volumes unite and divide the room functions. The facades 'mark' some interior transformations, that is if you look at them with the diagrams in your hand and think for a long time. This architecture, like nineteenth­ century programme music, demands a complementary text in order to be fully understood.

MODES OF ARCHITECTURAL COMMUNICATION

115 THOMAS USTICK WALTER, Moyamensing Prison. Phila­ delphia, 1835. The Egyptian style, with its battered walls, heavy columns and small openings, naturally signified a structure from which it was hard to escape. (HABS, Library of Congress, photo Jack E. Boucher).

on which building type. An architect would pick the Doric Order for use on a bank because the Order and the banking function had certain overtones in common: sobriety, impersonality, masculinity and rationality (a bank was meant to look tough enough to discourage robbers, and sensible enough to encourage depositors). Not only were these semantic properties set by comparison, by looking at the Orders in opposition to each other and other styles, but so were a host of syntactic aspects: the size of the Doric capital, the column's relation to other columns, and its proportion to the cornice, frieze and base. Since these forms and relationships were used coherently, people felt able to pass judgement on their suitability. They could tell what the building signified, and they could read a slight change in emphasis, a variation of proportion, as a change in meaning.

Of course, this is to idealise the situation, as only a small part of the community could make these distinctions. But at least some could, and this community (echoing the root-word 'communication') kept the architect responsive to the whole enjoyable game of signification. He knew that if the semantic system were violently overthrown or became too complicated, his communication would be reduced to primitive gestures. In fact, by 1860 the game of eclecticism had become too complicated. For this reason it Was overthrown, and vilified sixty years later because it had failed to signify those meanings architects found

important. But it needn't have broken down if an adequate theory of eclecticism had been in operation. (I can't dis­ cover anything of that time that develops much beyond the notion of syncretism: taking the best parts from different buildings and combining them).

Nonetheless, revivalist architects did at least justify their choice of a style in terms of appropriateness, suit­ ability; and this gave a degree of coherence to their formal choice. One architect, J. C. Loudon, proposed a theory of 'associationism' based on the notion of 'association of ideas', and even went so far as to say that each house should convey in its manner the character and role of its owner.13 If the inhabitant were a country parson, the house should be dressed in castellated Gothic or related 114 clothing. Thus the environment would become more and more legible as society became more differentiated.

To a certain extent this doctrine was followed in the nineteenth century, and you find that the introduction of a new style is assimilated into the appropriate semantic field. The Neo- Egyptian Style, popular in 1830 because of the Rosetta Stone and Napoleon's previous campaigns, was used sensibly on banks, tombs, prisons and medical 115 colleges. The argument for its use might be based either on conventional or natural meanings. In the first cases, Neo-Egyptian was appropriate because the Pharaohs buried their treasure in temples of this style; or famous Egyptian doctors, healers and practitioners of medicine were sometimes also arch itects. Hence by the association of ideas, you could properly use the Egyptian style on banks and chemists' shops. Secondly, this style had natural meanings of heaviness, impenetrability and massiveness. The walls are battered and the openings small - use it on prisons, it 'naturally' signifies high security.H

THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

116 CHARLES GARNIER, Paris Opera House, 1861-74. The giant, heroic order is played double height against a smaller one. Surfaces are covered with sculpture and polychromy. Everywhere statues take up operatic poses, flexing their muscles even the women lookintimi­ dating. The interior grand staircase displays people as if they were to make an entrance on stage. The internal corner, with its re-entrant angles, medallions and general grandiloquence, is the most muscle­ bound corner of the time. The Second Empire style naturally signified power: it took a lot of money to build. (French Government Tourist Office).

ny the same line of reasoning, the Neo-Baroque, or Socond Empire Style of 1860 had a series of natural OVlHtones. It was massive, overarticulated, splendiferous, muscular, angst-ridden, tempestuous, bombastic, playful, ,xullerant, pretentious, and very expensive to build. Whore should it be used? On the opera house of course. Gllrnier's Parisian confection of the 1870s was most tunably clothed; and it was no accident that when he (:ol1quered France, Hitler danced a jig on its steps. His choice of this style for the Third Reich (an Empire meant to Inst longer than the French attempts) was both appropriate nnd inadvertent. It symbolised strength, but like so many u()vernments which have chosen this style,. it was a IItrength that didn't survive its leader. Today, for this historical reason, it conventionally symbolises 'vanished power' or 'ineffectual dictatorShip', and is used in in­ Ilumerable movies and television dramas to signify this nmbivalent pathos. The short-lived nature of the archi­ toctural code, and its distortion by' historical events thus brings out once again the domination of conventional meaning over natural signification.

We can clarify this issue by looking at the classical liJnguage of architecture, the way the Three Orders con­ stituted a semantic system, and how this system changed under the pressures of eclecticism. Vitruvius characterised the Doric Order as bold, severe, simple, blunt, true, honest, straightforward, and in sexual terms, masculine. In part this characterisation stemmed from the natural metaphors inherent in this form, but also it stemmed from historical accident (or at least Vitruvius' account of the Doric Order's

The Corinthian Order was, by contrast, delicate, dainty, slender, ornamental and, sexually speaking, a young virgin. As one would guess, the middle Order, the Ionic, was a kind of architectural hermaphrodite, a neuter - in fact for Vitruvius, a matronly Order, because it was slightly more feminine than masculine (with volutes that look elegant). But these characterisations really only begin to make sense, as E. H. Gombrich has pointed out, when the Orders are put in opposition to each other.

The rigid orders of ancient architecture would seem to be a fairly recalcitrant matrix for the expression of psychological and physiognomic categories; still it makes sense when Vitruvius recommends Doric temples for Minerva, Mars, and Hercules, Corinthian ones for Venus, Flora, and Prosperina, while Juno, Diana, and other divinities who stand in between the two extremes, are given Ionic temples. Within the medium at the architects' disposal, Doric is clearly more virile than Corinthian. We say that Doric expresses the god's severity; it does, but only because it is on the more severe end of the scale and not because there is necessarily much in common between the god of war and the Doric order. (E. H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion, London, 1960, pp. 316-317.)

Clearly there is nothing in common between warfare and the Doric except with respect to comparable things or elements: they each occupy equivalent semantic zones. In other words, if we map the Three Orders in a

119 semantic space, it is the relationships (r1, r2, r3) which really matter, and not the 'natural' meanings of the forms, nor the particular semantic axes we choose, (whether Vitruvius' or our own).

As long as we can distinguish clear differences between elements, it doesn't matter too much what these dif-

MODES OF ARCHITECTURAL COMMUNICATION

117 CHARLES GARNIER, Paris Opera House, 1861-74.

ferences are, because custom and usage will first set them in one semantic space and then transform them to another. This can be seen in the nineteenth century with the rapid shift of stylistic meanings. For instance, in very crude terms, the concept of state power was indicated successively by the Roman revival, the Greek neo­ Classical, the Gothic (at least in the House of Parliament), the Italian High Renaissance, the Rundbogenstil, the High Victorian Gothic, and finally in the 1870s, the Second Empire Style. There was a general trend in this evolution towards more and more bombast and articula­ tion, understood metaphors of power; but all of a sudden the semantic system could be overturned. Simplicity could become a correlate of potency, as it was with the Neo­ Classical and the International Style. There is nothing to keep an age from inverting the semantic space of its predecessors. The relation of form to meaning is mostly conventional.

We can see this transformation of meanings in the jump from the Classical Language of architecture to Eclecticism, and in the work of one man. Nikolaus Pevsner has sum­ marised the way John Nash used a different 'style for the job'.

[Nash] had a nice sense of associational propriety; as shown in his choice of the neo-Classical for his 118

THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

118 JOHN NASH, Chester Terrace, Regents Park, London, 1825. The Corinthian Order, triumphal arches, and endlessly repeated white forms were used on these town houses giving them an appropriate impersonality and rectitude. The detailing was notional and symbolic, quickly conceived for spec builders. For this kind of

town house and of the Gothic for his country mansion (complete with Gothic conservatory). More­ over, he built Cronkhill in Shropshire (1802), as an Italianate villa with a round-arched loggia on slender columns and with the widely projecting eaves of the Southern farmhouse (Roscoe's Lorenzo Medici had come out in 1796); he built Blaise Castle, near Bristol (1809) in a rustic Old-English cottage style with barge-boarded gables and thatched roofs (one is reminded of the Vicar of Wakefield, Marie Antoin­ ette's diary in the Park of Versailles, and Gains­ borough's and Greuze's sweet peasant children), and he continued the Brighton Pavilion in a 'Hindu' fashion, just introduced after 1800 at Sezincote in the Cotswolds where the owner, because of personal reminiscences, insisted on the style. 'Indian Gothic' ... (Nikolaus Pevsner, An Outline of European Architecture, Harmondsworth, 1964, p. 318.)

In effect. Nash has substituted a revival style for each of the Three Orders. Roughly speaking, Hindu has been substituted for Corinthian, Gothic for Ionic and Classical for Doric (the Old English and Italian styles occupy new niches).

opportunism Nash was damned by the serious classicists. C. R. Cockerell: 'Greek bedevilled ... scenographic tricks hastily thought. hastily executed .. .' The indictment may have its point, but still Nash's willingness to change to the appropriate semantic system has its greater poi nt.

More significantly, a single form has taken on its oppo­ site meaning in the system. The Corinthian (or Nash's Classical Order) has become masculine, simple and straightforward, because now it is set. against other formal elements. This inversion is a good illustration of tlie semiotic rule that it is relationships between elements which count more than their inherent meanings. We could find countless other examples throughout architec­ tural history; the Picturesque aesthetic being 'functional' in 1840 and 'anti-functional' in 1920; simple, Platonic forms symbolising truth and honesty in 1540 and deceit and artifice in 1870, and so on. Although our intuition and perception of form may feel straightforward and 'natural', it is based on an elaborate set of changing conventions. It is the differences between juxtaposed elements which constitute one of the bases for their meaning not the natural overtones inherent in the elements themselves.

Even though aesthetic and technical issues dominate architects today, they still pay some measure of attention to semantics. An architect will use a curtain wall for an office building, because glass and steel feel cold, im­ personal, precise and ordered -the overtones of methodical business, rational planning and commercial transactions.

MASCUllNI:

Ilorit

Corinthian FEMININE

II') The THREE ORDERS. I have used these particular axes of v.""vius for the sake of simplicity and comparison with the subse­ 'I"""t diagrams. But more interesting oppositions could be chosen il', long as they are semantically distinct enough to give different ",Iormation from each other. For instance, 'nature' might be opposed to 'culture', 'power' to 'impotence'. etc. Semantic meaning consists

p.lttly in oppositions within a system.

~

121 JOHN NASH, Royal Pavilion, Brighton, 1815-18. Nash threw into his souffle a bit of Gothic, a bit of Chinese, a bit of cast-iron (palmtree columns), and his own version of a bulbous Hindu style. The domes are faintly mammarian. Here is the beginning of modern Ersatz, the first exuberant Kitsch building in England. Bad taste has been a positive creative force since then reaching one high with the

MODES OF ARCHITECTURAL COMMUNICATION

Hindu

MASCULINE

ltauan.,. .-

-----. OIdEfI1lIisb

FEMININE

Classical

120 JOHN NASH'S Five Styles compared in the same semantic space as the Three Orders (128). The comparison brings out the fact that it is the relationship between styles. or Orders, which matters most in determining semantic meaning. The Corinthian, or Classical Order, has thus taken on its exact opposite meaning in Nash's system, because now it is more masculine, simple and

straightforward than the Hindu style.

Victorian country house. All this obscures. however, the appropriate­ ness of choosing the Indian style for an escape palace next to the sea. If you are designing a 'pleasure dome' for the Prince who wants to get away from London sobriety. what better than the style of Kubla

Khan (published 1816) ?

73

121

120

THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE MODES OF ARCHITECTURAL COMMUNICATION

122 NORMAN FOSTER, Willis Faber Office, Ipswich, 1975. Dark tinted solar glass and steel studs make this 'Big Black Piano' or 'Rolls-Royce' semantically fitting for cool office work. The curves around the site, takes up the street lines and reflects the surrounding environment in fragments. (John

y THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE MODES OF ARCHITECTURAL COMMUNICATION

23 TRADITIONAL SWISS CHALET 'Montbovoo', sixteenth­ century, now in Geneva. The natural qualities of wood make it semantically suitable for the house. The knots, grain and texture are all metaphors for the wrinkles and birth marks on skin; the surface is tactile, warm and faintly responsive, again like the human body: the material can be easily tooled at a human scale. In this case the surface is adorned with jewellery and decorated like a peasant costume.

One could argue that the architect should deflect these meanings, that business might be made to look more adventurous and domestic than it is; yet the basic classifi­ cation is suitable.

Wood is intrinsically warm, pliable, soft organic, and full of natural marks such as knots and grain, so it is used

where people come into close contact 1;> I Brick is associated by use with flexible in detail, so it is also used

domestically. In spite of the fact that there are much more economic building systems available, the wood-and-brick hybrid still accounts for seventy-five per cent of specula­ tive and council housing in Britain - a clear indication that semantic issues take precedence, in the public's mind, over technical ones.

What about new materials such as nylon, which make up pneumatic buildings? The inflatable system is naturally pudgy, squashy, cuddly, sexual, volumetric and pleasant to touch, so it has naturally found a secure niche in the semantic field and is used appropriately on swimming pools, blow-up furniture, entertainment areas and other 1,,1 unmentionable places. Its occasional use as a church or 1,,, office building brings out different, less dominant semantic overtones.

24 PAUL BURROWS, Brothel for Oil Men in the Desert 1973. The pneumatic architecture takes up and supports the natural metaphors of these girls. as well as their activity.

BARBARELLA. 1968. is always shown surrounded with vis­ flllS, shiny plastic and soft hairy fur. (ALA Fotoeine).

126 JAMES BOND and TIFFANY CASE in Diamonds Are Forever, 1971. frolic around on a transparent water bed surrounded by 3.000 tropical fish. Connery's sardonic smile suggests he has had almost enough of this sort of thing. (United Artists).

THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

These comparative aspects of building systems can be graphed in a semantic space similar to that already used, although axes other than the ones I have taken over from

127 Vitruvius would be more relevant. The relations between brick, pneumatics, concrete and steel set up the semantic field which will differ slightly for each individual and particular usage employed. Architects do not at present consciously map materials to each other, and functions to each other, and then compare the two mappings. Rather

128 they leave semantic questions to intuition, if they acknow­ ledge them at all. Yet if our complex urban environments are to speak coherently, an explicit method must be used. The various building systems, the new materials, the five or so reigning styles, create such semantic richness as to generate confusion. So far architects have only responded to this as a positive aesthetic gain, trading off stylistic options for psychological and social meaning. As a result no one expects to understand a building and read it as a text. Everyone is the loser, the architect and public. Hence the plea that some system of semantic ordering be explicitly used. It can be as crude as the one proposed here, because it is gross distinctions and oppositions that are at stake, not the fine shades of semantic meaning (which can in any case only be communicated in language).

Several architects have made hesitant steps in this direction - hesitant because they are not backed up by theoretical understanding, or by more than single instances in their large output. One such building in Rome com­

129 pleted in 1965 has been rather heavily criticised for being made up of cliches, and for being schizophrenic. This building, by the Passarelli brothers, uses the conventional forms for office: smooth black steel and glass, below conventional signs for dwelling - hanging vines, broken silhouette, picturesque massing and balconies. A third building system below ground, in monolithic, Brutalist concrete, is the parking garage. The standard joke was that each of the brothers designed a different part of the building and never talked to each other. Part of the criti­ cism directed against this building was for its obvious, boring use of styles already better developed by Harrison and Abromovitz, Paul Rudolph, and Le Corbusier; and one can see the point of this censure.

But also, and perhaps a more deep-rooted reason for the pique was the use of various structures and materials. Architects and critics brought up with the International Style were ingrained with the Purist notion that one aesthetic and structural system should be used on a building. Attendant ideas supporting this were the notions of harmony, the classical ideal that a part cannot be added or subtracted without disturbing the integrated whole, and that each building had, Platonically speaking, one and only one best solution.

There were even further assumptions which this build­ ing called into question: the self-conscious use of opposite styles as styles. Le Corbusier had said, 'the "styles" are a lie'. Frank Lloyd Wright and Walter Gropius believed that a single style, expressing the character and integrity of the architect, must animate all his work - otherwise he was guilty of insincerity, pandering to the whims of a client and ultimately to a corrupt ruling taste. Eclecticism meant slick facility and lack of conviction.

There are two obvious problems with this single-style approach (still the reigning one, even if it is less explicit than at previous times). First, mixed styles are an aid to communication, as the Passarelli building shows; and an

M

Steet.-..---T............1 -..........,

I I 1

f l

Wood

I ! !

..............--....~..,..........""......

i i 1 !

Concrete

s

, . ....,...... ! ..... Pneumatic ..............:...............

127 FOUR BUILDING SYSTEMS. Particular uses of each building system have to be established before these relationships can be plotted: e.g. the particular use of concrete may in fact be more complex and feminine than the use of steel. Then the functional aspects have to be mapped in the same semantic space, and the two mappings compared.

128 ARCH IGRAM, Bournemouth Scheme, 1971, uses four different building systems semantically: the tent-like forms signify ephemeral beach activity, the wandering stepped forms signify large-scale collective activity (department store), the fragmented individual objects are the conventional sign for amusement park, and the linear spine classifies circulation. These sytems are then modified or distorted to articulate further meaning: the linear spine indents to accept plastic' pod-like rooms and changes into a lattice girder as it goes out over the water.

architect must master at least three or four to articulate any complex building today, especially if he is to design the interior.

Secondly, the connection of any particular style with sincerity, whether it is the International Style or the ad hoc aesthetic of Handmade Houses, is a matter of history and convention, not something eternally true. By that typical process of historical inversion, we have actually arrived at a position where consistency and Purism do not equate with integrity, but quite the reverse. How has this happened?

Precisely because the I nternational Style has been accepted on a massive scale by those who build cities. It is now the conventional style of the ruling class and its bureaucracy, (at least for its large-scale offices and civic

\WlCO) [ffi[L[ID

129 PASSARELLI BROTHERS, Multi-use structure, Rome, 1965. The concrete and hanging vines classify the flats, the black steel curtain wall indicates office, and below ground, exposed concrete articulates parking. Termed 'Schizo' in this item by Architectural Review, and attacked by modernists for its impurity, the building nonetheless makes basic distinctions which are obscured in Purist design.

buildings). so its use hardly ensures that same sincerity which preoccupied the pioneers of the style. Furthermore the 'Masters of Modern Architecture' (I take the phrase from a series of books) have become like the consumer products Coca-Cola, Xerox, and Ford, each with their own house style and corporate brand image. They did not intend this of course, but since they couldn't advertise and since they had to work within a consumer society, the main way of selling their reputation was to develop a single recognisable style which could be purveyed through magazines, books and TV. In short, their authenticity, and their sincerity itself, became a marketable commodity, just as that of Picasso and Che Guevara did in other fields.

The followers of the 'masters' are led in the same direc­ tion, with the result that we can now recognise the Safdie style, the brand marks of Kurokawa and Tange, the Stirling manner, and so forth. How does a client or committee know which one to pick? They choose from books or articles which show his style distinguished from those of competitors. Originality and distinctiveness are saleable items.

The result of this hidden process, of the marketing of reputations, has been to produce a recognisable style of the elite, middle-class architects: it tends towards univalence because of the pressures toward consistency. It is made up from repetitive geometrics, divorced from most metaphors except that of the machine, and purged of vulgarity and the signs common to semiotic groups

MODES OF ARCHITECTURAL COMMUNICATION

SCHIZO The split fUlICtI,lns of mixed develop." men! ha~(' rarely. if ever. been ex­ pressed in so split-minded a wa)' as in the cosa pet" IIffit:i If! ahiro:1oni recently cOlT\Plet<:d in Ihe Via Romag­ na at Rome. 1. designed by the Ihree brolhers Passarelli: three floors of parking out of sight below ground, an open ground floor concourse, three office floors of the sleekest curtain walling in black. steel followtng Ihe street lines, and finally four floors of crazily elCpresse<1 hanging gardens punched a~k.ew. Rudolph stands on Mies. The quadruple columns (ducts running centrally between them) stand proud as pilotis, are enveloped in curtaining and are threaded through balconies, The obvious merit of Ihis millture aesthelically is Ihat it de­ vdops the ac..-rued confusion of history; Roman wall. neo-Roman­ et\(Jue church. 2. sl\utlered palauO'l. Uke so man), Italian schemes, it all seemi balan~'ed. even academk. in section. 3, How wMir designed'~ Perhaps the hrathen split it; Vincento the !lats, Luca the offices and Fausto the car park-a new Adelphi

l tq

130 PAOLO SOLERI, Arcosanti, Cordes Junction, Arizona, 1972-7. Restaurant block and accommodation to left and bell foundry and great arch to the right, with housing on either side (semi-circular windows). The Roman-like pattern making, squares, circles and flat masonry walls, is not tied to any semantic system, either his­ torical or internal to the scheme. The formal play is pleasurable, but it doesn't relate to anything other than the grand ecological dreams of Soleri.

other than that of architects. The environment which is created by such a situation is one where every building is a monument to the architect's consistency, rather than appropriate to the job or the urban setting.

The issues involved are obviously complex. An architect must, to a certain extent, develop his own way of doing things, his own details and mannerisms; but these no longer guarantee or signify authenticity as they tended to do before the avant-garde was incorporated into con­ sumer society. And if this practice now produces essen­ tially boring, idiosyncratic SCUlpture, oversimplified in a single language, then today the architect's sincerity can be measured by his ability to design in a plurality of styles. Consistency equals unconscious hypocrisy, (or, oc­ casionally, conscious elitism).

THE LANGUAGE OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

,---"­

248 THOMAS GORDON SMITH, Paulownia House, Oakland, California, 1977. A prefabricated Quonset hut. wood frame con­ struction and a rusticated, Serlio arch which is mirrored to make it

it can be understood and enjoyed by different taste cultures - both the inhabitants and the elite. Although it starts from these codes, it doesn't necessarily use them to send the expected messages, or ones which confirm the existing values. In this sense it is both contextual and dialectical, attempting to set up a dis­ course between different and often opposed taste cultures.

Although it is generated in participation with those who will use the building, it transcends their goals and may even criticise them. For these contrasting reasons it can be read on at least two quite distinct levels telling parallel stories which mayor may not be consistent,

247 THOMAS GORDON SMITH, Jefferson Street House project, Berkeley, California, 1976. Like Queen Anne and Maybeck's work, an easy-going mixture of grand, traditional elements with the local vernacular. The 'Palladian' viewing porch treated as a symmetrical, formal front which organises the informal, rambling sides; meaning through opposition.

whole. The quoins, voussoirs and other traditional elements are made from stock pieces to suggest a more substantial construction than actually exists.

depending on the context and building involved. Finally Radical Eclecticism is multivalent, as against

so much Modern architecture: it pulls together different kinds of meaning, which appeal to opposite faculties of the mind and body, so that they interrelate and modify each other. The taste of the building, its smell and touch, engage the sensibility as much as does the sight and contemplation. In a perfectly successful work of archi­ tecture - that of Gaudi - the meanings add up and work together in the deepest combination. We aren't there yet, but a tradition is growing which dares make this demand for the future.

NOTES

1 See Mies van der Rohe, 'Industrialized Building', original'y printed in the magazine, G, Berlin, 1924, and reprinted in Ulrich Conrads, Programmes and Manifestoes on 20th-Century Architec­ ture. London, 1970, p. 81.

2 See Manfredo Tafuri, 'L'Architecture dans Ie boudoir', Oppositions 3. New York, 1974, p. 45 and note p. 60. Tafuri claims that the 'accusations of fascism hurled at Rossi mean little, since his attempts at the recovery of an ahistoricizing form exclude verbalizations of its content and any compromise with the rear. This escape clause is of course impossible; all form will be looked at historically and have conventional associations tied to it, and Rossi's work cannot escape this 'compromise with the real' any more than all other architecture.

3 Peter and Alison Smithson, Architectural Design, October 1969, p,560.

4 Peter Smithson, Architectural Design, May 1975, p. 272.

5 A. et P. Smithson, 'Gentle Cultural Accommodation', L 'Archi­ tecture d'aujourd'hui, Janvier/Fevrier 1975, pp. 4-13, quote from page 9. The Smithsons contend that they didn't write this, although it is typical of their ideas, See Architectural Design 7, 1977 and my answer.

6 See Tom Wolfe, The New Journalism. Picador, London, 1975, pp. 54-6, and my article 'The Rise of Post-Modern Architecture', Architectural Association Quarterly, London, Summer 1976, pp. 7-14.

7 For the call to morality see Sigfried Giedion, Space, Time and Architecture. Cambridge, Mass" 1971, pp.214, 291-308. For the 'Heroic Period', see Peter and Alison Smithson, issue of Architectural Design. December 1965,

8 Sant' Elia's 'Manifesto', July 11, 1914, is quoted from Futurismo 1909-1919, exhibition of Italian Futurism, organised by Northern Arts and the Scottish Arts Council, 1972, catalogue, p. 49.

9 A more rigorous comparison of architecture to language is made by architectural semioticians, who substitute technical terms for these imprecise analogues. For our general purpose however, the analogies will suffice, as long as we don't take them too literally.

10 A point made by Umberto Eco in 'Function and Sign: Semiotics and Architecture', published in Structures Implicit and Explicit, Graduate School of Fine Arts University of Pennsylvania, Vol. 2, 1973. Republished in our anthology edited by Geoffrey Broadbent. Dick Bunt and myself, Signs. Symbols and Architecture, Wiley, to appear in 1978.

11 See Umberto Eco, 'A Componential Analysis of the Architectural Sign/Column', in Semiotica 5, Number 2,1972, Mouton, The Hague, pp.97-117.

12 See for instance Herbert Gans' description of the five major 'taste cultures' in his Popular Culture and High Culture, Basic Books, New York, 1974, pp. 69-103.

13 See G. L. Hersey, 'J. C. Loudon and Architectural Associationism', Architectural Review, August, 1968, pp. 89-92.

14 The use of 'naturally' begs the important semiotic issue of exactly how natural a sign can be. They all depend on coding, and therefore convention. But the issue is too complex to be treated

here. See Umberto Eco, A Theory of Semiotics, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1976, pp. 191-221

15 I've discussed these debates in Modem Movements in tecture, Harmondsworth & New York, 1973, pp. 318-28, and foot­ notes for references. The Italian press took up the controversy and applied the metaphors of 'refrigeration' to English criticism (if my memory serves me).

16 Philip Johnson, 'The Seven Crutches of Modern Architecture: Perspecta III, New Haven, 1955; 'Whence and Whither', The Processional Element in Architecture, Perspecta 9/1 0, New Haven, 1965,

17 See John Jacobus, Philip Johnson, George Braziller, New York, 1962.

18 Letter to Jurgen Joedicke, 6/12/1961 reprinted in John Jacobus: Philip Johnson, New York, 1962.

19 See Robin Boyd, New Directions in Japanese Architecture, New York and London. 1968, p. 102.

20 See ClAM '59 in Otter/o, ed. Jurgen Joedicke, London, 1961, p.182,

21 A fairly complete bibliography of these writings and comment on the Venturi Team can be seen in Learning from Las Vegas, revised edition by Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour, Cambridge, 1977. For a criticism see my review, 'Venturi et. al. are almost all right', in Architectural Design, 7, 1977.

22 See Learning from Las Vegas, op. cit., pp. 130 & 149.

23 They have often pointed this out; Robert Venturi for instance said at a conference at Art Net. London, July 1976: 'I apologise for all these Rich Men's houses, but I'll take anything we can get'. Their projects are often for more social tasks, sometimes minority groups and the under-serviced.

24 See A & U, 74.' 11 devoted to their work from 1970-74. p. 43.

25 See my 'MBM and the Barcelona Schoor. The Architectural Review, March 1977, pp. 159-65, and ArqUitectura Bis, 13 & 14, Barcelona, May-June, 1976.

26 I've discussed this 'threat' of pluralism and eclecticism in 'Isozaki and Radical Eclecticism', Architectural Design, January, 1977, pp. 42-8. In this article I try to distinguish between a radical eclecticism which is semantically based and nineteenth-century 'weak eclecticism' which shuffling of styles.

multivalent and the was an easy-going

27 I am investigating this partly in Culture of Our Time to appear in 1979.

Ersatz The International

28 See Aldo Rossi, L'Archittetura della Citta, Padua, 1966. Arqui­ tecturas Bis, No. 12, pp. 25-31. Gijon is a monumental form of classicism with Venturi-like juxtapositions.

29 See L 'Architecture d'Aujourd'hui, the issue devoted to Formal­ isme-Realisme, 190, April, 1977, p. 101.

30 I'm sure there will be misunderstandings on this score as I seem to be having it both ways, arguing in favour of 'the spirit of the age' and against it; but the distinctions between 'climate of opinion' and