I think architecture can be read as a statement of information or as a signalling process. (Everything is a sign, right Ms. Rosalind Krause?) But I think more often than not architecture is not about signalling as much as it is about allowing for inhabitation, through good function. The signals might be read later by whoever is actually interested in "reading" or learning from a building.

When you can as a designer conciously add a layer of signal intent, that makes it more interesting, certainly.

I'm sick of images. Listen.

I would be interested to see how 'signal' might fit in (or not) to the already well-developed discourse about signification in architecture.

Without considering it too much, I think that architecture can be a statement, can probably be a request, but also can exist in a great many ambivalent states of query.

(huh, only just saw liberty's post - low signal-noise ratio so far in this thread)

in a thread relating to semiotics, you are sick of images?

It's not about semiotics, per se, it's about signal, which is, while related to semiotics, is a concept from information theory and communications.

buildings of significance are signals in that they are backdrops for car ads or action movies. Or they can work as brand identity for their architect. or as a backdrop for your vacation...

[img]
http://tanmaypics28.tripod.com/SnowChicago2005Again/MilleniumPark_7.jpg width=418[/img]

coincidentally the chrome bean is featured on the cover of Ross Westerfield and Jordan's tome "Fundamentals of Corporate Finance" 7th edition. which signifies what?

My humble residence.

diabase? Honey? Are you throwing up your hands in frustration yet? (I'll be back in a bit...)

Dear Liberty,

I know how you like to get metaphysical, so this thread was/is for you...

d.

Thanks diabase. I'll try, but thinking about this while simultaneously calculating the amount of fabric needed for a bedspread is asking my brain to bounce a bit...

I'm thinking about vado's bean image being featured on the book about corporate finance - I wonder if it's the bean being featured or the reflection within the bean being featured? And in either case the bean is not architecture.

I tend to think of architecture-as-signal being on the level of "stealth communication with other experts" I mentioned on the hotrod architecture thread.



This is the stair at the Williams Tsien Folk Art Museum. I think of the way the concrete is handled here being a "signal" to other architects as well as a functional use of a prosaic material. It's a concrete stair, you go up and down a zillion of them in day to day urban life. But THIS one is handled with such finesse - the rough finish on the cheek wall or facade of the stair, the polished surfaces (skin) where your foot goes - it's like allowing the viewer to see "into" a section of concrete, to expose the body of the concrete, and to show us how beautiful a material it can be when handled well.

And I suppose one could say the slight tapering of the wood handrail is a "signal" to the user that the hand starts here.

So my reading of signal in architecture tends to be about material usage. Certainly Vegas is signal/communication as well, but I'm less interested in that.

And the real difference between signal and sign? I can't even tell you what semiotics means so I'll stay away from that argument. I just like talkin' about material.

most architecture is a cry for help...




lb- that stair doesnt meet code!!!

From my perspective, and specifically architecture, I am interested in translation and materialisation.

The statement talks about how threads of thought or information that are intense, eventually condense into objects, and that they carry statements or questions.

Is the object still carrying the question or statement? Or is it the answer to the question, or is the question never or only partially answered? Is the question from a limited set, or an infinte one?

Is the difference between that which gets built and that which doesnt a question of metaphysical relevance or lack of desire? Or is architecture, as can be argued, a purely social enterprise and therefore, any possible discussion of question and answer can be described in terms of societal need? Or economic need? ie, if something does'nt exist, it exists for a [lack of] reason.

When something is built, it is usually described as an assembly of building materials. But these materials have their own history and development - intense signals made dense - and therefore how did they come into existence?

Is architecture made of atoms, or is is a dense [wave-like] signal? Atoms never die, but buildings deteriorate and the answer or question they represent become irrelevant or unknowable.... who asks the quetions and who provides the answers?

ref. Jung

I can certainly agree with the notion of material assemblies being "intense signals made dense". Wood constructions, for example, are detailed the way they are (no exposed end grain, brick mould vs. shoe mould) due to ages and ages of experimentation and practice by expert craftsmen. Doing it right was a signal that you were an expert.

In this example, having your building last longer than its original use means really showing the world that you knew what you were doing! Of course you may have drifted into obscurity by then, but your knowledge-by-example can be a "signal" to those living. The social aspect of it is limited by this point, as the current occupant doesn't care about the original use but just the fact that it's a well-built structure.

If something doesn't exist, is it because it isn't needed...hmmm.....well this bedspread so far doesn'y exist because I haven't had time to deal with it - it is deperately needed!

So in other words, in a well-constructed wood building, the statement "longevity" has condensed into material. In a dryvit/EIFS building, the statement "opposite of longevity" has condensed into a material-like composition of (really sad) atoms.

So is architecture mainly answers, or mainly questions?

Almost entirely answers in physical construct. Sometimes questions in social context.

I guess I'd prefer not to walk through a building in which the structural engineer was asking the physical world a lot of questions!

If signals are either statements of or requests for information, isn't the request for information a statement of the lack of knowledge on the part of the asker? All signals are statements. So all material is a statement. The questions occur entirely in the realm of social interpretation.

But the answers are incomplete - accuracy can never be 100%. And questions from ignorant sources [which Ivy to go to?] will continue ad finitum. Which makes me think, what kind of question did the pyramid builders ask...

You know that story Bill McDonough tells, about the dining hall of some private British boys school or something? Built 200 years ago with enormous oak hammer beams for the roof? Then a few years ago the beams had deteriorated and were going to be replaced with steel because "you can't get oak that big in the UK anymore". Then the campus horticulturist/historian noted that on that very campus was a stand of 250 year old oak trees that were the right size. A review of the archives showed that the architect of the dining hall had stipulated that these trees be planted when the dining hall was built so they would be of proper harvesting size when the day came that they were needed.

That approaches 100% accuracy in my book! Here's the question, oh and here's the answer too!

I had'nt heard that story - very nice.

I think that I might folllow up Jung - his work is absent fom my knowledge - any specific references nichomachean?

God damn its hot in Auckland - it's beer o'clock - which is the answer the question: what's the time and what can I have to drink?!

I'll match your beer with a little pre-bedtime wine, dia. Cheers.

but lb, what does the timber preparedness signify?

is life a symbol, bad copy of a logos, sorta thing, or is it just lots people doing there thing, planting trees, getting ready to chop them down a few hundred years later, drinking beer, drinking wine, etc etc...?

the bean is a piece in the larger architectural signifier that is milllenium park, which is itself a piece of the larger architectural signifier that is chicago.

a build(ing),therefore, in(form)s its audience in a stratified way as a series of (sign)nifiers , ie as architects conceit/concept as constructed process, as corporate image etc and in/turn is in/form/ed by its audiences un(in)formed response to the form, ie as meta/phor, directional marker, scenographic vaca(n)tion picture backdrop etc....

In response to a question, a question.
Why does it matter if the signal maintains it's message?
Are we not all the infinitely varied interpreters of our constant interpretations of representations? Is it not enough to know that one has signaled AT ALL?
I would say all we could do, as signifiers in the built environment, would be to coincide our purported representation with our best understanding of the current cultural status of building (which includes a knowledge of past iterations of the cultural status of building). Then, after we have acted and designed, for the experiencer the {immersion in a similar environment} or the {universal acceptance of the rationality of beings} will take over.
It's hard to say that we can control how they (sentient beings? dogs?) will interpret it, but it's easy to say that we can control how we are meant to be interpreted. It's a little harder to judge whether or not our representations coincide with the current cultural status of architecture, but that's the fun in theory right?

Life IS just a bunch of people doing a bunch of things. Sometimes we can "read" these activites as "signs". But whether we read them or not, incorrectly or not, the things are always only things.

It's fun to talk about them as being more. And that's where human culture (not dog culture!) is found.

mr or mrs. bell

So you would be saying that the "reading" of these signs constitutes our culture?

Also (ha!), could you define "things." What are we people doing exactly?

I don't know if my post is correct, in fact, I am probably wrong. The counterpoint would be to argue that since we are all rational beings, we can understand perfectly these signs in terms of ourselves and can expect other people to understand them in a similar way. Otherwise, what is language?

Mies -

it's Ms., please, but not in an obnoxious way ;)

Why does it matter if the signal maintains its message?

In terms of architecture it really doesn't matter if a signal maintains its message. A building is ultimately only a physical object, its "meaning" and intent can change significantly but if it still stands it's still in some way meeting a functional need that does not need to relate to culture. But an "art" object as opposed to an "architecture" object probably becomes less useful if it loses its original meaning - I think this is part of what makes art and architecture different.

I don't find a single thing with which to disagree in your post. But I would add that as rational beings, in addition to expecting that others can understand the intent of our signals, we can also expect that others can misunderstand them - not in a way that is "incorrect", but in a way that takes different enculturations into account. This can be good or bad: skateboarders (used to) love Philly's Love Park, for reasons that have nothing to do with it's original "intent" and which some see as a good "mis-use and some don't.

Dammit, the only thing I'm good at in these discussions is talking in circles. So one straightforward statement: Yes, I think that collective reading of signs constitutes culture. Please feel free to disprove me!

"If there is still one hellish, truly accursed thing in our time, it is our artistic dallying with forms, instead of being like victims burnt at the stake, signaling through the flames." --Antonin Artaud

I would offer that the architectural dallying with signification is on par with artisitic dallying with forms, and the signaling of which he speaks is analogous to action, to intervention in the furious catastrophe of matter, energy, and information in which we are all burning.

I find the initial reduction which spawned this thread to be not very helpful, except as a point to reject and move on.

I wish cellardoorwhore would chime in.

maybe its useful to consider architecture neither the question or the answer (and therefore possibly not a signal) but a means to decipher/interpret signals to/from other sources.
a simple example would be how ancient civilizations used architecture that aligned with star positions, paths of the sun etc. to inform them about when to plant/harvest crops, worship a god, or kill a virgin. the signals came from the sky, the buildings just helped interpret that signal. maybe you could assume that if it works for environmental signals, it could work similarly for social/cultural signals?

dallying is action...

Keep telling yourself that vado ("dallying is action.")

I'll go away now, since you posted that image. Not mad though.

Stay, Public. I don't understand what your previous post meant. What is wrong with "artistic dallying with forms"?

black bat, good post, nice example.

imaginative perception.

lb,

Here is Artaud's introduction to The Theatre and It's Double, from which I pulled that quote. It's not without problems, but it is great nonetheless. (I apologize for the crappy mistake ridden internet reproduction, it's the only one I could find.)

I might dispute this, but only because I'm an architect, and when designing something it's impossible to design just a physical object. It's a physical object contextualized. One can say that a building is just a physical object the way one can say that a written word is just ink on a page or a spoken word is just vibrating air.

I don't think that this is contrary to either of the ideas of yours or blackbat's. This is a pretty deep subject, and took up a lot of debate in the sixties, seventies onward. Anyone want to pull out their "Oppositions" reader?

Also, can someone translate the German in that post above?

Mies - I said that a building is ultimately only a physical object. If I didn't think a building could simultaneously be a vessel of cultural memory I wouldn't be an architect (too).

But the cultural significance has to be channeled through physical material (and its rules) - the building has to stand to be read.

this conversation desperately needs alcohol...

And, no alcohol here as it is 8AM, an art object is also ultimately only an object, and since the function of an art object is its content, an art object becomes much less relevant if divorced from its "signal" or original intent/content, whereas architecture begins with a function thus still retains some kind of relevance even if divorced from its original "signal".

Miesvanderrice: One can say that a building is just a physical object the way one can say that a written word is just ink on a page or a spoken word is just vibrating air

I'm still playing aoround with this intriguing notion in my head...haven't quite worked out if I agree with the analogy or not. But I like the notion.

I would say that architecture - constructions more exactly - can be seen more as the medium in wich signals, no matter what kind, are transmitted.
Signal is data- a YES or No, 1 or 0 and can be transmitted in so different forms, so why not through arch.
Buildings can be some kind of catalogs, a database even for informaton that leeds the people to use the building in the right way.

So signal and statement is not the same. I like whet the work transmits a statment of contemporanity in its image and the use of materials.

But architects use signals in the process, in the programming of a wolume, a surface...

So data is in the buildings as buildings are an accumulation of data