About sign processes and their influence on architecture

1. SHREYA DESHPANDE

2. Topics
 Introduction to Semiotics
 About semiotics and key terms
 Examples
 Semiotics and architecture
 Examples

3. Semiotics
 Semiotics is the study of meaning-making or
Interpretation of signs, the study of sign processes and
meaningful communication.
 This includes the study of signs and sign processes ,
indication, designation,
likeness, analogy, metaphor, symbolism, signification, and
communication.
 Ferdinand de Saussure (“so-SIR”) (1857-1913)
 “It is possible to conceive of a science which studies the role of signs
as part of social life. It would form part of social psychology, and
hence of general psychology. We shall call it semiology . It would
investigate the nature of signs and the laws governing them.”

4.  Signs and symbols can be studied, not only in language (both
written and spoken forms), but also in rituals, culture, images
and art – in fact, anything that can be ‘read’.
 Basically, semiotics is the study of signs and their meanings!
Signs include words, gestures, images, sounds, and objects.
The
form
Concept
Saussure and American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce brought the term
into awareness and are thus called as the founders of Semiotics

6. RED
APPLE
LOVEFIRE
BLOOD

7. SIGNIFIER:
Blonde Hair
Signifies:
beauty,
Innocence,
Looks ‘gold’
SIGNIFIER:
Perfume
Bottle
Signifies:
Looks Jewel-
like, Buried
Treasure
SIGNIFIER:
Jewelery
Signifies:
Extravagance,
Excess, Glamour,
Decadence
SIGNIFIER:
Colour Gold
Signifies:
Luxury, Riches,
Expense,
Success,
Shimmering
SIGNIFIER:
Font
Signifies:
Dior Logo,
Brand Name,
Designer

8. Key terms
 Denotation - What we actually see…
The surface meaning.
 Connotation - What you associate with this image…
The deeper or hidden meanings and associations or
INTERPRETATIONS

9. • Denotation (meaning):
1. Text “Fight Cancer”. Motivation for
women.
2. Strong black-white contrast.
3. Woman because of long hair, feminine
face.
4. Woman looks to the left.
5. Holds sword.
6. Snakes attached to sword.
• Connotation (deeper meaning):
“Fight” seems to express masculine values .
Masculinity also is expressed in the totalitarian
style.
Sword underlines fight & bravery.
Looking to the left is looking against reading
direction; stresses fight against.
Black-white contrast seems to stress good-bad
duality.
Picture of woman because this is an ad for
women so, women can identify.
Snakes express symbol for medical profession.

11. OBJECTIVES
• Identify the conventions of their use ,in a particular culture
of a particular society.
•Decode the meanings conveyed by the signs and understand
what it denotes and what it connotes.
•The idea is to uncover the rules that govern human behavior

12. SEMIOTICS AND
ARCHITECTURE
If semiotics, beyond being the science of recognized systems of signs,
is really to be a science studying all cultural phenomena as if they
were systems of signs—on the hypothesis that all cultural
phenomena are, in reality, systems of signs, or that culture can
be understood as communication—then one of the fields in which it
will undoubtedly find itself most challenged is that of architecture. –
UMBERTO ECO, Semiotician and Architectural critic
(Rethinking Architecture)

13.  Most architectural objects do not communicate (and are not designed
to communicate), but function.
 Thus , Architectural objects communicate through their form and
function accordingly.

14. ARCHITECTURE AS COMMUNICATION
A phenomenological consideration of our relationship with
architectural objects tells us that we commonly do experience
architecture as communication, even while recognizing its
functionality

15. ROLAND BARTHES (semiotician)-
As soon as there is a society, every usage is converted into a sign of itself’
Every object
communicates the
function to be fulfilled.
•To use a spoon to get food to
one’s mouth is still, of course, the
fulfilment of a function, through
the use of an artefact that allows
and promotes that function.
•the fact that someone uses a
spoon becomes, in the eyes of the
society that observes it, the
communication of a conformity
by him to certain usages
Need
Satisfaction
Convention

16. The architectural sign is the presence of a sign vehicle
whose denoted meaning is the function it makes possible…
Architectural object Form and Functions
Observable and
Describable
Variable
Different forms, same denotations, different connotation

17.  Through materialization in the architectural-spatial
environment, society leaves its anthropomorphic trace,
reflecting direct and indirect interrelations between man
and his environment, between human ideas, intentions,
bodies, human organism proper and the architectural-
spatial environment, rich in volumes, shapes and volumes.
 Even these interrelations manifest themselves in the
interaction of the signifier and the signified, with the latter
able to act both as a denotation and connotation.

18. “the form of the object must, besides making the function
possible, denote that function clearly enough to make it
practicable as well as desirable”
FORM FUNCTION
DENOTATION
CONNOTATION

19.  In human perception, the urban architectural-and-spatial environment acts as a
system of mutually replacing and interacting emotional-aesthetic signs,
symbols and images recognized in architectural bodies. This system causes and
determines the emotional-aesthetic, symbolic and figurative perception of
the image of the world by man . Directly or indirectly, all the object-spatial
world surrounding man acts on him. At that, from 85 to 90 percent of
information about the surrounding world comes to humans by vision, while only
10-15 percent, by the senses of hearing, smell, touch and kinaesthetic feelings
(Barabanov, 1991, 1992, 1997).


21. SEMIOTICS AND HUMAN
PSYCHOLOGY
•Powerful stilobate underscored with
rows of repeating steps, producing a
general feeling of peace,
satisfaction and strength
•Bunches of vertical lines rush
upwards, and line-vectors of the
fluted columns converge above
generating the feeling of noble
loftiness and exaltation,
•At that, an ultimate feeling of
strength, nobleness, reliance,
exaltation and balance is born in
the whole system of interacting line-
vectors and shapes.

24.  Form lines are the emotional-aesthetic signs personifying
certain sensations, ideas, phenomena, human virtues and
culture, appearing as kind of substitutes to some
phenomena of the reality.

25.  The combination of ideas as well as the different kinds of memory
involved in the process of human perception allows both the architect-
creator and the perceiving consumer, to reconstruct and create new
ideas.
 This is strongly dependent on subjective factors of perception, such as
ability to aesthetic perception, orientation to perception, emotional
state, etc.

26. CONCLUSION  The form of the building
itself suggests its mode of
inhabitation or function.
 Its aesthetic properties like
volume,mass,texture,materi
al suggest the concept
behind it.
 Several ancient to
postmodernist architectural
buildings have been
purposefully designed to
evoke certain feelings into
people’s minds.

27. Literature
 Eco, Umberto- Rethinking Architecture : function and
sign, the semiotics of space.
 Seiler, Robert- Semiology
 Jenks ,Charles- What is postmodernism?
 Gaines ,elliot- Space and semiotics
 Kristina Juodinytė-Kuznetsova -Architectural Space
And Greimassian Semiotics

28. Thank you!!