MULTIDIMENSIONALITY

The architectonic code or system of signs is a complexly-ordered device for the transmission of information regarding the cueing of the perception of identities and differences in the visual channel, decodable spatiotemporally. Architectonic formations consist of artifactual and/or appropriated environmental constructs conventionally linked to culture-specific information about the conceptual world of a society.

Generically, distinctions in formation are linked to differences in meaning. The architectonic sign comprises a copresent formal configuration and its intended conceptual domain of reference.

An architectonic formation (such as a village, building or a made pile of stones) exists spatially and temporally, in several senses. A formation is a tridimensional construct whose constitutive components may be visually palpable either piecemeal, overtime, or largely copresent more or less as a totality, depending upon the position of the addressee(s). Normally, an architectonic formation is only partially copresent in the visual channel, and its totality unfolds for an addressee over time, as a result of somatotopic interaction.

It is important, moreover, to recall that vision and visual address is directional in nature whereas audition and vocal broadcast is omnidirectional. This difference is crucial to any comparative understanding of architectonic and linguistic systems, and again points up the increasingly evident fact that in so many ways, linguistic and architectonic formations dovetail, complement and supplement each other.

Architectonic formations transmit information on a continuous basis relative to other semiotic formations (verbal utterances, gestural signing, etc.), thereby maintaining a relative object-permanence. There may be a very great range in the permanence of broadcast in a given corpus: a transmission may last indefinitely long, as in the case of an Egyptian pyramid, or may be momentary and ephemeral, as with an umbrella raised in a rainstorm or an annually recurrent parade along a boulevard.

The architectonic code is not dependent upon specific kinds of physical media: the medium of the built environment consists of anything and everything drawn from the visually-palpable resources of the biosphere, from frozen blocks of water in the Arctic to wattle-and-daub to ashlar masonry, as well as place-frames constructed simply by the relative positioning of bodies. Architectonic formations are not necessarily positionally stable; they may be rolled, floated or flown away.

While architectonic formations unfold within the dimensional parameters of euclidean geometric space, they also reveal organizational properties of a topological and perspectival nature which are copresent as distinctive features with the former.

A given formation reveals structural properties which are multidimensional in a tripartite sense: (1) geometrically, with the three dimensions of euclidean space; (2) perspectivally, with the parameters of egocentric projective-planar space; and (3) topologically, with the parameters of distinctive domains, fields or loci. Thus the specification of the component properties of a formation will be a function of the geometric, perspectival and topological perspectives upon that formation. Distinctive contrastive features in one perspective may be non-distinctive or irrelevant in another perspective.

In addition, architectonic formations reveal another multidimensional parameter induced by the nature of the signalling medium: a construct may reveal alternative material realizations even where the above tripartite properties remain invariant. Thus, formal invariance may underlie material variations in color, texture, materials, metric size, and so forth. Similarly, the reverse will obtain. Generically speaking, the task of architectonic analysis will involve the elaboration of models to account for the relational invariance of structures at all levels of organization.

An architectonic transmission may often be augmented, with partial redundancy, by formative features in nonvisual channels. Thus, in a village of thatched huts a hut reserved for worship of gods or ancestors may be externally identical to all others formally (and perhaps even largely identical internally), but may be slightly different materially, incorporating materials which tinkle in the wind or which make noise when it rains in ways noticeably different from the noise made by residential huts.

In short, the analysis of architectonic communication, representation and expression must take into account every distinctive feature of organization, both materially and formally.

An important characteristic of architectonic codes is the dispensibility of artifactual formations. Architectonic signs may be replaced by correlative signs in other modalities, and by various kinds of corpus-specific symbols which with varying degrees of iconicity or indexicality stand for artifactual formations themselves, as for example where a circle of stones may replace a built hut, and so forth. Often, the given landscape itself takes on architectonic significance merely by the insertion of bodies into it, as with our circle of seated elders assembling on a meadow once a month. In many societies there will be found a great amount of code-switching between architectonic and somatotopic formations, a situation by no means confined to nomadic or hunter-gatherer peoples. Indeed, there are no groups which do not communicate architectonically as we do: there is evidently a fundamental family resemblance among the architectonic systems of all extant human groups.

THE HIERARCHY OF SIGNS

An architectonic formation consists of transmitted information carried by a variety of copresent sign types. Several kinds of architectonic signs have been identified. The primary unit in the code which is directly significative is the space-cell, having two alternative formal realizations: (1) a distinctive spatial configuration bounded by masses (a closed cell), and (2) a distinctive mass configuration bounded by space, which may or may not be artifactually delimited (an open cell or locus).

The space-cell enters into aggregations of cells (matrices) defined principally by the geometry of their tridimensional syntax or interaction. In a given corpus, certain habitual matrices may occur like stock phrases, but in general the matrix as an architectonic sign consists of an abstract diagram of arrangements which may have a wide variety of formal and material realizations. Essentially, at this level of organization the focus of analysis is upon the relative arrangements of other signs (cells).

Larger communicative unities comprise conventional, and even more abstract or diagrammatic, relative arrangements of matrices into neighborhoods, settlements, and so forth. It will be clear that a settlement need not comprise large aggregates of cells or cell-matrices, but may consist of a single cell (open or closed).

The architectonic code is built upon a principle of duality or double articulation. The ‘smallest’ directly-significative unit in a code, the space-cell, is built out of sign-units which are not directly significative in themselves, but are rather systemically-significant. Such forms function principally in a sense-discriminative manner to distinguish one cell from another, and are meaningful primarily in this sense. (See Appendix B below.)

In given corpora, forms may also serve sense-determinative functions as in cases where a given facade or cell-component is directly significative of a certain conceptual domain.

In a parallel sense, the material realizations of architectonic formations may serve a dual significative role: on the one hand they reveal a systemic function to discriminate one form from another in perceptually-palpable ways, and on the other hand they may take on sense-determinative or sematectonic roles. An example of the latter would be a case where the material articulation of a given form is conventionally associated with certain cultural meanings. Thus, cells painted crimson, or built of ashlar limestone, or twice the size of other cells in a settlement, may be canonically associated with a ruling class in contrastive opposition to cells associated with an underclass, cued by cells painted blue (or anything but crimson, mudbrick construction, or half the size (or generically smaller than) the former.

The identification of signs in a corpus is corpus-specific; what are significative unities in one system may be non-significant or non-present in another system. The set of distinctive forms of corpus W will differ from that of corpus X, as will the set of possible cells and the range of cell-matrices. Moreover, two apparently identical formations (both materially and formally) in two different corpora will normally be contrastively meaningful (homonymy), as members of distinct architectonic systems.

Architectonic forms comprise sets of copresent spatial features which distinguish one form from another, and serve to define components of the set of forms, which is finite in extent. While there exists a generic correlativity between architectonic and linguistic distinctive features in a systemic sense, architectonic spatial features are quite unique in their properties. Moreover, the latter are distinguished by being tripartitely organized. There exist three classes of architectonic features: geometric, perspectival or planar, and topological.

Geometric features of a form consist of relative ratios within a ternary space-manifold (height, length, width) such that forms in a corpus are conventionally contrastively opposed to each other. Thus, form G is distinguished from form H on the basis of its geometric features: (2:1:1) vs. (3:2:1).

Forms are also distinguished from each other in a planar or perspectival sense, involving egocentric parameters. Thus, the same form (as a tridimensional geometric construct) may have different planar features relative to the parameters of the visual channel, depending, in other words, on its cellular position (above vs. below; in front of vs. in back of; to the right of vs. to the left of).

From a topological perspective, distinctions in either planar or formal formation may become neutralized or non-relevant, just as from a planar perspective various disjunctions in form may be non-relevant. Topological features involve bounded unicums: from this point of view, a cell is defined as a formation with a property of boundedness which remains invariant over a variety of formal and planar transformations.

An architectonic code comprises a hierarchical ordering of sign types in the following manner:

Normally, the ‘largest’ sign type to be coded as such in a system is the cell; ‘above’ the level of the cell, architectonic signs consist of patterns (coded as such).

A built environment is a complex spatiotemporal framework for human action and interaction whose components are less like building blocks and more like patterns of potential signification; its structure is not to be found as a definite arrangement of constituent parts, but is given by sets of interrelationships, less of things and more of choices among formations. The components of an architectonic formation can only be understood in terms of their interactions with the rest of that formation, in the context of that formation’s associations with others in a system of formations.

Architectonic objects comprise patterned, multidimensional arrangements of forms articulated by means of rule-governed oppositions between masses and spaces unfolding for the addressee(s) over space and time. The ‘vocabulary’ of the built environment consists of elements formed by perceptually palpable edges, boundaries and other discontinuities in formation. Such elements acquire significance less in terms of their inherent properties and more in terms of their relationships to other items in multidimensional arrays.

The primary directly-significative unit in an architectonic code, the space-cell, is ‘built up’ out of forms, planes and domains, themselves distinguished by sense-discriminative geometric, perspectival and topological features. It has been noted that the cell may consist of spatial configurations bounded by mass (closed cell) or massive configurations bounded by space (open cell). What is common to these alternative formal realizations is a perceptually-palpable alternation between mass and space, a binary-contrastive opposition. Necessarily, this is not an opposition analogous to ‘sound-and-silence’, for an architectonic code consists of distinctive configurations in both mass and space. There are no ‘empty’ spaces in a settlement from an architectonic point of view. Corpora are contrasted with each other on the basis of distinctive spatial conformations as well as distinctive mass conformations.

A space cell is defined by means of this particular kind of alternative patterning, which is systemically correlative in a generic sense to the alternative patterning of the (albeit more simply unlinear) consonantal/vocalic conformations of a linguistic code. In both codes, this kind of alternative patterning provides an essential template for perception. In the architectonic code, this patterning is inherently more complex, being multidimensional in its parameters. An architectonic space is no more the ‘absence’ of mass than mass is the ‘absence’ of space.

MULTIFUNCTIONALITY

In the architectonic code, as in any semiotic system, the meaningfulness of a formation is dependent upon a variety of functional factors according to the particular orientation of that formation toward one or another of the constituent elements of any semiotic transmission.

A given architectonic formation normally reveals more than one function, and invokes different aspects of meaningfulness at the same time. The ‘function’ of an architectonic object—in the sense of its contextual reference or behavioral usage—is but one of six copresent architectonic functions, which are generically shared with other semiotic systems. In architectonic semiosis, an orientation upon

Any given architectonic formation will reveal the copresence of these functional horizons in varying degrees of dominance. The first four of these horizons were perceived clearly by the Czech theoretician J. Mukařovský in his 1938 paper on architectural function, and in this regard his observations appear to have been inspired by contemporary linguistic research, notably that of Jakobson (reported more recently in 1956).²

Several factors within architectonic semiosis induce significant distinctions between the horizons of addresser and addressee in comparison with the linguistic code, and it is on these horizons that the former writer reveals a certain unclarity.

It is necessary to stress the role played in architectonic transmission by its peculiar medium and by the permanence of its signalling. The very fact that architectonic formations remain in the visual channel and continually broadcast induces a situation which is more complex than what obtains normally in linguistic semiosis. A linguistic utterance is (unless translated into optical representations) momentary and ephemeral. A plethora of speech acts may exist against the ground of a single architectonic broadcast. The idealized ‘speaker-hearer’ of verbal language finds an occasional correlate on the architectonic side, but this is not normally the case.

Furthermore, in the architectonic code, the original generator of a formation may be a person or persons who ‘design’ an object, who may also (but need not) ‘build’ that formation for a ‘client’ (who may be the generator or builder) who employs that formation significantly, thus serving as a transmitter of that signal to himself (or to themselves) or to others, or to both.

An additional comparative difference must be taken into account. In linguistic transmission, a speaker or addresser produces acoustic signals through the instrumentality of his own vocal organs, to be decoded by an addressee or hearer with his own auditory organs. In architectonic semiosis, the correlative addresser generates sign-formations through the instrumentality of his limbs and body (somatotopically) or by means of surrogate instrumentalities (tools, machines, and so forth), to be decoded by addressees with their own visual organs, employed directionally through spatiokinesis.

But in an architectonic code, the principal addresser is the user of a formation (whether he or she generated or built the sign-formation himself or not), and, furthermore, a sign-formation may have many users, a concomitant of the relative object-permanence of architectonic signals. Buildings remain in the visual channel to be continually used and intersubjectively appropriated; sentences do not.

Consequently, the architectonic addresser may (or may not) stand at the temporal end of a chain comprising designers and builders, but his semiotic position is correlative to that of a linguistic speaker. Thus, the former may employ a given sign formation (with or without infrastructural or exoskeletal modifications) in such a way as to emphasize the user’s attitude toward what he is using, and such an orientation is correlative to the emotive function in verbal language.

In a similar fashion, the organization of a formation with an orientation upon addressees (conation) finds an architectonic correlate in the somatotopic constraints offered by an object in terms of the prescription of various kinds of movement, passage, and spatial activity of any kind, and in particular upon various kinds of prescribed activity. One may be exhorted not to go down the up staircase through a variety of formal and material means, including everything from physical constraints upon movement to arrows, diagrams and even optical representations of verbal messages. Ariadne’s thread and the traffic signal on the corner both participate in architectonic conation.

Clearly, the understanding of architectonic functionality has had a long and confused history, and the spurious question as to whether ‘architecture’ (itself, as we have insisted, only a portion of the architectonic system) is ‘art’, craft, engineering, theatre, or housing is best laid to rest. Much received analysis has suffered from a misconstrual of architectonic functionality wherein attention has been given principally to two functions—namely the contextually-referential or usage function, and the aesthetic function.

The built environment is no more an ‘art’ than its sociocultural complement and supplement, verbal language, except insofar as a given formation may reveal a dominance of orientation upon the formation itself for its own sake—correlative to the ‘poetic’ function of verbal language.

Much of the confusion regarding architectonic function stemmed from a misconstrual of the aesthetic function with given and necessary object-types, a result of culture-bound prejudice analogous to a situation in verbal language where at a given place and time certain vocabularies were deemed more ‘poetic’ than others. This is also in part the result of a confusion between the characteristic dominance of an aesthetic orientation accruing to certain kinds of architectonic formations in various familiar Western corpora—such as churches and palaces—which tend toward a certain stability and continuity. It need not be stressed that the aesthetic function is autonomous of given object or usage types.

The aesthetic function of architectonic objects is often confused with their meta-codal or allusory function, wherein a formation reveals a predominant orientation upon the code itself in its historicity. Thus, a trolley-barn built to resemble an Ostian apartment block alludes to a known corpus of formations and provides a certain commentary upon it, while at the same time calling attention to itself as a formation.

It cannot be overstressed that architectonic formations are multifunctional in their very nature, revealing the copresence of a variety of orientations upon the different components in any transmission. It may be doubted that single-function formations exist. There will be observed a dominance of a given function over others in a given formation, held in dynamic equilibrium by the coeval set of currently subordinate functions. Moreover, it must be stressed that such functionality changes over time within the ‘same’ formation, so that it is necessary in architectonic analysis to speak of a diachronie variability with respect to function. A building put up in the Seicento as a palazzo converted in the Novecento to government offices and reconverted recently as a memorial to unknown soldiers is more than the ‘same’ building with different usages; these are three different semiotic formations.

The property of object permanence relative to somatotopic and linguistic signing induces a hitherto little-explored dimension to semiotic study, namely a concern with communicative events per se in their multimodal totality. Whereas generically speaking an architectonic formation remains relatively invariant across a variety of linguistic and somatotopic signings, from the perspective of the communicative event in its totality, the multimodal message contains distinctive elements in the latter two modalities at different times. Consequently, the meaningfulness of an architectonic formation will be in part a function of its embeddedness in copresent signings in other words, in a network of signs drawn from several modalities or codes.

Such a situation is correlative to that obtaining in any transmission in any code wherein the same formation acquires contextually-variant meanings depending upon its syntactic surround. Humans respond to a combination of stimuli across chemical, tactile, acoustic and visual modalities, and in many cases across all four. Speech acts are cooccurrent with signals in a variety of other modalities, and the meaningfulness of an utterance represents only a portion of the total meaning of a communicative event. The analysis of transmissions in any one modality may not necessarily result in an entirely complete or coherent message. Much of the information simultaneously broadcast may be redundant (i.e., perceptually enhanced) and augmentative. Some of it may be contradictory or modifying.

A semiotics of communicative events in their characteristically normal multimodality has yet to be born, and it is clearly in this direction that an important part of the future of semiotics lies. We need to know how the various sign systems employed by humans are designed to function in concert with each other.

In the ongoing semiotic bricolage of daily life, humans will employ anything and everything at their disposal to communicate information, from pan-human codes such as verbal language, somatotopic signing and architectonic structuration to transitory ephemera arising as transformations of transformations.

The many different sign systems evolved by humans are not all different ways of doing the same things; each modality offers its own partly-unique advantages under the shifting conditions or social life. But each symbol system is not entirely unique either structurally or functionally; there is a great deal of necessary overlapping among systems, and each is complexly cross-indexed with the other and all are deictically interlinked.³

The more we understand the particular parameters of organization of nonverbal codes such as the architectonic system, the less will we be inclined to view the position of verbal language as an active semiotic figure against a static and passive ground. Concomitantly, we shall be in a better position to understand how and why each system provides its own particularly powerful perspective on the totalities of human experience, and the ways in which each such perspective necessarily implicates all others. In this regard, architectonic inquiry provides the potentially richest frontier for the growth and maturity of our understanding of the human orchestration of meaning.

No attempt at a comprehensive semiotics of the built environment can, at this stage in its development, be final. This is no less true of the present study, whose chief function has been to define the proper questions to be asked.

FOOTNOTES

CHAPTER VI

¹Terence Hawkes, Semiotics and Structuralism, Berkeley, California, 1977, 134.

²J. Mukařovský, op. cit., 236 ff; R. Jakobson, “Metalanguage as a Linguistic Problem,” Presidential Address to the Linguistics Society of America, December 27, 1956, and “Linguistics and Poetics,” in T. Sebeok, ed., Style in Language, 1960, 350-377.

³The subject of deixis is one of the most important questions in linguistic analysis as well as of prime concern in the study of architectonic meaning. See the writer’s forthcoming monograph, “Multimodal Communication,” 1978k, and see Appendix A.