Architecture and Language: Theories and Practice in Architecture since the 1960s.

건축과 언어: 1960년대 이후 서구건축의 이론과 실험

  • Published : 2001.10.01

Abstract

This paper examines the way in which the idea of language has been introduced in architectural discourse since the late 1960s. The paper reviews the works of Robert Venturi, Charles Jencks, Peter Eisenman, Alan Colquhoun, and Mario Gandelsonas, which explore the analogy between linguistic and architectural form. All of the writers above are responsive to each other's theoretical positions, sometimes implicitly and sometimes explicitly. A system of signs can be approached by asking how the lexicon and syntax are proportioned. The same question may be posed to architecture: can architecture be understood as a lexicon or as a relational structure, such as language is\ulcorner Two perspectives are presented by architectural theorists. The first advocated by Venturi and Jencks posit architectural form as a problem of signs. The problem with this perspective is that, it reduces architecture into popularized iconography in favor of the representational aspects of architectural form. The second perspective, developed by Eisenman, explores the possibility of finding new formal constructs in the abstract relationship of formal properties. Eisenman's theory, however, has its own problems for, in highlighting syntactic structure, it minimizes the distinction between the perceptual and the pragmatic dimensions. Yet both perspectives address crucial problems of contemporary architecture and expand architectural discourse into the broader realm of humanistic studies.

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