Week 3: Signs, Semiotics, Signification

Key Readings:

Barthes - The Eiffel Tower

Eco - Function and Sign: The Semiotics of Architecture

Jencks - The Iconic Building is Here to Stay

Many of the ideas in Umberto Eco's text seemed to be stating the obvious, albeit in a very clever way, as though you always understood these rules, but never known why. The 4th section, on architectural codes seemed to be asking too much of architecture at times. Eco compares architecture's reliance on limited pre-existing codes and conventions with the freedom of verbal languages. To me this seems to be an unfair comparison. Architecture is always tied to real constraints - programme, gravity, economics etc - and if it was absolutely free in its expression, would it be intelligible?

Eco's exposition of three modes of design in existing social systems were for me a key part of the essay:

- Integration with existing codes

- Deviation from existing codes

- Innovation in relation to existing codes

My own aim would probably be innovation, trying to create something new, but which still finds a place with the existing society, even if it requires a little adjustment to work. As it was put in the reviews of our work last week, trying to find the metapresence of Marseille - what about our projects make them particularly Massilian? However good Eco's modes sound, there is a difficulty which we might encounter in our studio work. It assumes that a society is coherent - in Marseille, with so many cultures overlapping the task of understanding local codes is that much harder, but also much more interesting. Another key lesson following on from this, is that architects work within history, but do not significantly alter history. As the primary and secondary meanings of designed objects are not fixed, but can change through history, an specifically overcoded design will soon find itself redundant, more than one which leaves things more open. In Jencks' terms, this would be the enigmatic signifier, where there are multiple interpretations of one building possible.

Jencks' text on icons is straightforward, journalistic, but felt a bit too simplistic at times. However, given the level of analysis that architects put into studying buildings, the essay is perhaps a good understanding of how the public perceive our buildings. This can be seen particularly in the sketches of different metaphors, and the understanding of the role of the media in contemporary architecture. Barthes' analysis of the Parisian icon, the Eiffel Tower is a good counterpart to Jencks' study of the icon genre. It reveals the complex and changing semiotic nature of the Eiffel Tower, giving several different viewpoints for its deciphering; tourist, engineer, inside-outside.

In the design studio, Tom and I have been looking at our study area of Marseille, trying to unpack particular characteristics of the area. We have been trying to find out about voids and cases in the site, trying to define what they are in Marseille. One example which we like is the local construction method for building extra chimneys onto the side of a building:

A few points in musical semiotics:

- Monteverdi: Cruda Amarilli (the start of seconda prattica, where harmony

is crucial in conveying the meaning of the music)

- Beethoven: 9th Symphony, 4th Movement (shifting meanings; drinking

song, Nazi appropriation, A Clockwork Orange, EU Anthem)

- Wagner: Tristan und Isolde, Prelude (at the height of expression in music)

- Webern: Variationen für Klavier (modernist reaction against expression and emotion in music)