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Meaning of space and architecture of place

Article  in  Semiotica · June 2009

DOI: 10.1515/semi.2009.049

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 Meaning of space and architecture of place

PIERRE PELLEGRINO and EMMANUELLE P. JEANNERET

Abstract

This article reviews and evaluates some aspects of the semiotic heritage
from a fundamental treatise on architecture. It shows how the system set
in place by Vitruvius at the dawn of our era is being today brought up to
date by contemporary architects, yielding a projection know-how that can
contribute to the design of virtual worlds.
The question is therefore, how can space make sign. According to the
Saussurean conception of the arbitrary relationship between signifier and
signified and Hjelmslev’s concept of connotation, the semiotic of space an-
swers this question and clarifies the various approaches to description of
meaning production developed in the theory of architecture. In this way
the semiotic theory can give an explanation of the modernist function-ori-
ented conception of the world, as well as of the post-modernist communica-
tion-oriented one. For this purpose it questions the concept of generative
grammar that the contemporary architects have developed starting from
the works of Chomsky.

Keywords: space; form; figure; style; connotation; metasemiosis.

1. Semiotic of space

Space is an a priori form; it allows us to know our external reality.1 In

space we represent to ourselves the objects on which we act; that is where
we determine their shape, their magnitude and the relationships between
them (Kant 2000 [1781]). Space as form a priori structures the extent in
which our own body moves and objects are placed. The movement of
one’s own body, the transport and handling of objects, as the anchoring
in a place, suppose space, a liberty in space that makes possible the

Semiotica 175–1/4 (2009), 269–296 0037–1998/09/0175–0269

DOI 10.1515/semi.2009.049 6 Walter de Gruyter
270 P. Pellegrino and E. P. Jeanneret

dynamic of displacement as much as the stop in a place. But they also

suppose a space that gives way to an energetics of movement, to a space-
dash without limitation as much as a reserve in a consciousness of space
(Moutsopoulos 1968), an intensity calculated in a behavior without risks
and in decent limits.
Actions in space require an estimation of the final position to reach in
the movements of transport and avoidance, of handling and transforma-
tion, or capture. The estimation of the distance to the object and the di-
rection of the movement carried out to reach it are based on spatial invari-
ants (Paillard 1974) built up by experience, in action. In space, objects
are not merely perceived by a reading of their respective properties, but
gain meaning through the actions applied to them (Piaget 1964). The per-
ception of the material reality of things concerns their ‘‘topic’’ neighbor-
hoods. It reconstructs upon symbolized objects the result of an action in
the space of real objects (Piaget and Inhelder 1972 [1947]). In this sense,
resulting from action, it is a production of a form, the principle of exis-
tence of objects for us, beyond our immediate perceptual field (Pellegrino
1994).
As well as the location of one’s own body, one has at one’s disposal the
invariance of a gravity reference frame; the information gathered about
an object to reach supposes an invariance to be perceptible and usable in
action. Motive invariants and visual invariants are built into the articula-
tion of the own body location and of the localization of external objects
in relation to the body. In the construction of these invariants, the gravity
reference frame and the visual system of localization are stabilized in in-
ternal models, functioning like generators of motive forms and perception
forms.
Consequently, as to their form, the objects to be analyzed in the action
can leave the framework of tactile or visual apprehension to be traversed
successively by sequential analysis. If the invariants constitute a control-
ling device of capture of the form, the path, in its turn, depends on the
contextual activity of the subject, on the persistence of his intention,
even of his tenacity when the correlation of various sensorial spaces ap-
pears di‰cult because of the circumstances.
The thirst for invariance of the central nervous system can be satisfied
with the construction of the invariants proper to various geometries, to-
pological, metric, projective or a‰ne (Guilbaud 1974), each one bringing
a specific information on the location of places, the positioning and the
analysis of forms. Notably, if the analysis of forms supposes a relational
topology, the location of places and the positioning of one’s own body re-
quire in addition a metric, as the aligning of a movement on the succes-
sive steps of a path requires a projective geometry and the guidance
 Meaning of space 271

of this same movement in relation to visual points of reference an a‰ne

geometry.
In the action, coordination between the various systems of invariants is
done by fitting more flexible ones into more rigid ones. In particular, in
the vision of the limbs in displacement, the system of postural positions
is measured on the system of visual positioning, more rigid. The factor
that forces the calibration of active movement lies in its discontinuity
(Paillard 1974). Thus, the semiotic function begins with the capacity to
anticipate a relation between actions and to infer one from the other (Pia-
get 1978). Representation extends space beyond the limits of the percep-
tual field, and allows not only the imagining of an object in its absence,
but the internalizing of an action (semiotic function) and the expression
of adapting of the actions to objects which resist them (pragmatic func-
tion).
There are thus articulations between what is seen and what is seized,
walked and touched, arranged or transformed; in particular, the succes-
sive perceptive resemblances of postural or palpable forms require a sys-
tem of reference that allows their comparison. This is why space is semi-
otic as much as pragmatic. The semiotics of space is constitutive of the
relationships between presence and absence that make possible a practice,
whatever it is. And the visual system of reference is precisely privileged in
the sense that it allows us to relate perception and representation of the
projected object, actual approach and virtual form, context and model.
This is why, in architecture, the plan, which traces possible actions, is
related to the facade in elevation, which shows a vision of the building in
project. Plan, instrument of action, and facade, monument of vision, are
articulated one by the other. There is measuring, but also a second dis-
course of one above the other. As the project is proposal, it does not
only describe, in a semiotics of the absence, the empty place that it de-
signs, o¤ered to the object that is supposed to be laid out there, but, by
connoting it with figures, it also intends to persuade (Fontanier 1977
[1830]) of the well-foundedness of the outline that it gives it, in a rhetoric
producing an e¤ect of presence.
In its argumentative logic, the project is thus a semiotic proposal that
gives to the signs designing them the name of the designed things (Arnaud
and Nicole 1970 [1662]). The sign is a thing for an other. The sign takes
the place of its object (CP). Space makes sign by substitution with the ob-
ject. The possibility that a space can substitute for an object comes from
the fact that it is the prerequisite for exteriority, simultaneity, and juxta-
position of objects, the prerequisite for their relation, coexistence, and in-
tegration. And this prerequisite implements not only the opposition of
the material and the immaterial, but also those of the continuous and
272 P. Pellegrino and E. P. Jeanneret

the discontinuous, the homogeneous and the heterogeneous, the here and
the elsewhere.
Thus, if the sign a¤ords an object in the place of an other, space o¤ers
a possible place for this object. And, if it means it, the place can substitute
for the object. The dialectic of absence and presence (in a here or an else-
where) implies that of the void and the full (in a limited or an unlimited
space), where the full supposes the void (Barthes 1995 [1967], 1970) and
receives passive or active values, coded by traits, according to systems of
exchanges.
The links between actual and virtual space distinguish links in absentia
and links in praesentia for the knowledge of a place. The link between
the actual object and virtual objects can also be conceived as the link be-
tween the actual process and the system of places which makes it possible
(Pellegrino 2006). Within the space of our relations it refers to the link
between possible places and occupied positions. The position is the result
of the action of positioning, like putting the object in an empty existent
place; an object that occupies a place in competition with others (Des-
marais and Ritchot 2000). One can thus better understand how the fact
of positioning is articulated and extended by the fact of the available
places, in the sense of having places to distribute objects as means to a
potential action. The way of positioning is also a way of opposing; in po-
sitioning an object one has to impose it and sometimes remove another
object, sometimes even displacing an opposing object to the point of
threatening the other’s position (Pellegrino 1986).
The available place is bounded in reference to others according to
a grammatical form giving to the placed object an emerging surface
(Foucault 1969), a value and rules regulating other objects occupying dif-
ferent places. The di¤erent spaces are thus structured by places that deter-
mine them. Spaces are articulated by places which are superimposed or
mutually excluded, which are intertwined or intersected, open or closed
to each other. These places o¤er virtual positions ordered in their connex-
ities and disconnexities by the partition and composition of spaces.

2. The Vitruvian heritage

Architectural treatises are many and have been written, as century fol-
lowed century, for a long time. When we go back to the founding texts
of European architecture of the last 2000 years, or at any rate to the ear-
liest text still accessible to us, in the ten books of Vitruvius’s De architec-
tura (written c. 80 BC) we find a very precise definition and an explicit
 Meaning of space 273

construction of architectural lore. In the first of his ten books, Vitruvius

addresses the prince — the Emperor Augustus — to inform him of the
purpose of his work, which is to acquaint him with what architecture is,
to ‘‘make’’ that ‘‘science intelligible’’ to him, so that he may judge for
himself the beauty of the buildings he orders to be erected. We then learn
that ‘‘this science is acquired by practice and by theory’’ (Vitruvius Pollo
1979). The practice consists in the execution of designs ‘‘whereby the mat-
ter’’ of architectural works ‘‘is given suitable form.’’ The theory ‘‘explains
and demonstrates the fitness of the proportions of the things it is desired
to make,’’ the relevance of the measurements given to the various parts of
the edifice planned. Architecture cannot do without either its theory or its
practice.
We also learn that architecture ‘‘is a science that should be accompa-
nied by a great variety of studies and knowledge, by means of which it
judges all works of the other arts that belong to it,’’ (Vitruvius Pollo
1979: 23, our translation) to the point where ‘‘most cannot comprehend
that the understanding and memory of one man should be capable of so
much knowledge.’’ All sciences, however, have ‘‘a communication and
link between them . . . universal science is composed of all these sciences,’’
so that it is enough for the architect to know the ‘‘consistencies . . . be-
tween certain things that are common to all the sciences, one of which
helps in learning another more easily’’ (Vitruvius Pollo 1979: 27, our
translation).
This is a piece of extremely rigorous epistemological thinking, placing
architecture at the heart of what at the time was regarded as universal
science; architecture is allotted a place, that of a branch of learning that
today would be defined as learning of a generalist kind. That applies, at
least, to the theory, since for Vitruvius a practice belongs especially to
him who professes a particular art, whereas theory in architecture is
‘‘common to all the learned.’’
And theory in architecture, according to Vitruvius, is a semiotic theory
inasmuch as ‘‘in architecture, as in any other science, two things are no-
ticed: that which is signified and that which signifies’’ (Vitruvius Pollo
1979: 24, our translation). Still more precisely, it is a theory based both:
– on a metasemiotic system, in which the thing signified, the thing stated
and spoken about, is the object of the architectural design, the build-
ing, a tool possessing a certain utility for those who use it (see Figure
1).
– and on a connotative representation in which the thing that signifies in
the design of the object of an architectural project is the demonstration
given of it by reasoning, supported by science (see Figure 2).
274 P. Pellegrino and E. P. Jeanneret

Figure 1. Pellegrino (2007)

Figure 2. Pellegrino (2007)

For Vitruvius, what signifies in architecture is not the building per se

but the secondary connotative signification that architecture gives of the
connection that the edifice may have with things other than itself: certain
items of knowledge, a path of reasoning. In architecture, the demonstra-
tion of the usefulness of the instrument is given by a measured design
that connotes a reasoning.
The connotative connection between what architectural reasoning sig-
nifies and what is signified in the design of the edifice that it builds is
thus marked in the building as a right measurement of objects in relation
to their use; architecture is then constituted by operations of measurement,
such as disposition and distribution, as well as ordering, rhythm, propor-
tion of the parts of the edifice. And the theory of architecture is a theory
of measurement (Boudon 1975) signified in the edifices it produces.
But the meaning of measurement is not limited to a use value of the
building; it is thematized synthetically as the ‘‘meeting’’ of the sturdiness,
utility and beauty of the edifice. Sturdiness demands that ‘‘nothing should
be spared’’ in choosing the best materials and digging firm foundations,
and hence it results as much from an economic principle of invest-
ment as from the quality of the materials. Utility refers back to the dispo-
sition of the edifice and the integrity of each thing that, set in its place,
must have everything that is ‘‘proper and necessary’’ to it; it stems from
respect for the needs of the human body, but also for established social
customs. Beauty is achieved in the shape of the edifice through the
right ‘‘proportion’’ of all its parts; it depends on geometry, but also on
the taste for ‘‘elegance’’ and on seeking for the ‘‘agreeable,’’ for cultivated
aesthetics.
 Meaning of space 275

2.1. The classical semiotic order

From the Renaissance onwards, classical architecture formalized the

teachings of Vitruvius. The arrangement of the features of a building —
the taxis — becomes a normative scheme, dictating the split between a
work of art and an ordinary product. That scheme, following the precepts
of Aristotle’s Poetics (circa 350 BC, see Aristotle 1771), is tripartite, a
whole ‘‘which has a beginning, a middle and an ending,’’ every distribu-
tion comprising an opening, a continuation, and a completion. But this
tripartite scheme is not closed; by overlapping and merging certain com-
ponents it can combine, add or remove features while maintaining an in-
variant bilateral symmetry (see Figure 3).
While the taxis sets the limits to the development of a rhythmical com-
bination, the ending of the combination may be advanced or extended by

Figure 3. A. Palladio (1997 [1570]). La Rotonda, 1565/1566–1569, Vicenza

276 P. Pellegrino and E. P. Jeanneret

eliminating or duplicating the final feature, whether accentuated or not.

With the rhythm set in the taxis, a classical building is a universe within
a universe. Classical architecture is a combinatory art that renders possi-
ble controlled variations of the buildings designed (see Figure 4).
Figurative motifs are composed in a manner similar to the tropes of
rhetoric. Whether by parallelism or by analogy, by metaphor or by synec-
doche, the motif aims to strengthen the relationship, through ratios of
proportion and equivalence, between components that at first glance are
di¤erent.
The rhythms are combined in repetitive motifs; the units of rhythmical
measurement are given by the size of the features and the distance be-
tween them. The rhythmical motifs combine units of measurement of dif-
ferent magnitudes, accentuated and non-accentuated. The accents are
given by the polar opposition full/empty; by qualities of feature, such as
wall/opening or column/interval; by qualities of shape, such as convex/
concave or building/flat; and by qualities of material, such as rough/
polished or opaque/transparent. Rhythmical motifs may be built inside,
superimposed on or placed in front of one another, giving faster and
slower, more closely and more loosely linked combinations of phrases.
Figurative motifs may also contribute to the meaning of the work by
flouting its coherence, whereupon they bring to the very core of the com-
position a discussion that follows the path of its polarities. Contrast and
oxymoron set face to face, or in opposition, similar or dissimilar combi-
nations. Abruptio or aposiopesis disaccentuates or interrupts a rhythmical
motif by linking or merging it with another. Sooner or later, the e¤ect of
these tropes, by inviting discussion of the coherence of the normal rela-
tionships between components, invariably strengthens the overall com-
position of the building. Displacements, elisions, non-accentuations or
breaks clash with the norms laid down, but have the reverse e¤ect: the
complex sequences of the composition are strengthened by the attention
thus drawn to them.
Imposition and breach of the norm answer each other to strengthen the
identity of the work. Classical stylistics thus constitutes a frame of refer-
ence for a discourse modifying the meaning of the object of use. It has the
e¤ect of diverging from the prosaic use of the semiotic organization.
Good form and its opposite are conceived as a struggle against the inertia
of pragmatic habits — a defamiliarization (Tzonis and Lefaivre 1985
[1983]). But the doctrine of ‘‘architectural orders’’ ultimately establishes
a link between architectural shapes and social hierarchy. Classification is
a cultural legitimation. The architectural shape no longer has an indepen-
dent existence. The symbolic loses its dislocation e¤ect; it is justified by
belief in natural causes.
 Meaning of space 277

Figure 4. A. Palladio (1997 [1570]). Variations of figurative motifs and rhythmical accents
278 P. Pellegrino and E. P. Jeanneret

3. The search for modern solutions

Towards the end of the last century Viollet-le-Duc, in the thirteenth of his
Discourses on Architecture, a‰rmed that: ‘‘If, then, architects do not wish
to be classified in 1900 among the lost species that have passed into the
condition of extinct historical individualities, like astrologers, alchemists,
and armor-clad men-at-arms, it is time they set resolutely to work, for
the old mysteries they rely upon are beginning to be seen through . . . ’’
(Viollet-le-Duc 1977 [1863–1872]: 112, our translation).
What had happened to architecture, that one of its most ardent defend-
ers should see fit to make such a prophecy of imminent disaster? What
had the architects, the builders of palaces and stately homes, done that
in the nineteenth century their profession should be under threat?
Viollet-le-Duc made himself pretty clear: architectural learning could no
longer rely on old mysteries! They would be unmasked as mountebanks’
tricks.
What upheaval of learning took place at that time to cause Viollet-le-
Duc to fear for architecture’s very existence? The cognitive system was
challenged. The people were making themselves heard and the industrial
revolution was not merely ‘‘imposing its products,’’ as our author per-
fectly understood, but also imposing its intensive methods of production
and the sciences that made them possible: not only the natural sciences —
physics, biology, and chemistry — but also the work sciences: economics,
psychology, and sociology. The quantities to be produced were at the cen-
ter of research and scientific thought.
A rift was appearing in what had formerly been ordered as a ‘‘universal
science.’’ On the one hand, the natural sciences were developing through
the study of an object defined in its own substance, the material reality of
things; on the other, the work sciences — which pretty soon came to be
called the human sciences — were taking as their object not the material-
ity of things per se, but the practical knowledge an actor might have of
that materiality according to the point of view that he held and that he
shared with others: a practical knowledge made up of values, wishes,
and needs.
Architecture thus saw its principle of unity exploded: architecture that
had to measure not only the materiality of the buildings it erected but the
uses to which their recipients might put them according to the conventions
of their period and rank. Faced with the now-acknowledged impossibility
of a universal science purporting to embrace everything on one and the
same principle, some architects attempted to maintain their hold over the
production of buildings by abandoning all theory and taking refuge in
the area of practices in order to claim a position as ‘‘orchestra conductors.’’
 Meaning of space 279

In reality, from formalism to functionalism, the successive schools of

modernity took to shuttling helplessly between two levels of the concep-
tion of architectural space, which was henceforth split up. Between what
signifies and what is signified, the demonstration of ‘‘reasoning,’’ even
aided by science, no longer held unconditional sway; between the level of
the signifier and that of the signified, an epistemological cut no longer
permitted strict deduction.2
The objects to which architecture proposed to give measurement no
longer took on meaning only in certain customs hallowed by immutable
social norms, but were relevant enough to be planned in some cases and
not in others, depending on the (numerical or metrical) quantity of the
substances in which they were built. There was no longer any theory of
the ‘‘right measurement’’ that was a priori automatically valid both for
the materiality of things and for the meaning they had for those who
used or abused them.
Measurement itself, having become as much a means as an end, was
changing its dimensions. It was no longer solely a question of ordinal
variables, hierarchies, and right relationships fixed in proportions that en-
abled us to notice them; it was the means of drawing nearer to knowledge
of what was not yet known because it was connected with masses of in-
formation of a kind not immediately perceptible, with quantities linked
to phenomena of scale. That is certainly why, in the twentieth century,
architectural theory, enriched by its past, is in redefinition, seeking new
instruments for the knowledge of the probable and applying itself to
scopes of new forms.

3.1. Space, form and style, decomposition and recomposition

Whereas space defined by its formal invariants is a priori universal, space

defined by its actual form is particular. Form is both that which is the
shape of some particular thing and that which, in a universal manner, is
pregnant with everything to which it gives shape. Space is a priori univer-
sal; form is shaping; it is the relationship of the universal to the particular.
The figures of Euclidean geometry have a formal force such that their
projection onto a content is ‘‘satisfying to the spirit’’; but they stem from
a mental space which is di‰cult to create unless the figure is dissociated
from the form of the content (see Figure 5).
The content is not always capable of following the regular outline that
an architectural design proposes to give to the container (e.g., the cube
for Le Corbusier’s Stein house at Garches). In this case, either the con-
tainer is adapted to the content and follows its irregular outline, the
280 P. Pellegrino and E. P. Jeanneret

Figure 5. Le Corbusier (1960 [1930]). The four compositions

meanders of its decomposition into constituent parts, the organization of

which may be disciplined and hierarchically ordered by classification and
relation to another content, that of spaces experienced in practice (the La
Roche house); or the composition nevertheless seeks to a‰rm the shape
of the content; it then dissociates the planes on which it traces the shape
of the content from that of the container (vertically in Le Corbusier’s
house at Stuttgart), leaving only minimum points of articulation (the seat-
ing of the piles). It may also envelop the shape of the content in the shape
of the container by making use of another space, that deducted from the
di¤erence between them, a ‘‘generous’’ interstice or threshold (e.g., the
Villa Savoye).
 Meaning of space 281

The spatial synthesis interposes itself between form contained and form
expressed, in a space that brings into play the contradiction between be-
ing and seeming: a play of veilings and unveilings in which, between the
inside and the outside, there may be as much antithesis or paradox as
transparency or metaphor. The container — a stately envelope on the
outside and a slum within — may be consistent with a content while at
the same time presenting to view a deceptive facade; a block of minimal
dwellings for poor families may have a facade like that of a block of large
luxury flats; or vice versa. The shape of a space insinuates itself between
what is contained inside and what is maintained outside; it is a threshold,
all the more so since it expresses a relationship and not merely a spatial
quantity.
Veilings and unveilings present ways of being which urban culture rec-
ognizes as forms of distinction, style, or etiquette, of self-presentation.
Style is each individual’s own way, direct or indirect, of stating and ex-
pressing himself: a way that unveils the personality and reveals its salient
characteristics; but it is also filtered information, the surface through
which the personality comes into contact with the spirit of a period, con-
forms to it or confronts it (Gromort 1946). Since it is ‘‘the characteristic
that causes periods and schools to be distinguished from one another’’
(Viollet-le-Duc 1967 [1846–1904]: 478, our translation), it is a conception
of the spirit that manifests an ideal, an ‘‘expression of art independent of
the object’’ and belonging to a generative principle that in architecture
dictates the mode of building appropriate to the scale of the projected ob-
ject. In this sense, style is an instrument of conception that, from the
plane of expression, frames and measures what emerges and takes shape
on the plane of content, and that sometimes demands to be ordered be-
fore being projected.
This definition of style comes close, in instrumental terms, to the defini-
tion of connotation given by L. J. Prieto, since he deems ‘‘connotative the
way of conceiving an operation that results from the act of recognizing
[that operation] as a member of the utility of the tool used to carry it
out’’ (Prieto 1975: 85, our translation) rather than as a means to an end.
Then, however, connotative conception presupposes the ‘‘notative’’
conception of the operation: that which consists in recognizing it as a
member of the class that determines it (the class of a system of inter-
understanding if it is a question of meaning, or of a system of what I shall
call interaction if it is a question of operation).
Connotation, in architecture as in the other arts of space, by dividing
up the relationships between signifiers and signifieds, as between opera-
tors and utilities, proposes at a secondary level (Eco 1972 [1968], 1973)
of conception the interpretation of their signification or utilization. The
282 P. Pellegrino and E. P. Jeanneret

‘‘Picasso blue’’ from which historians recognize a certain stylistic period

in the artist’s work is not just any blue but, among blues, possesses a par-
ticular range of tonality and intensity that distinguishes it while at the
same time presenting a particular atmosphere, a particular vision of the
space depicted, of the scene made up of the figures he paints. But in
Picasso blue may also be the (non-connotative) notation of a sky or a
sea. A conception may be connotative through a secondary signification
that it gives to the signifier: a secondary signification that, correlated
with certain attributes of the signifier (that are recognized as such in the
continuity of the signifier’s space), presents itself as the interpreter of the
signifier.
Modern architecture, rejecting any form of conditioning by the past,
reduced and functionalized this second level of conception (see Figure 6)
and rejected the system of traditional figures in favor of a single figure,
that of the machine that ‘‘functions.’’

Figure 6. Pellegrino (2007)

It follows that the second level of conception is, in the application of

a typological code, merely that of the architect’s signature, that of his
adherence to the idea of the machine as world view. As Robert Venturi
saw it, modern architecture sought to discover in simplicity the truth not
only of art, but also of life (Venturi 1966). It believed in the rationalism
of an order sprung from simplification. Le Corbusier, in his purist period,
sought ‘‘cleanness and absence of vagueness’’ and was brought to find
them in ‘‘big primary shapes.’’ Mies Van Der Rohe asserted that ‘‘Less
is more.’’ Modern architects selected the problems they chose to solve
(Rudolph 1961). In practice they ignored many dimensions of the reality
they envisaged.
For modern architects, the machine presented ‘‘the only figure in keep-
ing with the needs of the industrial society’’ (Colquhoun 1981: 36), that is
to say a model that reduces connotations to a mere metaphorical repro-
duction of a bi-univocal functioning thought in which the connotation of
the first level of conception is to make believe that what determines needs
(Sd) is the only possible one having regard to a good relationship to the
object coded for serial production. Modern architects thus reduced secon-
dariness to a zero degree, they functionalized the connotation.
 Meaning of space 283

Against this reduction, to give again meaning to their project, the post-
modern architects implicitly reverse the diagram (see Figure 7).

Figure 7. Pellegrino (2007)

In fact, these two diagrams should be acknowledged as adequate to de-

scribe two procedures for the production of meaning, one inclusive (I)
and the other derivative (D). Since the first of the two has already been
amply discussed by other writers (Hjelmslev 1966 [1943]; Barthes 1982
[1964]), we shall confine ourselves here to a brief presentation of our pro-
posal of the second, at the same time referring the reader to another text
in which we discuss it in more detail (Pellegrino 2007).
From the derivative point of view, the shape taken by the signifier
enters into mobile relations with that taken by the signified; at a second
level of signification it may present the communication of a secondary
idea (Sd2) with which the primary signified (Sd1) is associated, and inter-
pret in its own functioning (R2) the relation (R1) between the signifier
(Sr1) and signified (Sd1) of the first level (see Figure 8).

Figure 8. Pellegrino (2007)

Such an approach aims to avoid confusing real objects and uses with
the forms (of expression and content) in which they are conceived. By de-
fining itself in the arbitrariness of an articulation of components, the plan
of the expression is endowed with a connotative articulation between ex-
pression and content.
284 P. Pellegrino and E. P. Jeanneret

As a monument of architecture, the building is a semiotic object of con-

notation, of which the shape taken by the signifier enters into measured
relation with that taken by the signified (Pellegrino 2003). Through a sec-
ond level of design, it presents the communication of a primary concep-
tion interpreting its functioning (R1) as a measuring (Mr2) (see Figure 9).

Figure 9. Pellegrino (2007)

This is, for example, the case of the access to the sacristy of San
Lorenzo, where Brunelleschi opens a narrow door in the large framing
of a monumental arc (see Figure 10). It is then the articulation of the de-
sign by the measuring, presenting itself as a monument, a mechanism of
communication that gives meaning to the form of the expression as well
as to the form of the content. The intention of the architect is thus mea-
sured in a design that contains and expresses it.
Exploiting this articulation, in opposition to the concept of form of the
modern architects, for whom form follows function (Sullivan 1976 [1903]),
contemporary architects develop the concept of complex form, that is to

Figure 10. F. Brunelleschi, Sagrestia Vecchia, San Lorenzo, Florence, 1428

 Meaning of space 285

say of form conceived at several levels of design (Muntañola 1996), some-

times contradictory. Colquhoun draws attention to the concept of figure
(Colquhoun 1981), which stems from the classical tradition of rhetoric
(Fontanier 1977 [1830]). The figure is built upon a procedure of second-
ariness similar to those we have just been considering, and is designed to
persuade of values to be adopted.
But form is conceived as an approximation as faithful as possible to the
referred content, which remains unutterable, i.e., to the signified of the
first level of conception. At the first level, the form is then conceived in
an articulation inserted in a system of potentialities. At the second level,
it may be symbolized and inserted as substitutive into a paradigm, for ex-
ample that of orders of columns. The connotation diagram is then as be-
low, where the form of the second level of conception is inserted in a con-
stituted culture, a learned one in this case, whereas at the first level it
tends to inform an unknown, x, which is the interpretation of its use (see
Figure 11).

Figure 11. Pellegrino (2007)

Thus postmodern architects propose to reinsert the figure in the con-

ception of their project, but at the same time creating shocks and frag-
menting it. Thus, by the ambiguity and the contradiction (Venturi 1966)
between its levels of shape, architecture escapes from habit, from the re-
production of usage norms and the imitation of a stylistic manner (see
Figure 12).
No longer seeking to produce ‘‘pure’’ functional form, they also tend
not to integrate fragments in a coherent system of the figure (Colquhoun
1981), but, by playing on connections, to juxtapose figurative elements
(see Figure 13) in an unexpected manner, producing the meaning of the
‘‘measure’’ at the first level of conception, from which resulted a meaning
of proportion or disproportion.
We may ask, then, whether what links the fragmentary references one
to another is the fact that they interpret certain attributes of the second-
level signifier. Rhetoric helps us to find the answer (Fontanier 1977
[1830]); it is a logic of the figure in which attributes maintain measured
286 P. Pellegrino and E. P. Jeanneret

Figure 12. M. Botta, Sketches for the Bregenzona House, 1983 (Pizzi 1991)

Figure 13. Pellegrino (2007)

relations with what they connote: synecdochic relation, correspondence of

the part with the whole; relation of metonymy, connection of the contain-
er to the content; contrastive relation, of a part antithetical to the whole
which posits it; relation of semantic metaphor, resemblance which posits
a gap in order to propose its reduction (Ricoeur 1975); relation of cata-
chresis, to extend the meaning of a part to a whole which no longer has
any; relation of integrative analogy, in which the parts maintain with one
another relations similar to the relations which the totality that they con-
stitute maintains with another totality (Quatremère de Quincy 1980
[1823]). In these figures, the connotative drift opens a gap, a reduction
 Meaning of space 287

Figure 14. M. Graves, Fargo-Moorhead Cultural Center Bridge, 1977–1978 (Dunster 1979)

of the primary signifier to a few of its attributes, to reveal a secondary

signified that restores meaning to the complexity of a whole. This is
what happens when a monument condenses the meaning of a territory
that surrounds it (see Figure 14).
And the rhetoric of the project does not remain on the surface of forms,
but acts on the deepest of their genesis to introduce there by displace-
ment, subtraction and addition, spatial measured components of a monu-
ment up to then ignored. What gives this system its derivative character is
the fact that it allows more than one reading of a sign, an image or a
form of space (Barthes 1982 [1964]). This derivative character is based
on spatial dimensions of the production of meaning. It is thus a matter
of reversal of signification, unless the recipient lends itself to the play of
tension between signifier and signified.
As a component of a level of the expression initially void of meaning, a
figure is endowed with a motive force that does not merely dredge some
content up to the surface but also plunges the surface down to the greatest
depths of its being. The problem is then that of the universality or limita-
tion of values. This is why, rather than imposing the stereotyped figure of
a prefabricated world, of an equal presence, repeated in the series, archi-
tecture must, for the post-moderns, propose possible figures, permutable,
of presence as much as of absence. To reach universality, it is not enough
to reproduce the figure by mimesis, repetition of the same except for some
variations, but, by extracting it from its context to plunge it in another, it
is a question of giving it a meaning that transcends the characteristics of
one and the other.

3.2. Dislocation, self-reference and strategies of project

Turned into mimetic in its search for a ‘‘good form,’’ where the design is
a metaphorical representation of the human body, modern architecture
288 P. Pellegrino and E. P. Jeanneret

had implemented a series of universal concepts, anthropologically

founded, which marked formal oppositions between full and empty, fron-
tal and diagonal, centrality and periphery, plan and volume. Seeking to
give an equivalent weight to all these dialectical pairs, constitutive of the
building, contemporary architecture on the contrary (de)constructs sys-
tematically the possible prevalence of each one of them. With this inten-
tion, it proceeds by decomposition, deconstruction and displacement. The
architectural project thus articulates the actuality of an absence with the
virtuality of a presence.
To produce a dislocating text, against the presence of a truth embodied
by the tradition, Eisenman opposes to the force of its image the fiction
(the absence) and the error (the unexpected, the non normal), ‘‘play of
the absence against the presence, by the work on and within the contra-
dictory terms of the discourse.’’ Thus ‘‘the resurfacing of the absence
implied or contained within presence can be called the dislocating text of
architecture’’ (Eisenman 1987: 187). Process of transformations by dislo-
cation, the act of architecture can propose new forms, precisely because,
being a language, architecture represents the absence of its object, and
not only the presence of its intention. The very absence of reality (of cur-
rent actions in space object) opens, in the project, the possibility of mis-
reading and invention.
In the fiction of the project a whole series of possible contexts opens,
which, in their absence of present reality, can be taken in elsewhere places
and before times, in other cultures. The form is developed in reference
to a context, but to a context considered in a textual way, in a ‘‘textual
architecture’’ (Eisenman 1986).
A fictitious context can thus perfectly be the context of a project.
Creating ‘‘a fiction of the fiction,’’ the structure of the architectural text
becomes gradually representative of the narrative structure of a story
and of its context. Architectural logic is superimposed on that of the nar-
ration. Thus Eisenman intends to oppose to the presence embodied by the
site a ‘‘discontinuity,’’ that he conceives at the same time as trace (imma-
nence) of a past presence (memory) and trace of a possible presence (pro-
ject). With this intention, he proceeds by ‘‘scaling,’’ in a decomposition of
the form at various scales, starting from its structure (see Figure 15).
In the development of the form, Eisenman intends thus to oppose the
‘‘recursivity’’ of the figures to the origin of the project that is embodied
by the program. To the original object, it opposes ‘‘self-similarity.’’ He
seeks to unify figure and discourse in a single text. To conceive his archi-
tecture as a text referring to its own structure, he passes from an object
that takes its references in a context represented by resemblance, to an
object that refers only to the arbitrary of its internal logic. The develop-
 Meaning of space 289

Figure 15. P. Eisenmanm (1987). Sketches for the House VI, Cornwall, 1972–1973

ment process of the form is then self-referential, each component element

of the object of the project, wall, beam or column, is read and interpreted
for itself.
Dislocation is e¤ective only if the object that is designed is autono-
mous, but there is no object without context. Making use of this contra-
diction, the architecture of Eisenman proceeds at the same time to a sec-
ond reading (‘‘re-reading’’) and to an interpretation (‘‘misreading’’) of the
referents taken as context of the project. It implements a generative pro-
cess (Chomsky 1987 [1982]) developing a conceptual scheme, whose
transformations can act without the contribution of referents external
to the project, by ‘‘self-generating,’’ as much as taking for starting point
fictitious or unexpected spaces of reference. This process can proceed ac-
cording to several strategies.
290 P. Pellegrino and E. P. Jeanneret

A first strategy acts by lure. It presents structural elements, beams and

columns, but removing their structural function. Although their primary
function, ‘‘to carry,’’ is removed, columns and beams remain as signs of
something that carries. This strategy aims at destabilizing the reader, thus
leading him/her to wonder about the very meaning of the elements of the
project.
A second strategy proceeds by emphasis, it duplicates the static struc-
ture of the projected building. There again, the reader is brought to
wonder about the significance of the structure. Ultimately, this process
creates a sign of the architectural function of the building: each structural
system can be considered as the expression of its own lack of function.
A third strategy aims at removing any dimension of scale of the build-
ing, it aims at removing all the marks that could inform the reader about
its scale. Once built, the building must look like a model as much as a real
object, even like a megastructure.
A fourth strategy acts by surprise. Being in opposition to modernity be-
cause it did not call into question the institution of the uses, Eisenman in-
troduces discordant elements, that is to say elements not responding to
what is expected by the norm. This strategy aims at knocking about the
habitus of the users, to incite them to question the standard and its trans-
gression, and the possibility of trying out other uses of the space.
Lastly, a fifth strategy aims at dislocating the traditional codes of
‘‘reading’’ of the building, in which conventions establish an order in the
perception of the architectural object, in sequential and hierarchical
approaches. Eisenman distinguishes the physical plan from the semiotic
plan, in what the first refers to the sensitive, and the second to the intelli-
gible. While the perceptual level of knowledge is explicit, actual, real and
concrete, the cognitive level is implicit, virtual and does not have material
substance.
Then, going further in his reasoning, he (de)constructs the usual dialec-
tic between perceptual order (of the product) and conceptual order (of the
process), making them independent. In a duplicated reading, the building
is presented at the same time as a moving memory of its process of elab-
oration (virtual) and as object present in its physical materiality (actual).
Associating design of the building and design of the reasoning, by taking
back the expression of the building to the content of the reasoning, the
dislocation disarticulates relations between signifier and signified, to
make them arbitrary (see Figure 16).
Autonomy intrinsically supposes a free design of a multiplicity of dif-
ferent forms. However, if the attempts of dislocation carried out can pro-
duce infinite variations, it is nonetheless in a closed system. So that, by
closure, as means of dislocating architectural metaphysics about actions
 Meaning of space 291

Figure 16. Pellegrino (2007)

in space, autonomy reinforces it considerably. Eisenman replaces then the

idea of autonomy with that of absence of object. The distinction between
a perceptual order and a conceptual one opens the way to a text-reading
in opposition to an object-perception. At the same time presence and ab-
sence, architecture has thus the qualities of a text; ‘‘the logic of a text be-
gins and finishes beyond itself.’’ As a fiction, i.e., as a representation of
absent referents, the text brings its reader towards other times and other
spaces.

4. Contemporary prospects

The current break with modernity is reinstalling the figure as the shape of
a being. In this break, in order to be composed, the figure is decomposed;
in order to be placed it is displaced. The displacement produces a meta-
phor where the placement installs a topos. The figure brings out an event
in a place and fits a memory arrived from elsewhere into a context that is
foreign to it.
The polar pair form/function, used to define the instrument of the
modern conception of the world of industrially produced objects, is thus
broken down into an articulation in which, between the form and the use
of the components of material reality, the figure is reinserted. But the
problem is to produce a figure that is no longer merely projected as ap-
pearance, but also produced as consistency of being.
Text of fiction, monument of a possible future, as much as instrument
of function, machine for an actual use, architecture develops an ontology
of the probable (Jeanneret 2007a) as a semiology of space and time. It
questions the absence in the present of what has been, will be or will
292 P. Pellegrino and E. P. Jeanneret

Figure 17. Pellegrino (2007)

have been. For this very reason, in order to measure the relevance of new
forms, the contemporary theory of forms and figures attempts to be able
to compare the conditions of making and use of the figures, which vary
with the places and the times where they are planned, and the people
who live there. In this theory the meaning of an architectural form is a
projected figure, designed by reasoning (see Figure 17).
As instrument endowed with a usefulness, the building is the semiotic
object of a demonstrative meta-discourse explaining intentions that pre-
side over the partitions whose object it is and over the articulation of the
variable forms of its content and its expression. This metadiscourse is
held in the form of a project. This project disarticulates and rearticulates
its models of reference, to neutralize its context and seize its deep seman-
tic. It decomposes and recomposes its models in a graphic reasoning by
putting them at stake to test their syntactic rules. Through this process,
it becomes able to transform its context in a measured co-text (Pellegrino
2000; Jeanneret 2007b).
The relationship between what the forms arising out of architectural
reasoning signify and what is signified in the design of the building is of
the order of the project, the order of probable correspondences between
connotation and metasemiosis. These are projected correlations between
magnitudes measured in architecture and magnitudes analyzed in other
sciences, especially physics, which calculates the stability of the edifice
from the strength of the materials assembled, and the human sciences,
which assess the amenity of the housing supplied in terms of the value it
has for particular users.
The architectural project seeks to define itself among the sciences of the
artificial, where what is involved is an epistemology of knowledge of the
transformations undergone in the material reality of things.3 But whereas
the engineering sciences, approximate branches of knowledge, test mea-
surements and dictate standards defining suitable correlations between
the economics and the physics of what is to be built, architecture, a pro-
 Meaning of space 293

jected branch of knowledge and a creative act, works on surpassing the

standards and emphasizing unexpected rhythms and correspondences
(Jeanneret 2008).
Architecture thus fits into a new configuration of knowledge, in which
the great cleavage between natural and human sciences is called into
question. In this configuration, the development of virtual worlds is dis-
solving the boundary line between the real and our knowledge of it. The
real, when virtual, is the knowledge we have of it: a knowledge produced
by the figures we give it, linking up with the shapes in which it is de-
signed. Material reality, when caught up in this configuration, becomes a
synthesis product of the human mind. The possibility of producing living
beings — today clones; tomorrow perhaps chimera or monsters — calls
for speculation about the dual separation between form and figure, as be-
tween material and substance — a separation that has been one of the
premises of twentieth-century semiotics.
In periods of transformation such as our own, reality is complex and
paradoxical. The internal contradictions of building programmes cannot
be swept away by over-simplification in black and white: ‘‘Less is a bore’’
(Venturi 1966). Complexity occurs because reality stems from several
points of view; it is evident in the contradictory juxtaposition of the image
with what it represents. It is a mode of expression. A complex architec-
ture is contradictory: it embodies levels of articulation under tension;
and contrasting: it expresses itself in paradox and ambiguity.
The work of the imagination is undermining our culture, producing a
distortion that ultimately destroys the very signs of that culture; the
means of expression are becoming saturated and losing their e‰cacy, to
the point where the very perspective in which we view our surroundings,
our world of objects, is called into question; and this questioning will be
fraught with anxiety until such time as we discover ways of giving expres-
sion to the newness of our vision. To give expression is to formalize the
unformalized, to structure it so that one meaning makes sense in relation
to another; so that the meaning that originates in our senses finds, hidden
in our uncertain wanderings, a way out to the surface of the opus that un-
veils its form intact in yet another embodiment.

Notes

1. In discussing classical architecture here we have been guided by the excellent work of
Alexander Tzonis; our conclusions, however, di¤er in that, as we see it, distinctive con-
notations, after having been intentional, always become functional sooner or later. Cf.
Tzonis and Lefaivre (1985 [1983]).
294 P. Pellegrino and E. P. Jeanneret

2. The articulation between the form of architectural expression and the form of the con-
tent of the product of architecture could no longer be left to a single logico-deductive
calculation (stone edifices age well, this edifice is in stone, this edifice will age well), but
required a statistico-abductive calculation (stone edifices age well, I want the edifice I am
planning to age well, it is highly probable that I would do well to choose to build this
edifice in stone) — a calculation in which creative invention emerged from significant
di¤erences between probable cases (I can also conceive that it could happen that this ed-
ifice, even though built in stone, might age badly on the chosen site, and I can also con-
ceive that this edifice might be built of other materials and age well).
3. In evaluating the object of an architectural project, history is not left behind, for it dic-
tates a judgement based on the measurements supplied to it by other sciences and sub-
mits to that judgement the beauty of the objects weighed by its critical thinking.

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Pierre Pellegrino (b. 1947) is a full professor at the University of Geneva 3pellegri@
bluewin.ch4. His research interests include the semiotics of space. His recent publications in-
clude ‘‘Le sens des formes urbaines’’ (2005); ‘‘Semiotics of space’’ (2005); ‘‘Il senso delle
forme urbane’’ (with E. Jeanneret, 2006); and Le sens de l’espace, Livre IV, Le projet archi-
tectural (2007).
 296 P. Pellegrino and E. P. Jeanneret

Emmanuelle P. Jeanneret (b. 1966) is co-director of research at Centre de Recherche en

Architecture et Architecturologie 3empellegri@bluewin.ch4. Her research interests include
the semiotics of architecture. Her publications include Theory of architecture, models, and
grammars (with P. Pellegrino, 2001); ‘‘Winds concepts’’ (2007); ‘‘Introduction à une sémio-
tique des territoires’’ (2007); and Géographie de la maison et achitecture des territoires, Livre 1,
Langage et contexte (2007).

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