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| All artwork by Barie Fez-Barringten |
By
Barie Fez-Barringten:Associate
Professor: Globla Univesity
bariefezbarringten@gmail.com
Background
Early monographs justifying
architecture as the making of metaphors were steeped in deductive reasoning
since we could not find new information pertaining to metaphors. Many of my
monographs included analyzing and explaining the syllogism:
- Art [1] is the making of metaphors
- Architecture is
an art[1]
- Therefore
architecture is the making of metaphors.
Till now we did nothing to reason
why art [1] is neither the
making of metaphors nor why architecture is an art. Since 1967 I proceeded to
analyze the presumptions and find its many applications. This new information
in Metaphor and Thought by Andrew Ortony first published in 1979, provides
evidence to support inductive reasoning and to this end each axiom is its own
warrant to the inferences of the above syllogism and the answer to questions of
why metaphor is the stasis to any of the syllogism’s claims and implications.
In argumentation (Zarefsky,D (2005) .it is
noted that in induction there is no new information added. In both methods the metaphor is at their root and as
such the basis of aesthetics and as such essential to understand the stasis to
what makes all arts the making of metaphors and how that Wilson’s statement is
true for everything as most are metaphorical s as well. The matter then is one
of standards, social rightness and the ability any one or another work has an
explanation of its form.
Architecture as
the making of metaphors not only is the stasis to why architecture is art but
also explains the formation of architectural aesthetic vocabulary.
The below is predominantly
developed from a study of “Metaphors and Thought” by Andrew Ortony, and, is in
addition to over forty years of my work about “architecture as the making of
metaphors. It is my hope that this monograph will introduce to aesthetics an
architectural vocabulary to further the appreciation of works of architecture.
Arnold Berlant’s
writes that: “Sense perception lies
at the etymological (history of words) core of aesthetics (Gr. aesthesis, perception by the senses),
and is central to aesthetic theory, aesthetic experience, and their
applications. Berlant finds in the aesthetic a source, a sign, and a standard
of human value”. It is this human value which is one leg of the metaphor and
the very basis for the view that metaphor is the foundation for both art,
architecture and aesthetics, and why I have spent over forty years researching
the stasis to architecture being an art (because it too makes metaphors) it can
also be shown that this same stasis is the commonplace to the works of
aesthetic thought and investigation. . This coincidence (between aesthetics and
art) confirms the intrinsic nature of this study of epistemology of
architecture and aesthetics. The metaphoric evidence I believe will prove both
useful to the creation, teaching and valuation of works of art as well as their
architectural off-spring. In fact metaphor is the driving parte
for most creative arts and architectural works.
Some contemporary aesthetic theory differs with how best to
define the term
“art”, What should we
judge when we judge art?, What should art be
like?, The value of art, things of value which define humanity itself;
contrasted to Raymond Williams
who argues that there is no unique aesthetic object but a continuum of cultural
forms from ordinary speech to experiences that are signaled as art by a frame,
institution or special event. Conversations about aesthetics, metaphors and
architecture reassess current and traditional issues by providing a scientific
analysis for the way metaphors work in architecture.
This is the
“stasis” (the state of equilibrium {equipoise}
or inactivity caused by opposing equal forces) of the controversy of
architecture being an art; that if architecture behaves, acts, looks and works
like art than it too must be an art. Why? Because it, too, makes metaphors, and
those metaphors are varied in depth, kind, scope and context. It is the stasis
because it is where art and architecture meet. The metaphor is the conceptual
focal point. While many claim that the architect is the “techne” artist being a
crafts man point has been conceptual and so useful as to bridge, carry-over and
provide both artist and architect a common authority over the making of the
built environment.
As stasis,
“architecture as the making of metaphors” enables the center of the dispute to
be argued with common purpose. So this is a stasis in definition which concedes
conjecture.
With all the
controversy around "knowing"; how do we know we know and the
inaccuracy of language and dubious nature of scientific conclusions I have
written over fifteen monographs about “architecture as the making of metaphors”
This is the first with the sciences of linguistic, psychology and cognition definitions of the metaphor and there
fore a set of third party facts by which to base our comparison. It was my hope
that these commonalities provided substantive reasons to allow the metaphor
linking architecture to metaphors as my theorem (stasis): "architecture is
the making of metaphors”.
The below are
excerpts form my monograph of paradigms and axioms about architecture based on
Metaphor and Thought. In each of the below cases I have fist paraphrased the
scientist's conclusions based on a notable commonality to architecture where
space allowed described an architectural process or product in the terms of
each finding. Out these comparisons there came topoi (Zaretsky,D (2005) (A traditional theme or motif; a literary
convention.) which we can use to describe architecture and aesthetics, all
below sections and paragraphs reference Metaphor and Thought by A. Ortony. (Ortony,A)
Whether by formal
or informal reasoning, whether by deductive or inductive reasoning it is
necessary to know that aesthetics’ fundamental basis for linking a specific
case to general referent is, as art,
bridging the craft to the craftsman, the concept to the craft and the
observation to a model. . While in earlier monographs I have dealt with the
specifics of these relationships this monograph presents the ways metaphors
work and by induction support claims.
The study shows that metaphors are
not all the same and work in different ways. These different ways are the
evidence for the inferences to the claims and resolution significant to
aesthetics, art, and architecture; namely that artist, art critiques,
philosophers, architects have an awareness of many the shapes and forms of
metaphors and their possible inclusion in what can be judged and included.
Aesthetics
mainstay: ’beauty is in the eye of the beholder’ where the beholder is the
referent of the metaphor and the necessary completion of the judgment. While
there can be an aesthetic experience, without such a referent it’s understating
and taste would be irrelevant. With two referents, the social norm and the
specific case, the experience and taste is, too, a metaphor. As metaphor
carries-over, transfers and talks about one thing in terms of another; taste is at the heart of determining whether
a work is art, its value, a work of architecture, etc. If there is no bridge
then the work is another kind of metaphor, perhaps a technical metaphor linked
to the craft of the art and if there is no bridge, determining how close or far
from the ideal would be capricious. Yet one can describe ones feelings
involving the senses. Having studied behavioral psychology many of my earlier
design projects were predicated on the affects of space, volumes, planes and
shapes on the five senses. I admired and under-studied with architect,
Frederick Kiesler.
Yet these
relationships between aesthetics and metaphor, while useful do not wholly
explain the aesthetic and sensual experience of art or architecture. It only
assumes these experiences as a referent to aesthetic judgment and the making of
metaphors.
The generative metaphor is the name for a
process of symptoms of a particular kind of seeing-as, the “meta-pherein” or
“carrying –over” of frames or perspectives from one domain of experience to
another. This process he calls generative which many years earlier WJ
Gordon called the Metaphoric Way of Knowing (Gordon, W.J.J.) and Paul Weiss (Weiss,P) called “associations”.
In this sense both
in enterprise architecture, interior design and traditional architecture after
assimilating the program the very first step in the design process is to
develop a “parte’ (An ex
parte presentation is a communication directed to the merits or outcome of a
proceeding …it’s the resolution of the argument consisting of claims,
inferences, evidence and warrants to the inference). It is a “top-down” (
Plyshen, Z.) approach later followed by designs which meet the parte. The parte
may follow the design process and be presented to sell the product.
The landscape is
replete with an infinite number of inane
replicas which render readers dull, passive and disinterested (How many
times will you read the same book?)
Mass housing, commercial office buildings and highways are the main
offenders leaving the owner designed and built residence, office, factory, fire
station, pump house, as unique and delightful relief’s in an otherwise
homogenized context. The reader stops reading because it is the same as before.
Not reading the copy yet seeing the copy and the collective of copies focuses
rather on the collective as the metaphor as the overall project which also may
be “dead”. In its time, Levittown’s uniqueness and the sub-structures
sameness were its’ metaphor. It was alive and today still lives as new
residents remodel upgrade and exhume their “dead” to become a “living”
metaphor.
Revitalization
teams of revivalist have discovered there is more than turf and proprietorship,
peculiarization, personalization and authentication are required for a metaphor
to live. In this is the art of making metaphors for the architect of public
works. In this is the aesthetic of public works and culturally pervasive urban
design.
An
example of novel images and image metaphors is Andre Breton’s “My wife……whose
waist is an hourglass” explains…..”By mapping the structure of one domain
onto the structure of another”, (Lakoff,G) . “This is a superimposition of the image of an
hour glass onto the image of a woman’s waist by virtue of their common shape.
As before the metaphor is conceptual; it is not the works themselves, but the
metal images. Here, we have the mental image of an hour glass and of a woman
and we map the middle of the hourglass into the waist of the woman. The words
are prompts for us to map from one conventional image to another”. Lakoff concludes that “ all metaphors are
invariant with respect to their cognitive topology, that is, each metaphorical
mapping preserves image-schema structure:” Likewise when we look at the
geometrical formal parts of an architectural metaphor we note those common
elements where fit, coupling and joints occur. We remember that which
exemplified the analogous match. (Lakoff,G)
This observation
of the metaphor finds that the commonality, commonplace and similarity are the
chief focus of the metaphor. As Frank Lloyd Wright designed his Prairie
architecture with dominant horizontal axis thrust to his structure as common to
the horizontal axis of the land upon which the building sits. Thus the two
horizontal axes, the land and then the building were wed by their commonality
of horizontality.
According to
Lakoff plausible accounts rather than scientific results is why we have
conventional metaphors and why conceptual systems contain one set of
metaphorical mappings than another.
An
architectural work establishes its own
vocabulary which once comprehended become the way in which we experience the
work, finding its discrepancies and fits and seeking the first and all the
other similar elements. We do judge the work as to have Consistency,
integrity and aesthetics. Buildings which do not have these characteristics do
not work as metaphors. ((Lakoff,G))
The relevance of
studying architecture:the making of metaphors is to provide practitioners,
owners, and mainly those that shape the built environment that they have a
somber and serious responsibility to fill our world with meaning and
significance, That what they do matters as in this first of Layoff’s results
(Please note the application of Layoff’s vocabulary, definitions and
descriptions related to linguistics metaphorically applied to architecture).
Subject matter,
from the most mundane to the most abstruse scientific theories, can only be
comprehended via metaphor. ((Lakoff,G))
Much
subject matter, from the most mundane to the most abstruse scientific theories,
can only be comprehended via metaphor where metaphor is fundamentally
conceptual, not linguistic, in nature ((Lakoff,G) Metaphorical language
is a surface manifestation of conceptual metaphor. ((Lakoff,G)) As
language is to speech so are buildings to architecture where each has a content
and inner meaning of the hole as well as each of its parts. As each word, each
attachment, plain, material, structure had first been conceived to achieve some
purpose and fill some need. Hidden from the reader is the inner psychology,
social background, etc of the man when speaking and the programming deign and
contacting process from the reader of a building metaphor. As in completing an
argument the reader perceives the inferences with its warrants and connects the
evidence of the seen to the claims to make the resolution of the whole, all of
which are surmised from the surface.
Through much of
our conceptual system is metaphorical; a significant part of it is
non-metaphorical. Metaphorical understanding is grounded in non-metaphorical
understanding. ((Lakoff,G)) The
science of the strength of materials, mathematics, structures, indeterminate
beams, truss design, mechanical systems, electricity, lighting, etc. are each
understood metaphorically and there precepts applied metaphorically but often
random selections, trails and feasibility are random and rather in search of
the metaphor with out knowing it is or not a metaphor and fit to be part of the
metaphor at hand. On the other hand we may select on or another based on
non-metaphorical, empirical test and descriptions of properties. We then try to
understand the metaphor in the selection, its commonality, how it contributes
to the new application, how its has
properties within itself which are alone strange and unrelated yet when couple
with the whole or part of the created metaphor contribute to metaphor.
Aesthetic judgments are affected by sense we have of both the technical and
conceptual aspects of the metaphor.
Metaphor allows
us to understand a relatively abstract or inherently unstructured subject
matter in terms of a more concrete or at least more highly structured subject
matter [((Lakoff,G)) . The
whole of the metaphor is designed in such a way as to clarify, orient and
provide “concrete” reification of all the design parameters into a “highly
structured’ work, a work which homogenizes all these diverse and disjointed
systems and operations into a well working machine. Building types such as
pharmaceutical, petrochemical laboratories, data research centers, hospitals,
space science centers, prisons, etc are such relatively abstract unstructured
uses which only careful assembly can order. Faced with both housing and
creating identity the Greeks and the Romans derived an Order of Architecture
which we now call the Classical Order of Architecture. Long before the use of
computers after faced with a complex way of teams of service clerks
communicating on the phone, accessing and sharing files and instantly recording
all transactions I invented a huge a round table where all clerks would be
facing the center where would be sitting a kind of “Lazy Susan” . I choose the
Lazy Susan because of my experience in Chinese restaurants and selling Lazy
Suzan’s as a young sales assistant in a gift store in the Bronx. The aesthetics
of this design were driven by an elegant accommodation to a complex function.
.Before the public ever sees the constructed metaphor
Building Officials, manufactures, city planners, owners, estimators, general
contractors, specialty contractors, environmentalist, neighbors and community
organization frost read the drawings and map their observations to their issues
to form a slanted version of the reality.
Their
mappings are based on the warrants which are their licensed to perform. Each
warrant will support a different mapping (inference) and result in its own metaphor.
In effect each will see a kind of reality of the proposed in the perspective of
their peculiar warrant, where license is permission from authority to do
something.
It is assumed if one gets
permission it has met the conditions, operations, ideal and goals of the
proposed metaphor.
Like a landscape
artist who gathers for the chaos of the nature into select5ed items to organize
into the canvas so that the viewers will find what he saw and reconstruct so
the architect and the user map their reality into a metaphor. In this way the
conception of the map is the metaphor and what is made by the cartographer is a
"graphic" to simplify the chaos to find the commonality. Sifting through the program the architect
seeks the “commonality” between the reality and experience to make the
metaphor. Mapping is only possible when we know the “commonplace”, the
commonality, the characteristic common to both, the terms that both the source
and the target have in common that the mapping takes place.
As the architect
structures his program, design and specifications he simultaneously structures
the metaphor of his work of architecture. Architecture consists of program
specifics where the conditions, operations, goals and ideals are from
heretofore unrelated and distant contexts but are themselves metaphors “mapped
across conceptual domains”.
As the
architectural program the mappings are asymmetric and partial. The only regular
pattern is their irregularity, and, like
a person can be read and understood,
once one is familiar with the personality and character, vocabulary and
references, and of course the context and situation of the work the work can also be read and
understood. .
The regularity with which different
languages employ the same metaphors, which often appear to be perceptually
based, has led to the hypothesis that the mapping between conceptual domains
corresponds to neural mappings in the brain.
Schemas [((Lakoff,G))
are the realms in which the mappings
takes place much the same as the inferences in arguments have warrants and link
evidence to claims so do these schemas, architects carry-over their experiences
with materials, physics, art, culture, building codes, structures, plasticity,
etc. to form metaphor..
However, the scale
of habitable metaphors is the intrinsic relation between the human figure and
his surroundings as measured, proportioned and sensed. ((Lakoff,G))
It is dramatically represented by
Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man
(see below illustration) is based on the
correlations of ideal human proportions with geometry described by the ancient
Roman architect Vitruvius,
representation of the human figure encircled by both a circumference encapsulating
its’ feet to its outstretched fingertips where part is then encased in a
square.
This scale is read in elevations, sections,
plans, and whole and based realized in the limited and bound architectural
space. These spaces and their variations of scale are where the reader
perceives the architectural metaphors of compression, smallness, grandeur,
pomposity, equipoise, balance, rest, dynamics, direction, static ness, etc. In
his Glass House, Phillip Johnson extended that space to the surrounding nature,
making the walls the grass and surrounding trees, St. Peter’s interiors is a
Piranesi space.
(The Prisons Carceri d'invenzione or 'Imaginary Prisons'), is a series of 16
prints produced in first and second states that show enormous subterranean
vaults with stairs and mighty machines. Piranesi vision takes on a Kafkaesque
and Escher-like
distortion, seemingly erecting fantastic labyrinthian structures, epic in
volume, but empty of purpose and human scale in this work and often human scale
in architecture is deliberately violated ((Lakoff,G)) for monumental effect.
Buildings, statues, and memorials are constructed in a scale larger than life
as a social/cultural signal that the subject matter is also larger than life.
An extreme example is the Statue of Liberty, the Washington Monument, etc.It is
not hard to experience a built metaphor as it is an ordinary fixture on the landscape
of our visual vocabulary. It has predictable, albeit peculiar and indigenous
characteristics where the generic nature of the cues are anticipated.
A conceptual
system contains thousands of conventional metaphorical mappings which form a
highly structured subsystem of the conceptual system. ((Lakoff,G)) Over the year’s society,
cultures, families and individuals experience and store a plethora of mapping
routines which are part of our mapping vocabulary.
Our system of
conventional metaphor is “alive” in the same sense that our system of
grammatical and phonological (distribution and patterning of speech sounds in a
language and of the tacit rules governing pronunciation.) rules is alive;
namely it is constantly in use, automatically, and below the level of
consciousness and Our metaphor system is central to our understanding of
experience and to the way we act on that understanding. ((Lakoff,G)) Elegant
architectural metaphors are those in which the big idea and the smallest of
details echo and reinforce one another. (Sternberg, R. J).; Contemporary
architects wrapping their parte in “green”, “myths” and eclectic images” are no
less guilty than was their predecessors of the Bauhaus exuding asymmetry,
tension and dissonance as were the classics and renaissance insisting on unity,
symmetry and balance.
So while
architecture is the making of metaphors and architects are making metaphors
their works, though metaphoric, are not themselves the metaphors but the shadow
of the metaphor which exists elsewhere in the minds of both the creator and the
user (Sternberg, R. J). Architects
would not be known as artist nor should their works be known as works of art.
Both their works are the “deep” while the readers deal with the “surface”; the true architectural artisan has deep and
underlying metaphors predicated two and three dimensional space analysis,
history, culture, class, anthropology, geography etc. They all are often
underlying the surface of the choices of lighting, material, claddings, etc.
Vigorous aesthetic analysis would consider all of these axioms to realize the
full enjoyment of the information contained in the work. Spatial representation in which local
subspaces can be mapped into points of higher-order hyper-spaces and vice versa
and that is possible because they have a common set of dimensions. (Sternberg,
R. J).; In
these hyper-spaces many
architectural elements are fitted and combine to make a unity. It can be argued
that the seen is not at al the metaphor but the transfers, bridges and connections
being made apart from the building. In filling in the terms of the analogy lies
the metaphor.
Metaphor is
used, understood, misused and misunderstood due to the inconsistencies, lack of
derivatives and many unexplained changes in linguistics (Sadock, J. M)
Likewise, the street talk that
permeated my childhood was a string of “sayings, clichés, proverbs and European
linguistic slang. This was contrasted by the poetry of songs and medieval
literature. The architecture was the only source of my identity having
consistency, reputation and allusions toward science, logic and consequence.
I just know there was something out
side of this circus. Although I could not derive what I saw I could document
and retain the types and details of each type.
However, Sadock’s
examples and apologies only remind me that my work to derive the phenomenon of
architecture as the making of metaphors is in its’ infancy, beginning to
develop a vocabulary and understanding for the architectural profession and
its’ allies.
There is a
distinction and relationships between micro and macro metaphors and the way they
can inform one another as the form of design may refer to its program, or a
connector may reflect the concept of articulation as a design concept. (Sadock,
J. M).
“Whenever we talk about the metaphorical
meaning of a word, expression, or sentence, we are talking about what a speaker
might utter it to mean, in a way it that departs from what the word, expression
or sentence actually means”. (Searle,
John R).; A” problem of
the metaphor concerns the relations between the word and sentence meaning, on
the one hand, and speaker’s meaning or utterance meaning, on the other”
With the exception of major
corporate brands, churches, specialty building in architecture the examples is
in infinite as most works designed are with no intended message, meaning or
referent. Many are in the class of others of its types and generally convey
their class while others are replicas and based on a model. Furthermore most
architects have a design vocabulary which is foreign to the user. Conversely,
in public buildings, the user’s expectations, use and expectations are foreign
to the architect. At its best the architect may connect the vocabulary of his
design to some exotic design theory which, results I a very beautiful and
appealing building to which the user finds beautiful but has no idea about the
intended making of the whole or its parts. But some how it works!
After formulating
a program of building requirements and getting agreement that the words and
diagrams are approved by the client. If the architect built-work can meet this
program and come to be the building the client intended is such an example of
the work of architecture as a metaphor and metaphorical work. (They carry-over,
bridge, and are each others advocate)
Limited to meeting the program and
the fulfilling the design contract says nothing about the unintended
consequences of the building on the context and the way the metaphor outcome
impacts for users, community and the general public. In some ways this is the
job of municipal Departments of Community Services, town fathers, zoning boards
and building departments and their building codes.
All contribute to
honing the metaphors and their outcomes which is this relationship of intended
words to spoken words and the chasm between the two.
We are told to think before we
speak, picture what you are going to say then speak, still whatever we speak,
in tone, emphasis, timing(meter) and pitch can carry its own meanings; this was
also one of the final fields of investigation for my late mentor, Dr. Paul
Weiss.
Without apparent
rhyme of reason metaphors of all arts have a way of recalling other metaphors
of other times and places. In my mind I recall Brooklyn brick warehouses on
Atlantic Ave. with turn of the century Ford trucks and men adorned in vests,
white shirts and bow ties loading packages from those loading docks under large
green metal canopies. The streets are cobble stones.
In the case of
building metaphors it is the familiarity with not only the building- type,
materials, context and convention but the
architects, contactor’s and owner’s personas which increase the
understanding of the metaphor. In the case of Dubai and other such contexts it
is the lack of such familiarity and tolerance for the strange that makes the
metaphor acceptable on face value. The metaphor is accepted yet not understood.
As many beautiful things they are awesome, forbidding, and indicative of some
greater condition as being a stranger in one’s own context. Buildings are
perceived as cars manufactured by some idioms indicative of their species with
little conscious relevance to the user’s context. It is very strange. Building
designed for people who before (and even current) this generation found tents
to be their habitat metaphor.
Human cognition
is fundamentally shaped by various processes of figuration”. “The ease with
which many figurative utterances are comprehended are has often been attributed to the constraining influence
of the context” ………..Including “the common ground of knowledge, beliefs, and
attitudes recognized as being shared by speakers
and listeners (architects and users(clients, public) ( Gibbs, Jr., R.W.) As it is
with speakers architects, designers
and makers “can’t help but employ tropes
in every day conversation (design) because they conceptualize (design) much of
their experience through the figurative schemes of metaphor (design). Explaining tropes (turn, twist, conceptual
guises, and figurations). It explains
the standard and traditional building types found in various contexts as the
chalet in the Alps and the specific style of each found in each of the Alp’s
counties and villages, etc.
Psychological processes in metaphor comprehension and memory by Alan
Paivio and Mary Walsh say that Susanne Langer writes that:” Metaphor is our
most striking evidence of abstract seeing, of the power the human mind to use
presentational symbols”. (Gibbs,
Jr., R.W.)
.
In psychology “appreciation” (Herbert
(1898)) was a general term for those mental process whereby an attached
experience is brought into relation with an already acquired and familiar
conceptual system. (Encoding, mapping, categorizing, inference, assimilation
and accommodation, attribution, etc). (Miller, G A).
Likewise
aesthetics’ view of beauty is not based on innate
qualities, but rather on cultural specifics and individual interpretations. Miller explains how reading metaphors
build an image in the mind. That is to say we “appreciate” what we already
know. I have always contended that we do not learn anything we already do not
know. We learn in terms of already established knowledge and concepts. We
converse reiterating what we presume the other knows, otherwise the other party
would not understand. The other party understands only because he already
knows.
The architect who
assembles thousands of bits of
information , resifts and converts form
words to graphics and specification documents communicates the new proposed
(the strange new thing) in terms of the known and familiar. The first
recipients are the owner, building officials; contractors must read seeking
confirmations of known and confirm its adherence to expectations. After its
construction the users read familiar signs, apparatus, spaces, volumes, shapes
and forms. The bridge carries over from one to another what is already known
.Even the strange that becomes familiar are both known but not in the current
relationship. For example when we apply a technology used on ships to a
building or a room which is commonly associated with tombs as a bank, etc. Both
are generally known but not in that specific context. We could not appreciate
it if it were not known .It is what Weiss calls commonalties and is the
selection between commonalities and differences that makes a metaphor. About
understanding and discerning between what is” true in fact” and “true in the
model” Miller says: Metaphors are, on a literal interpretation, incongruous, if
not actually false-a robust sense of what is germane to the context and what is
“true in fact” is necessary for the recognition of a metaphor, and hence
general knowledge must be available to the reader (user, public).
“We try to make the world that the
author is asking us to imagine resemble the real world (as we know it) in as
many respects as possible. Offices, bedrooms, lobbies, toilets, kitchens are
such models which are built to specific situations in images of yet some other
context. We know one from the other from the perception of the smallest detail
to the overall layout.
By analogy what
Miller distinguishes between what the architect designed and what he thought
are different. The architects of the Renaissance tried to resurrect the
grandeur of the classic building they discovered and resurrected. The
contemporary architect faces a vernacular of design principles which are
reified in to conventional building types. The convention is the model whiles
the specific application in the strange. Often new buildings are likened to the
first model or the prototype. The reader
knows the building type and is able to recognize the new version. (Miller,
G A)
Architectural
making of metaphors is a matter of mapping, diagramming and combining to
conclude the validity of combining and matching unlike materials, shapes, &
systems. In this way any one of the metaphors and the whole system of bridging
and carrying over is metaphoric. (Gentner,
D) If one maps a rectangle and circle to a third you get a part square
part circular odd shape. Map cold and hot and you get warm; map hotel, office,
residential and shops and you get mixed use. (Gentner, D) The
alchemists describe a system of triangulation I taught and applied at Pratt
Institute which is as: “Metals were often held to consist of two components:
mercury, which was fiery, active and male, and sulpher, which was watery,
passive and female. Thus the combination of the two metals could be viewed as a
marriage. Metals and other minerals were often compared with heavenly bodies
and their properties triangulated to produce a third. Not to let this arbitrary
characterizations blemish the structure of this system it is valid to
triangulate and in fact produce a metaphor where you find the property they
both share.
Renaissance
European cities beguile their metaphor with such combinations known by their
scale, cladding, décor, and entrees. Particularly charming are the German
“guest houses ("gast hofs"), English family pubs, etc. New Towns and
contemporary town centers are mixed use, multi zoned urban cores. It isn’t the
referent where one is the other but where there is a similarity between like
features of two things, on which a comparison may be based: the analogy between the heart and a pump.
The commonality is apparent. They both share a similar
characteristic. The hotel, residence ,
office and shop are joined by their convenience
to that provide service to clients and their use of rooms, and a core of
service, mountainous and housekeeping and supply. A small staff can support
these businesses and there customers are compatible (Gentner, D)
They all have a front of the house and back-of-the -house
function (garbage, deliveries, maintenance, etc) in many cities lacks zoning
regulations have alo9owed such mixed uses zones to still exist to day. Seeing
these metaphors is a part of the fabric and character of neighborhoods. (Gentner, D)
Metaphor is reasoning using abstract characters whereas
reason by analogy is a straight forward extension of its use in commonplace
reasoning. (Gentner,
D)
All this to say and as if there was a choice that architects have a choice where to make
a new building by analogy or by metaphor. Analogies may be the ticky-tacks, office building, church, school building, fire
station analogies to a first model verses an abstraction of a program into a
new prototype. Is the analogy any less a work of architecture? Or do we only mean that works of architecture
are works of art when they make abstractions? (Boyd,
R). .Aesthetic judgments bridge some principle or prior experience to a
secondary subject. Architects design by
translating concepts into two dimensional graphics that which ultimately imply
a multidimensional future reality. She tests the horizontal and vertical space
finding accommodation and commonality of adjacency, connectivity and
inclusiveness. (Boyd, R).
Metaphors
simply impart their commonplace not necessity to their similarity or analogous.
(Boyd,
R). This kind of metaphor simply adds information to the hearer which
was not otherwise available which explains the built metaphor that is neither
analogous not abstractly common but works, is unique and serves a purpose. (Boyd, R).
We absorb new
knowledge on the shoulders of old experiences. [(Pylyshyn, Z W). about Cognition to justify Socrates “learning as recollecting” Consider
new concepts as being characterized in terms of old ones (plus logical
conjunctives)” As William J. Gordon [7]
points out we make the strange familiar by talking about one thing in
terms of another. Pylyshyn: "On the other hand, if it were possible to
observe and to acquire new “knowledge” without the benefit of these concepts
(conceptual schemata (an underlying organizational pattern or structure;
conceptual framework) which are the medium of thought), then such (Pylyshyn, Z W).
The art implicitly
has gathered the information and organized it in way that given the right
apriori vocabulary, codes definitions and signal and sign cognitions one can
read the message in one way or another depending on the individual and the
variety of individual perceptions. Buildings, artifacts, products with embedded
(encrypted) workings can be read, learned, assimilated, connected and either by
epiphany or Pavolivain stimulus –response known. Climbing the stairs of a
pyramid in Mexico City or a fire stair in a high rise is essentially the same
except for the impact of its context and what the stair connects (create and
base) and the object on which the stair ascends and descends. The conditions,
ideals and goals are very different while most of the operation is the same. In
this way you can say that non-architecture can be identified as teaching
nothing. (Pylyshyn, Z W).
Just as practice
makes perfect for the concert pianist, opera singer, ballerina, etc so is it
for the architect and in aesthetics for the critique and the reader. However, having said this reader is at
imitate disadvantage except for the natives of a particular location. Little
old ladies in the tiniest Italian village can tell in the minutest detail all
about every building, street and area. She has learned and passed on the
“knowledge” from her ancestors and is as trained as its creators but in a
totally different way. Hers is the act of perception and reader who must
recreate and challenge her memory and recollections. She does not have to work
at design but at reliving and imagining the design process to find the details
and the whole of the building and its social, political and chronological
context. Her explanations will include great joy, violent emotions, dis-tastes
and rejections of the owners and authors. Her experience of the metaphor will
be different from that of the creators both about the same work. (Pylyshyn, Z W).
“The difference
between literal and metaphorical description lies primarily in such pragmatic
consideration as (1) the stability, referential specificity, and general
acceptance of terms: and (2) the perception, shared by those who use the terms,
that the resulting description characterizes the world as it really is, rather
than being a convenient way of talking about it, or a way of capturing
superficial resemblances”. (Pylyshyn, Z W). Pylyshyn asks:” What
distinguishes a metaphor from its complete explication”? (In the case of
architecture the entire set of contract documents, program, etc).” Pylyshyn
answers: “I n this ways of all the arts, architecture is the
most profound in that it combines and confirms the secular (of this time), “how
things really are” with the gestalt of personal, social, community and private
importance. If art is the making of metaphors and it has no real use then how
significant is architecture with both “reality” and fantasy/ imagination
combined and confirmed by its very existence. The very real existence of a
work of art that bespeaks of life and
times, exists and is accessible and in our contexts is itself a metaphor of
great significance and satisfaction; where I a building it would look like this
metaphor. The metaphor expresses a value common to both; both are both real and
ideas at the same time.
The metaphor is
the bridge and confirmation of art in the world, life in the flesh and flesh
become ideas. Architecture is an extreme reification from notion in both
creator and reader of materials and idea.
“Metaphor
induces a (partial) equivalence between two known phenomenons; a literal
account describes the phenomenon in authentic terms in which it is seen”. (Pylyshyn, Z W). Socially speaking,
worldly people that work in offices, dress, and then behave the way they do,
for example, if they reported to work in a manufacturing warehouse? Their
scenario of the behavior and the metaphor would not correspond. (Pylyshyn, Z W). “Radically new knowledge results from a
change in modes of representation of knowledge, whereas a comparative metaphor
occurs within the existing representations which serve to render the comparison
sensible. The comparative level of metaphor might allow for extensions of
already existing knowledge, but would not provide a new form of understanding.
(Oshlag, Ra S)When visiting new cities in another country one is
immediately confronted with metaphors which create similarities as interactive
and comparative as we seek to find similarities and differences with what we
already known in our home context.
Visiting,
sketching and writing about over seventy European cities I noted the character
and ambience of each and the differences between one and another. I drew so
many vignettes of buildings and cityscapes noting the metaphor of each.
The visitor (this
is my word) may “well be acquiring one of the constitutive or residual
metaphors of the place (this is my word) at the same time; same metaphor,
different experiences. (Oshlag, Ra S)
Metaphors have
a way of extending our capacities for communications. ( Sticht T.G.)
As most artists their language is beyond
speech and to the peculiar craft of their art of which their practice and
exercise develops new capacity and opportunity to teach and express thought
outside of the linguistics but is nevertheless perhaps as valuable and worthy.
“The mnemonic (intended to assist the
memory) function of metaphor as
expressed by Ortony’s vividness thesis also points to the value of metaphor as
a tool for producing durable learning from unenduiring speech” ( Sticht
T.G.)
Architects both compose the program and reify
its contents from words to diagrams and diagrams to two dimensional graphics
and three dimensional models to reify and bring- out (educate) the user’s mind
and fulfillment of unspoken and hidden needs. Needs which may or may not have
been programmed and intended; the metaphor is the final resolution until it is
built and used.
Works Cited
- Boyd, Richard; 1.14.0 26. Metaphor and theory
change: What is” metaphor” a metaphor for?
- Conrad, Ulrich; 1.3 10. In Programs and Manifestoes on
20th-Century Architecture about Glasarchitektur Ulrich Conrad'
- Fraser, Bruce; 1.10.0 22. Interpretation of novel
metaphors
- Gentner, Dedre ; 1.13.0 25 The shift from metaphor to analogy in
Western science
- Gibbs,
Jr., Raymond W.; 1.9.0 21.
Process and products in making sense of tropes
- Glucksberg,
Sam; 1.12.0 24. How metaphors
work by Sam Glucksberg and Boaz Keysar
- Gordon,
W.J.J. 7. Metaphorical way of
knowing by William J.J Gordon: William J.J. Gordon began
formulating the Synectics method in 1944 with a series ... William J. J.
Gordon, The Metaphorical Way of Learning and Knowing (Cambridge, ...
William J.J. Gordon in his book The
Metaphorical Way of Learning and Knowing, Synectics asks
participants to solve problems by thinking in analogies--to identify ways
in which one pattern or situation is like or similar to another totally
unrelated pattern or situation. Synectics uses comparisons such as
analogies and metaphors to stimulate associations, developed by George M.
Prince; Gordon was one of the original speakers at the Yale lecture series.
- Jeziorski, Michael; 1.13.0 25
The shift from metaphor to analogy in Western science
- Kuhn, Thomas S.; 1.15.0 27 Metaphor in science by
Thomas S. Kuhn
- Keysar,
Boaz; 1.12.0
- Lakoff,
George; 1.4 11. The contemporary theory of metaphor by George Lakoff
- Mayer,
Richard E.; 1.17.0 29. The instructive metaphor: Metaphoric
aids to students’ understanding of science by Richard E. Mayer
- Miller,
George A.; 1.11.0 23. Images
and models, similes and metaphors by George A. Miller
- Nigro,
Georgia; 1.5.0 17. Metaphor,
induction, and social policy: The convergence of macroscopic and
microscopic views by Robert J. Sternberg, Roger Tourangeau, and Georgia
Nigro
- Ortony,Andrew;1.0 1. Metaphor and
Thought: Second Edition
- Edited
by Andrew Ortony: School of Education and social Sciences and
- Institute
for the learning Sciences: North Western University
- Published
by Cambridge University Press
- First
pub: 1979
- Second
pub: 1993
- Oshlag,
Rebecca S.; 1.18.0 30. Metaphor and learning
- Petrie,
Hugh G; 1.18.0 30.
Metaphor and learning
- Pylyshyn, Zeon W.; 1.16.0 28. Metaphorical imprecision and the “top
down” research strategy Is Board of
Governors Professor of Cognitive Science at Rutgers Center for Cognitive
Science. He is the author of Seeing
and Visualizing: It's Not what You Think (2003) and Computation and Cognition: toward a
Foundation for Cognitive Science (1984), both published by The MIT
Press, as well as over a hundred scientific papers on perception,
attention, and the computational theory of mind.
- Reddy.
Michael J.; 1.2 9. The conduit
metaphor: A case of frame conflict in our language about language: by
Michael J. Reddy.
- Rumelhart, David E.; 1.7.0 19. Some problems with the
emotion of literal meanings
- Sadock, Jerrold M.; 1.6.0 18. Figurative speech and
linguistics by Jerrold M. Sadock
- Schon, Donald A. ; 1.1 6.
1.1 Generative metaphor: A perspective on problem-setting in social
policy: by Donald A. Schon
- Searle, John R.; 1.8.0 20. Metaphor by John R.
Searle
- Sternberg,
Robert J.; 1.5.0 17. Metaphor, induction, and social policy: The
convergence of macroscopic and microscopic views by Robert J. Sternberg,
Roger Tourangeau, and Georgia Nigro
- Thomas
G. Sticht; 1.19.0 31. Educational uses of metaphor
- Tourangeau,
Roger; 1.5.0 17. Metaphor, induction, and social policy: The convergence
of macroscopic and microscopic views by Robert J. Sternberg, Roger
Tourangeau, and Georgia Nigro
- Weiss,Paul; 1.4.11 8. Paul Weiss: Born in 1901, Being and
Other Realities (1995) ; Emphatics, (2000); Surrogates," published by
Indiana University Press.
- Zarefsky,David 5. Argumentation: The Study of Effective
Reasoning, 2nd Edition; by Professor Dr. David Zarefsky of Northwestern
University and published by The Teaching Company, 2005 of Chantilly,
Virginia
Endnotes:
1. Art
is the intentional and skillful act and/or
product applying a technique and differs from natural but pleasing
behaviors and useful or decorative products in their intent and application of
a developed technique and skill with that technique. Art is not limited to
fields, persons or institutions as science, government, security,
architecture, engineering, administration, construction, design, decorating,
sports, etc. On the other hand in each there are both natural and artistic
where metaphors (conceptual and/technical)
make the difference, art is something perfected and well done in that
field. For example, the difference between an artistic copy and the original is
the art of originality and authorship in that it documents a creative process
lacking in the copy.
2. The first lectures "Architecture as the Making of
Metaphors" were organized and conducted by Barie Fez-Barringten near the
Art and Architecture building at the Museum of Fine Arts Yale University
11/02/67 until 12/04/67. The guest speakers were: Paul Weiss, William J.
Gordon, Christopher Tunnard, Vincent Scully, Turan Onat, Kent Bloomer, Peter
Millard, Robert Venturi, Charles Moore, Forrest Wilson, and John Cage.
3. American painter Irving
Kriesberg was born in 1919. He studied painting in America at The Art
Institute of Chicago and the University of Chicago from 1938-1941 and later in
Mexico from 1942-1946. Kriesberg began his interest in art as a cartoonist in
high school in Chicago. In the 1930's he spent many days sketching the work of
the great masters Titian & Rembrandt when visiting The Art Institute of
Chicago. In the late 1930's he came under the influence of modern art via
School of Paris exhibitions prominently exhibited in the museums in Chicago.
Researched Publications: Refereed and
Peer-reviewed Journals: "monographs":
Barie Fez-Barringten; Associate professor Global University
1. "Architecture the making of metaphors"
Main Currents in Modern Thought/Center for
Integrative Education; Sep.-Oct. 1971, Vol. 28 No.1, New Rochelle, New York.
2."Schools and metaphors"
Main Currents in Modern Thought/Center for
Integrative Education Sep.-Oct. 1971, Vol. 28 No.1, New Rochelle, New York.
3."User's metametaphoric phenomena of
architecture and Music":
“METU” (Middle East Technical
University: Ankara, Turkey): May 1995"
Journal of the
Faculty of Architecture
4."Metametaphors and Mondrian:
Neo-plasticism and its' influences
in architecture" 1993 Available on Academia.edu since 2008
5. "The Metametaphor of architectural education",
North Cypress, Turkish University. December, 1997
6."Mosques and metaphors" Unpublished,1993
7."The basis of the metaphor of
Arabia" Unpublished,
1994
8."The conditions of Arabia in
metaphor" Unpublished, 1994
9. "The metametaphor theorem"
Architectural
Scientific Journal, Vol. No. 8; 1994 Beirut Arab University.
10. "Arabia’s metaphoric images" Unpublished, 1995
11."The context of Arabia in metaphor" Unpublished, 1995
12. "A partial metaphoric vocabulary of Arabia"
“Architecture: University of Technology
in Datutop; February 1995 Finland
13."The Aesthetics of the Arab architectural
metaphor"
“International Journal for Housing
Science and its applications” Coral Gables, Florida.1993
14."Multi-dimensional metaphoric
thinking"
Open House, September 1997: Vol. 22;
No. 3, United Kingdom: Newcastle uponTyne
15."Teaching the techniques of making
architectural metaphors in the twenty-first century.” Journal of King Abdul Aziz University Engg...Sciences; Jeddah: Code:
BAR/223/0615:OCT.2.1421 H. 12TH
EDITION; VOL. I and
“Transactions” of
Cardiff University, UK. April 2010
16. “Word Gram #9” Permafrost: Vol.31 Summer 2009 University of Alaska Fairbanks;
ISSN: 0740-7890; page 197
17. "Metaphors
and Architecture." ArchNet.org. October, 2009.at MIT
18. “Metaphor as an
inference from sign”; University of Syracuse
Journal of Enterprise
Architecture; November 2009: and nominated architect of the year in special
issue of Journal of Enterprise Architecture explaining the unique
relationship between enterprise and classic building architecture.
19. “Framing the art
vs. architecture argument”; Brunel University (West London); BST: Vol. 9
no. 1: Body, Space & Technology Journal:
Perspectives Section
20. “Urban Passion”:
October 2010; Reconstruction & “Creation”;
June 2010; by C. Fez-Barringten;
http://reconstruction.eserver.org/;
21. “An architectural
history of metaphors”: AI & Society: (Journal of human-centered and
machine intelligence) Journal of Knowledge, Culture and Communication: Pub:
Springer; London; AI & Society located in University of Brighton, UK;
AI & Society. ISSN
(Print) 1435-5655 - ISSN (Online) 0951-5666 : Published by Springer-Verlag;; 6 May 2010 http://www.springerlink.com/content/j2632623064r5ljk/
Paper copy: AIS Vol. 26.1. Feb. 2011; Online ISSN 1435-5655; Print ISSN
0951-5666;
DOI 10.1007/s00146-010-0280-8; :
Volume 26, Issue 1 (2011), Page
103.
22. “Does
Architecture Create Metaphors?; G.Malek; Cambridge; August 8,2009
Pgs 3-12 (4/24/2010)
23. “Imagery or
Imagination”:the role of metaphor in architecture:Ami Ran (based on
Architecture:the making of metaphors); :and Illustration:”A Metaphor of
Passion”:Architecture oif Israel 82.AI;August2010pgs.83-87.
24. “The sovereign
built metaphor”: monograph converted to Power Point for presentation to
Southwest Florida Chapter of the American Institute of Architects. 2011
25.“Architecture:the
making of metaphors”:The Book;
Contract to publish: 2011
Cambridge
Scholars Publishing
12 Back Chapman Street
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE6 2XX
United Kingdom
12 Back Chapman Street
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE6 2XX
United Kingdom
Edited
by
Edward Richard Hart,
0/2 249 Bearsden Road
Glasgow
G13 1DH
UK
Lecture:
http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=2433463466927232250#editor/target=post;postID=1336825182293903445
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