Semiotics in architecture and spatial design

Aroni, Gabriele ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1343-613X (2023) Semiotics in architecture and spatial design. In: Bloomsbury Semiotics Volume 2: Semiotics in the Natural and Technical Sciences. Bloomsbury Semiotics, 2 . Bloomsbury Publishing, London, pp. 277-296. ISBN 9781350139329 (hardback); 9781350139343 (ebook); 9781350139336 (ebook)

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Abstract

The semiotics of architecture is intertwined with many other disciplines, such as aesthetics and sociology. This makes it difficult to find a precise stream of semiotics of architecture proper. Still, it is undeniable that semiotics has a very tangible and notable presence in everyone’s environment, since it is difficult to overlook the communicative components of landscape design, urban planning, architectural design and interior design, moreover ‘at the very heart of semiotics, a spatial logic (presence-absence, and an embodiment of this difference) is part of the definition of what it means to convey meaning’ (Sandin 2012: 175). Why, then, has relatively little attention been given to the semiotics of architectural design recently? The first reason is that, arguably, the architecture with which the vast majority of us deal on a daily basis apparently does not ‘communicate […] but functions’ (Eco 1997: 174), which raises the question as to whether representation in architecture is indeed possible, and especially how. Architecture, in fact, unlike figurative painting or sculpture, does not reproduce something that already exists, but necessarily creates something new. As such, it could be regarded as an asignifying and non-representative art, especially considering the mechanical role that it must serve. Despite this, there has always been a semiotic aspect one way or another: from the expression of natural or mathematical rules, to the imitation of historical styles, and expression of abstract rules. Much like Monsieur Jourdain in Molière’s Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, who did not know he was speaking in prose, ‘architects, unlike practitioners in many other fields, actually think in semiotic […] concepts directly in the process of their creative work’ (Broadbent 1994: 86). The meaning of the built environment is indeed a very present issue, even when not framed in semiotic terms.