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| Gibe by Barie Fez-Barringten |
By Barie Fez-Barringten
www.bariefez-barringten.com
bareifezbarringten@gmail.com
Biography
·
Studied
behavioral psychology and voice in
linguistics under Ralph Hefferline at Columbia University
·
B.A.
in Fine Art [I] from the Pratt Institute
·
M.A.
in Architecture from Yale University, during which time I was mentored in
metaphor and metaphysics by Dr. Paul Weiss
·
Founded
the New York-based not-for-profit corporation, Laboratories for Metaphoric Environments.
·
Practicing
architect in the US and Saudi Arabia for over 40 years
·
Author
of over 20 monographs published in
learned journals as: “Framing
the art vs. architecture argument”; “Metaphor
as an inference from sign”;
Teaching the techniques of making architectural metaphors in the twenty-first century.”; ."Multi-dimensional
metaphoric thinking"; The metametaphor theorem";and User's metametaphoric phenomena of
architecture and Music"
·
Author
of European Metaphors,
a book of pen and ink drawings on the architectural perspectives of 72
European cities
Affiliations
·
American
Institute of Architects
·
National
Council of Architectural Registration Boards
·
Florida-licensed
architect
·
Global
University
Abstract
Nineteen dominant, sub-dominant and tertiary axioms are
described in Andrew Ortony’s compendium entitled, Metaphor and Thought (Ortony,
A (1993) which references the results of
scientific method applied to metaphor in cognitive sciences, education,
linguistics, psychology, learning sciences and philosophy.
The key categories which underpin this work are as
follows:
·
Metaphor and meaning
·
Metaphor and representation
·
Metaphor and understanding
·
Metaphor and science
·
Metaphor and education
These axioms are the conclusion of their respective
experiments as they may apply to architecture and the stasis to architecture
being an art, the stasis being the metaphor. Since we are borrowing a term that
is normally associated with linguistics, I have referred to the work of
linguists in order understand how such axioms can be applied to architecture
and become tools of cognition. It is a pragmatic exercise in reasoning where
the axioms are the evidence and/or warrants to the inference that they support
the stasis/resolution.
Key words
Metaphor, thought, cognition, psychology, education,
linguistics, learning, philosophy, axiom, art, & architecture
Abstract
Cognition and architecture
In the late 1960s, as an architect concerned about
perception and knowledge, I studied metaphysics under Dr. Paul Weiss. These
studies concerned the basis of knowledge – how we know that we know – and what
the implications of this are. This was followed by a study of the work of
William J. J. Gordon, who was developing a thesis on the role of synectics and metaphor in understanding
the process of “knowing”. This led me to the belief that metaphor is integral
as a tool for the artist to know, to perceive and conversely to be known and to
be perceived.
It is central to cognition that a sense event links
to a referent which can then be known. We know
only when we make the newly perceived event familiar. As cognition is the
mental process of knowing and involves awareness, perception, reasoning and
judgment, I am proposing that we can only genuinely know through the medium of metaphor. Architecture – as with all the
arts - has meaning both as an idea and a proposition, because of its observable
practical consequence – the building – the work itself.
The axioms{3} derived from Metaphor and Thought
(Ortony,A(1993) provide the variations which have practical consequences in
architecture. Without cognition art would be inconsequential, incomprehensible,
nihilistic and absurd. Similarly, an artist without cognition is a
contradiction in terms because without cognition there can be no art. The
question at the heart of art is: What is it? We are indebted here to Hefferline
for showing us that seeing and cognition is not the same thing.
Preface: Architecture’s New Paradigm
There is a shift in architectural paradigms from one
set of forms to another - from existential shelter to “meaning” and
“significance”. As well as functioning, it is important for today’s built
environment to mean something. For the architect, cognition lies in the
technical and conceptual metaphor and is part of a continuous inductive process
which adds new information. This process facilitates the creation and
perception of the work as something contemporary and relevant.
What makes our present comparison about metaphor
unique is the important distinction that it draws between conceptual metaphors
(or metaphorical concepts) on the one hand and linguistic metaphors on the
other (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980, based on the 1967 lecture series: Architecture as the Making of Metaphors [see
Background]).
The former concepts, for example, refer to “love is
war” and “love is journey”, while the latter, according to Weiss, are
“linguistic" and are exemplified by his example: “Richard the
Lionhearted”. Metaphorical language, consisting of specific linguistic
expressions, is but a surface manifestation and realization of conceptual
metaphor. Conceptual metaphors are systematic mappings made across conceptual
domains: one, the domain of experience and two, the target domain,
architecture.
[F] The
Contemporary Theory of Metaphor, as outlined by Ning Yu, states that
architecture can be the making of conceptual not literal metaphors. This occurs
where the metaphor or extension of meaning from one object to another is not in
the words themselves. For example, the word building
conveys not just the image itself but the mental image it conjures. The words -
or in the case of architecture - the shapes, forms, materials, etc. –help us to
perform mapping (or cognition) from one conventional image to another at a
conceptual level.
Whilst the link between the metaphor of architecture and metaphor is conceptual, many of
its applications borrow readily from linguistics. Cognitively, as the work is
perceived, the reader learns the metaphor and connects it to the familiar.
Architectural metaphor is cognitively a kind of “body language”, which makes is
presence felt through poetry, music, ballet, etc. but whilst it does this, it
does so inaudibly as something implicitly understood but not said.
We find works which “welcome”, “open up”, “close”,
“reject”, “turn-in”, “introvert”, “explode”, “shout”, “play” etc. Cognitively, works
of architecture as metaphors may be more onomatopoetic – a full sentence which
is grasped intuitively as analogy rather than as something overt. It may be
sensed but never understood; used but never seen; ignored, condemned,
obliterated, preserved or worshipped as an icon or as a landmark. As a landmark
it stands as a statement and an artifact, which people have created in a
particular location at a given moment in time and space. It defines a context
and as a metaphor communicates its past in terms of itself. Conceptually, it
converses about the things it marks in terms of its design, its age or method
of construction.
Linguistic, conceptual and architectural metaphor all
make the strange familiar, but it is the architectural and artistic that
identifies our position in society and is emblematic of who we are. We are not
the metaphor but our experience of it is as real as anything we know. As we
perceive it, the metaphor is our reality. It contains our identity, signs and
signals. Its vocabulary, symbols and characters are symbiotic. The metaphor
itself is symbiotic and our relationship to it can therefore be considered as
symbiosis. The metaphor stands for change; it is transformational. It works
internally between its elements and upon us as we shape it. It is in the
process of completion, in which user and audience participate, that the
metaphor is created. The word metaphor has come down to us from the original
Greek (through Latin), where it described a “transfer” and it is no wonder that
linguistics plays such an important role in our attempts to understand human
cognition. Language is the principal vehicle of cognition but not it only
vehicle.
Conceptual metaphors are based on the idea that
form-function correspondences are derived from embodied experience and
language. It may seem facile to say that we are the sum of all that has gone
before but there is compelling evidence to support the claim that what works
for linguistics works for architecture, too. For any one work there are always
two metaphors: 1) The concept and 2) The manifestation of the concept. For
example, “Richard the Lionhearted” is a manifestation of the concept of bravery
but what links Richard to the lion is understood without being visualized
(Weiss,P) .
When we hear the voices of singers, the sounds of
musicians, the tones of speakers and the quality of a manifest metaphor, we
encounter the presence of other human beings. The cognitive essence of this
presence establishes our identity and we make the reality our own. We shape it in
our mind’s eye.
Axioms (shown in Roman numerals) are self-evident
principles that I have distilled from Ortony’s Metaphor and Thought (Ortony,
A(1993) and accept as true without
proof as the basis for future arguments; as postulates or inferences including
their warrants (which I have footnoted as 1._._ throughout).These axioms are in
themselves clarification, enlightenment and illumination which remove ambiguity
where the derivative reference (Ortony) has many applications. The axioms define
properties for the domain of a specific theory which evolved out of the stasis
defending architecture as an art and are in that sense a
"postulate” and an "assumption”. Consequently, I have presumed to
axiomatize a system of knowledge to show that these claims can be supported by
a small, well-understood set of truths.
Kurt Psilander in his article, Axiomatic Design in Customizing Homebuilding, published in Engineering,
Construction and Architectural Management, 2002, vol. 9, issue 4, page
318-324, wrote: “The developer would find a tool very useful that
systematically and reliably analyses customer taste in terms of functional
requirements (FRs). Such a tool increases the reliability of the procedure the
entrepreneur applies to chisel out a concrete project description based on a
vision of the tastes of a specific group of customers. It also ensures that
future agents do not distort the developer's specified FRs when design
parameters are selected for the realization of the project.
“Axiomatic design is one method to support such a
procedure. This tool was developed for the manufacturing industry but is
applied here in the housing sector.”
Aside from architect’s axioms such as “form follows
function”; “follow manufacturers’ requirements”, “local codes and ordinances”,
“AIA [The American Institute of Architects] standards for professional
practice”, architectural axioms are few and far between.
The Five Axiomatic Groups
1. Metaphor and Meaning group
Axiom I. In
making a habitable conceptual metaphor, after assimilating the program, the
first step in the design process is to develop a “parte” (a
communication directed to the merits or outcome of the design process). This is
the resolution of the argument supported
by claims, inferences, evidence and warrants. It is a “top-down” approach later
followed by designs which meet the parte. The parte may follow the design
process and be presented to sell the product. Of course, this parte would have
to converse with the parte of the street, neighborhood and township and with
all matters, social, political and legal, that pertain to them.(Zarefsky,D.)
The generative metaphor is “seeing” as the
“meta-pherein” or “carrying –over” of frames or perspectives and runs from one
domain of experience to another. You build one thing in terms of another where
the “other” is the model and what you build is the application. It is the
“ideal” of the proposed design. While architects may initially state an ideal,
it most likely evolves and even radically changes by the time the design
process comes to fruition in the building. Once achieved, the “parte”
(concept/gestalt) manifests itself and can be articulated. (Ortony, A. (1993) .
Axiom II. Peculiarization,
personalization and authentication are required for a metaphor to exist. This
too, is the way the user metaphorizes the using process; the user and the work
empathize. Intrinsic to the art of making metaphors for the architect, the
metaphor must “read” the cultural, social and suitability of its proposed
context. They are technê-driven engineering - a building
without architectural concerns. (Reddy. M J(1993)
Practically, such a work is a technê-driven
design where craft-like knowledge is called a technê. It is most useful when the knowledge is pragmatically
applied, rather than theoretically or aesthetically applied. It is the rational
method involved in producing an object or accomplishing a design where technê is actually a system of
practical knowledge. As a craft
or art, technê is the practice
of design which is informed by knowledge of forms
such as the craft of managing a firm of architects where even “virtue” is a
kind of technê of management
and design practice, one that is based on an understanding of the profession,
business and market.
Axiom III. A conduit is a minor framework which
overlooks words as containers and allows ideas and feelings to flow, unfettered
and completely disembodied, into a kind of ambient space between people.
Regardless of the details, the overall concept is “transferred“ one to the
other, irrespective of sub-dominant and tertiary design elements. (Reddy. M
J (1993)
The geometry of urban blocks and the location of
building masses that reflect one another is a scheme to define the volume and
mass of the block and the experience of city streets (Vincent Scully). In New
York City, the gridiron and its concomitant buildings and geometry, is a
metaphor of city-wide proportions. The streets are defined by the 90 degree
angles, planes, cubes and rectangles of the city plan.
In this way the metaphor of the overall and
individual building design - no matter where its location on the block - and no
matter when or in what sequence the metaphoric constraint of appropriateness or
zoning formulas, lead the ideas to flow from one architect to another. Furthermore,
the reader is able to “appreciate” (intrinsically) the street, its geometry,
limits and linearity as an idea which passes from the architect through the
metaphor to the observer. (Reddy. M J(1993)
Axiom IV.Culture is a product of man-made things
and architecture shapes this by allowing cognition to facilitate further
cognition. Building shapes and forms tend to reflect a common geometry;
they share common facilities; they adhere to specific code use designations
which in turn influence the selection of applicable codes and they create
clusters and community spaces which foster neighborhood and cultural identity.(
Conrad, U)
Axiom V. “Each metaphorical mapping preserves
image-schema structure.” In acting it is called a”handle, where a character’s
peculiarity is remembered by one device (an accent, slang, twang, wiggle, walk,
snort, etc). In architecture the same handle manifests itself in the building’s
roof, cladding, silhouette, interior, lighting, gargoyles, entrance, moldings
etc(Lakoff, G). If the facade of a building is designed in one order
of architecture, you can assume the other parts are akin and expressed through
every detail of the whole. An example of this is the 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 mental image they create. In this case metaphor is a mental
image.
Axiom VI. Since metaphor is the main mechanism
through which we comprehend abstract concepts and perform abstract reasoning (Lakoff,
G) what is built is first thought and conceived separately. Building as a form
of thinking and conceiving is separate from it outward expression and what we
see is the result of that process and not the manifestation of the metaphor.
Axiom VII. The metaphor-building clarifies our
place, status and value.
As metaphor is the main mechanism through which we
comprehend abstract concepts and abstract reasoning, so works of architecture
inform our social, psychological and political condition.
Axiom VIII. Much subject matter, from the most
mundane to the most abstruse scientific theories, can only be comprehended via
metaphor. The metaphor is encapsulated with knowledge about the state of
contemporary technology, scientific advancement, social taste and community
importance (Lakoff, G) .
Axiom IX. Architects process and what is assembled
may or may not correlate to what we perceive. What we see is not necessarily
what we think or believe we have seen. As with thought, poetry, song, etc.
architecture is both precise around the technique but vague about the cultural,
psychic and social bridges. Yet architecture is rich with icons, classic
silhouettes, orders of architecture, styles and periods. Metaphor is fundamentally
conceptual not linguistic in nature. It is the difference between the thing
itself and what we perceive (Lakoff, G).
Axiom X. Metaphorical language (in this case a
building) is a surface manifestation of conceptual (program, design and contact
documents) metaphor. The built metaphor is the residue, detritus, product
and periphery of the deep and complex reality of the process of creating a
building. It is analogous with driving a car. It is not necessary to know
mechanical engineering to do it any more than it is essential to understand
architecture to use a building. What we design and what we read is not the
metaphor itself but a surface manifestation of the concept metaphor. How well
we know this depends on how well we are able to discern metaphorical language(Lakoff,
G) .
Axiom XI. Though much of our conceptual system is
metaphorical; a significant part of it is non-metaphorical. Metaphorical
understanding is grounded in non-metaphorical understanding. Our primary
experiences are rooted in the laws of the physical world (gravity, plasticity,
liquid, climate etc.). These elements contribute to our metaphorical
understanding often through the conceptual commonality of being able to accept
that which appears at first sight to be strange(Lakoff, G) .
Axiom XII. 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 conceptual 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 orders all these diverse and
disjointed systems and operations into a highly efficient “mechanism”. A structured
building is a structured subject offering access to relatively abstract and
unstructured subject matter. Hence architects translate their architectural
conception from philosophy, psychology, sociology, etc. into two dimensional
scaled drawings which in turn become full-scale multidimensional structures
composed of conventional materials and building elements (doors, windows,
stairs, etc) .
Axiom XIII. Sifting through the program the
architect seeks the “commonality” between the reality and experience to make
the metaphor. Mapping is only possible when makers know the “commonplace” and
the commonality - characteristics which are common to both. In other words,
terms that both the source and the target have in common allow the mapping to
take place(Lakoff, G) . The
architect’s design agenda and the user’s requirements illustrate both their
commonalities and differences. 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 hitherto unrelated and distant contexts
but are themselves metaphors “mapped across conceptual domains”.
As maps are the result of cartographers placing
existing knowledge into graphic form for the purpose of reading and
comprehension by others, so “mapping” in this context is where the metaphor is
conveyed from one source to another. The cartographer seeks lines, symbols and
shading to articulate the world. The reader, hitherto unfamiliar with the
contents of the map, finds the essence common to both the reality and the
rendition so that the metaphor can be repeated and become part of the reader’s
new vocabulary. Each mapping (where mapping is the systematic set of
correspondences) is that which exists between constituent elements of the
source and the target domain. Many elements of target concepts come from source
domains and are not pre-existing. To know a conceptual metaphor is to know the
set of mappings that applies to a given source-target pairing. The same idea of
mapping between source and target is used to describe analogical reasoning and
inferences. For example, reception area to receive people, doors and door
frames, columns as vertical supports, parking spaces for cars, iron and stained
glass design patterns, and typical design details appropriated for a given
building system(Lakoff, G) .
Aside from articulating a program, architects
carry-over their experiences with materials, physics, art, culture, building
codes, structures, plasticity, etc. to form a metaphor. Identifying conditions,
operations, ideals and goals are combined to form plans, sections and
elevations which are then translated in to contract documents.
Later the contractors map this metaphor based on their
schemes of cost, schedule and quality control into schedules and control
documents. It is not until equipment, laborers and materials are brought to the
site that the metaphor starts to form. Once formed the only evidence for the
user (reader) are the thousands of cues from every angle, outside and inside to
enable use and understanding. An informed user can read the building’s history
from its inception to opening day. Mappings are not arbitrary, but grounded in
the body and in every day experience and knowledge. Mapping and making
metaphors are synonymous. The person and not the work make the metaphor.
Without the body and the experience of either the author or the reader, nothing
is being made. As language, craft, and skills are learned by exercise,
repetition and every day application, so are mappings. Mappings are not subject
to individual judgment or preference: but as a result of making, seeking and
finding commonality by practice(Lakoff, G)
.
A conceptual system contains thousands of
conventional metaphorical mappings which form a highly structured subsystem of
the whole. Over the years, society, cultures, families and individuals
experience and store a plethora of mapping routines which are part of society’s
vocabulary. As a potential user, when encountering a new building-type, such as
a hi-tech manufacturing center, we call upon this subsystem to try
conceptualize what is in front of us. (Lakoff, G) The scale of habitable metaphors is based on the
intrinsic relation between the human form and its surroundings as measured,
proportioned and sensed. It is dramatically represented by Da Vinci's Vitruvian
Man, which is based on the correlations of ideal human proportions with
geometry as described by the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius.
Architecture as a surrogate is accepted at face
value. As a surrogate (a work of architecture) is "a replacement that is
used as a means for transmitting benefits from a context in which its user may
not be a part”. Architecture’s metaphors bridge from the program, designs and
contactors, a shelter and trusted habitat. The user enters, occupies and
formulates the habitat without ever having articulated any of its
characteristics. Yet it works. “It makes sense, therefore, to speak of two sides
to a surrogate, the user side and the context side (from which the user is
absent or unable to function).” Each of us uses others to achieve a benefit for
ourselves. None of us is just a person, a lived body or just an organism. We
are all three and more. We are singulars
who own and express ourselves in and through them. As Weiss says, we cannot
separate these three from each other, so it follows that we may find it
impossible to separate ourselves from external metaphors. Inferences that are
not yet warranted can be real even before we have the evidence(Lakoff, G) .
Metaphors, like architecture, are accepted at face-value.
Accustomed to surrogates, architecture is made by assuming these connections
are real and have benefit. Until they are built and used we trust that they
will benefit the end user. In assembling the ambulatory, we assume the
occupancy, frequency and destination of the user.
We each are surrogates to one another yet fitted into one
message. When this passage had been used or ‘read’ it becomes a conduit like
other passages, corridors and links. Like a linguistic metaphor, the building
stands, like a great, stone dagger, emphatic
against the sky. The stairs, the exits, the space calls, give
emphasis and are strongly expressive.
Axiom XIV. Elegant architectural metaphors are those
in which the big idea and the smallest of details echo and reinforce each
another. Contemporary architects wrap their parte in “green”, “myths” and
“eclectic images”; their predecessors from the Bauhaus exuded asymmetry,
tension and dissonance and the architecture of the classical period and the
renaissance insisted on unity, symmetry and balance. The architect’s parte and
the user’s grasp of cliché parte were expected and easy “fill-in” proving the
learned mappings, learned inference trail and familiarity with bridging.
People ascertain the deep metaphor that
underlies one or more surface metaphor in terms of an implicit analogy. A
unique building metaphor may be reckoned by its apparent similarity to another
from a previous experience. A grain silo, a gas holder and an oil storage tank
all have marked similarities implicit in their shapes, appurtenances and
locations (Nigro, G.(1993).
We see the architectural metaphor, we read its
extent, we synapse, analogise and metaphorize absorbing its information,
contextualizing - and as much as possible- resurrecting its reasons for
creation (Nigro, G.(1993) . The architectural metaphor only speaks
through its apparent shape, form, volume, space, material, etc. that the
concepts which underlie each are known to the user as they would to a painting,
poem, or concerto.
Architecture is often more suggestive and trusting
rather than pedantic; it leads and directs circulation and use- recognition,
while abstracting shapes and forms hitherto unknown but ergonometric (Nigro,
G.(1993) . Furthermore, as observation, analysis and use fill in the
gaps, users inference the locations of concealed rooms, passages and supports;
the user infers from a typology of the genre a warehouse of expectations and
similes to this metaphor from others. In this way there are the perceived and
the representations they perceive, which represents when explored and inert,
what we call beautiful, pleasurable and wonderful. For example, in any culture,
upon entering a traditional church we anticipate finding a certain vocabulary:
vestibule, baptistery, pews, chancel; choir; transepts, chapels, statuary,
altar, apse, sacristy, aisles and side altars.
Metaphors are cognitions. While architecture is
the making of metaphors and architects are the makers of metaphors, their
works, though metaphoric, are not themselves the metaphors. They are but
“shadows” of the metaphor which exists elsewhere in the minds of both the
creator and the user. It is in the creator and user that this commonality may
be found (Nigro, G.(1993). If
I were to design my own house or decorate my own room, there will
likely be that commonality. Similarly, if an architect is selected from a
particular neighborhood his metaphor may be sympathetic to the culture of that
area.
Architects make possible a spatial representation
in which local subspaces can be mapped into points of higher-order hyper-spaces
and vice versa because they have a common set of dimensions (Nigro,
G.(1993). Architects organize broad categories of operation and their
subsets on the basis of how they differ from each other. These subsets warrant
separate groups because they adhere to common operational considerations,
functional conditions and models.
Axiom XV. Shelter and its controlled creation
contain sensual, graphic and strategic information. The need for shelter is met
by real deeds. The building and not its metaphor is direct. The metaphor is
indirect being the “sticks and stones” of its manifestation. Whilst the metaphor
may be explained with language, it would not encapsulate the building’s shelter
metaphor. The shelter prototype and its realization is itself indirect since
its referent is obscured by its context. 1.6.1 There is a difference between the indirect
uses of metaphor verses the direct use of language to explain the world. The
distinctions and relationships between micro and macro metaphors and the way
they can inform one another are akin to the role design plays to the program or
a connector reflects the concept of articulation as a design concept (Sadock, J. M (1993) . This
articulation describes an attachment between two separable parts in the sense
of "divide (vocal sounds) into distinct and significant parts" or
where an architect parses the program and reifies words to graphic
representations bringing together disparate and seemingly unrelated parts to
make a whole.
Axiom XVI. The two domains of the building and its
context may have analogies that relate to both. The site and the building
will absorb a high amount of pedestrian traffic. Both are ambulatories and both
guide and protect the pedestrian. Like a building metaphor’s common elements
with an uncommon application, the common connects to the unfamiliar and the
architect is able to find a way to bring them together in a way that enables
the user to discover their relevance. The neighborhood’s walkways and the
access to and through the building are analogous.
As a child, Kressge 5 and 10 were built as huge, wide
diagonal corridors connecting Westchester Avenue with Southern Boulevard thus
saving many steps, time and distance but providing a wonderful weather-free
comfort- zone cutting through this South Bronx, New York City block. At the
intersection of these streets there were shops, which because of the new
ambulatory link, where now conjoined. From being two
neighborhoods they effectively became one domain linked by the corridor (a bit
like adding a crossbar to make an “A”).
Alleys in big cities and Munich subway shopping malls
are also examples of these design analogies, called galleries, alleys, mews,
etc. Metaphors work by “reference to analogies that are known to relate to
the two domains” ( Rumelhart, D. E
(1993) .; .
Axiom XVII. A work of architecture has congruence
if the whole and the parts share the same architectural vocabulary with respect
to its building systems, materials and design philosophy. In a building
with dominant 90 degree, cubes and squares we do not expect (although they are
sometimes there) to find plastic, curved and circular elements. On the other
hand, if we can reason these differences, we would still question this
disparity and incongruity were it to appear in the final work .For this reason
we have design juries and inspections that reject elements which are out of kilter
with the design and construction of the part or the whole. Buildings designed
to be seen from the highway or visited for a fleeting moment, conform to a
different set of values than those such as a home, terminal, office, etc.,
which may be more elaborate and scaled for scrutiny. A built metaphor with all
of its metaphorical baggage calls to mind another meaning and corresponding set
of truths. The metaphor is not part of the building but is made from those
meanings. The meanings of one and the meanings of another may be similar so
that the other comes to mind.
“A problem of the metaphor concerns the relations
between the word and sentence meaning, on the one hand, and the speaker’s
meaning or utterance meaning, on the other ( Searle, J. R (1993).
“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 that departs
from what the word, expression or sentence actually means.” The design program,
building codes, manufacturers’ recommendations are compared with the final
design to test for the meaning and compliance of the work. The complaint
against Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum was that the inferior quality of
the concrete resulted in an uneven and mottled surface finish. The design and
the expression are often incongruous and out of the architect’s control.
“What are the principles which relate literal…
meaning to metaphorical… meaning where one is comprehensive, complete and
coordinated while the other is merely an incomplete scanty indication of a
non-specific? How does one thing remind us of another? The basic
principle of an expression with its literal meaning and corresponding
truth-conditions can, in various ways that are specific to the metaphor, call
to mind another meaning and corresponding set of truths” ( Searle, J. R (1993). Unlike a legal brief, a specification or an
engineering document, a work of architecture with all its metaphors tolerates a
variety of interpretations, innuendo and diverse translation.
Axiom XVIII. Building style and decoration are often
adaptations of a former and existing building emphasizing economic and
financial status, quest for status, adaptations to local common ground of
knowledge, beliefs and attitudes. Choice of structural, building systems,
building height and color are often in the vernacular and determined by
function (office, residential, commercial, industrial, etc.) and zone and/or
neighborhood fashion.
Explaining tropes (turn, twist, conceptual guises and
figurations). “Human cognition is fundamentally shaped by various processes of
figuration. “The ease with which many figurative… utterances are
comprehended are as often attributed to the constraining influence of the
context.” Included in this are the common ground of knowledge, beliefs, and
attitudes recognized as being shared by speakers and listeners (architects,
users, clients and public). One can say one’s speech is affected; affected by
peer pressure and the urge to communicate and adapt (Gibbs, Jr., R. W(1993) .
Medieval German, French and Italian cities are
replete with merchant buildings whose roofs have been configured, elongated and
attenuated to be higher than others. The Germany city of Trier, on the Mosel,
is a case in point. Similarly, the roofs on Manhattan’s skyline are an eclectic
collation of referent figures from one or other European city or building.
Axiom XIX. A habitable metaphor is not meant for
the user to fully, continuously and forever recall all that went into its
production. The fact that the roof silhouette may emulate a belvedere in
Florence, the windows, a palace in Siena or the stucco, a Tyrolean chalet, is
lost over time. Even the design principles so astutely applied by the likes of
Paul Rudolf, Richard Meier, or Marcel Breuer, may be unnoticed in favor of
other internal foci. These many design considerations may be the metaphor that
gave the project its gestalt that
enabled the preparation of the documents that in turn were faithful interpreted
by skilled contractors and craftsman. Yet at each turn, it is the affect of
metaphor and not necessarily its specifics that make a good design, a great
work of architecture or a working metaphor.
3. Section on Metaphor and Understanding
” A metaphor involves a non-literal use of
language.”A non-literal use of language refers to what is said is for “affect”
and not for “content”. At each moment in its use the metaphor may mean
different things, not least to its author (Fraser, B.) .
Axiom XX. In an attempt to make the strange familiar matching,
copying and emulating the design of other buildings or adapting the design of
one to modern usage is not unusual. In the Tyrol, offices are often housed
in large chalets, which look to all intents and purposes not dissimilar from
the typical domestic residences of the region (complete with overhanging
gables, ornamentation, iron work and window boxes). The new building is made in
the guise of the vernacular. There is no attempt to hide the emulation. Users
will easily transfer their experience from the familiar old to the emulated
new. Appreciation is when a metaphor as an abbreviated simile (a figure of
speech in which two unlike things are explicitly compared, as in “she is like a
rose.”) is designed to appreciate similarities and analogies. In psychology
“appreciation” (Herbert, 1898) was a general term for those mental processes
whereby an attached experience is brought into relation with an already
acquired and established conceptual system (ergo, encoding, mapping,
categorizing, inference, assimilation and accommodation, attribution, etc.).
“In principle,
three steps, recognition, reconstruction, and interpretation, must be taken in
understating metaphors, although in the simplest instance the processing may
occur so rapidly that all three blend into a single mental act” (Miller, G. A.(1993).
A metaphor may be
regarded as a compressed simile, the comparison implied in the former being
explicit in the latter; where the making of the comparison explicit is the work
of the designer and reader.
Like the writer, sculptor and musician, the work of
the architect in making metaphors is to reify amorphic matter, ideas and
principles into habitable reality. When we face a new metaphor
(building) a new context with its own vocabulary is presented, one which the
creator must find and connect and the other which the reader must read and
transfer from previous experience.
Axiom XXI. Buildings in one group often have more
known versions than others. In one city exposed wide flanged steel structures
may be preferred to the reinforced concrete in another (Miller, G. A.(1993). In Dubai
and Qatar, high-rise, multi-storey and iconic buildings are synonymous and
known to represent commercial buildings. Iconic is the trigger for all the
rest. High and rise used together recalls how the elevator and quest for
maximized real estate earnings encouraged the development of taller buildings
on zoned building plots.
Prototype theory is a mode of graded categorization in cognitive science, where some members
of a category are more central than others (Keysar, B) . For example, when asked to give an example
of furniture, "chair" is more frequently cited than, say,
"stool". If I asked a New Yorker to give an example of an office
building and they answered the Empire State Building, it would be because of
its height and reputation, In fact the office building has come to be a
metaphor for the city. New York is an office building city and even a
subliminal image Manhattan would suffice to evoke New York.
“Metaphors
are generally used to describe something new by reference to something familiar
(Black, 1962b), not just in conversation, but in such diverse areas as science
and psychotherapy (Keysar, B) .
Metaphors are not just nice, they are necessary. They are necessary for casting
abstract concepts in terms of the apprehensible, as we do, for example, when we
metaphorically extend spatial concepts and spatial terms to the realms of
temporal concepts and temporal terms.”
Most designers
of shelters are predisposed to the geometry of the rectangle and its variations
(with the exception of amorphic and ergonometric design) and present the
completed design as its offspring and/or compounded variations. The built
variation certainly refers to its base and vice versa. Most building types,
from classical orders of Egypt, Greece and Rome to the skewed iconic towers of
the Emirates, hark back to their essence as a kind of rectangle.
Axiom XXII. Without having an apriori parte a
design may evolve until a final design is achieved which is no more
representative as a whole from any other building of its type(Keysar, B) .
The Arab desire to “evoke the tent” and the notion of
“home-sweet-home” map basics that reinforce the “fully comprehensible” to the
creation of the clichéd “vernacular ideal/dream home”, respectively. Following
engineering, building and code conventions, it is no wonder that most buildings
of one type are similar to others. Architects choose building elements from catalogs
and in the most metaphoric circumstances designs elements from scratch (e.g.
Frank Lloyd Wright, John Rennie Mackintosh, Gerrit Rietveld etc.). Metaphor buildings may or may not be
composed of element metaphors, and buildings, which are analogies, may or may
not have elements designed metaphorically. However, it is less likely that an
analogous design will contain metaphorical elements.
Architects and clients begin their conversation by finding
both the abstract and commonplace to condition, model, propose and describe the
operations. The decision to select existing commonplace designs and choosing
special designs is determined by which can be analogous and which do not exist.
Much of architectural metaphor is a matter of
mapping, diagramming and combining to give validity to the idea of using 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).
Metaphor is reasoning by
abstraction whereas analogy focuses on specific comparisons. “In processing analogy, people implicitly
focus on certain kinds of commonalities and ignore others” An
analogy is a kind of highly selective
similarity where we focus on certain commonalities and ignore others. The
commonality is not that they are both built out of bricks but that they both
take in resources to operate and to generate their products (Gentner, D). On the architect’s side: “The central idea is
that an analogy is a mapping of knowledge from one domain (the base) into
another (the target) such that a system of relations that holds among the base
objects also holds among the target objects.” On the user’s side in
interpreting an analogy, people seek to put objects of the base in one-to-one
correspondence with the objects of the targets as to obtain the maximum
structural match. “The corresponding objects in the base and
target need not resemble each other; rather object correspondences are
determined by the like roles in the matching relational structures” (Gentner, D).
“Thus, an analogy
is a way of aligning and focusing on rational commonalities independently of
the objects in which those relationships are embedded.”
“Central to
the mapping process is the principle of “systemization": people prefer to
map systems of predicates favored by higher-order relations with inferential
import (for example, the Arab tent), rather than to map isolated predicates.
The “systemization” principle reflects a tacit preference for coherence and
inferential power in interpreting analogy.”
“No extraneous
associations: only commonalities strengthen an analogy. Further relations and
associations between the base and target - for example, thematic consecutions -
do not contribute to the analogy” (Gentner, D).
Axiom XXIII. More often than not designers are
influenced by the existence of similar types than the need to invent them from
scratch. Rather than deriving a new model, designers use prototypes and
translate concepts into two dimensional graphics which ultimately imply a
multidimensional future reality. It is the commonplace and not the abstract
necessity that communicates more readily. The architect is challenged to imbue
in the design a more subtle analogy then the obvious.
For example, “interaction view” of metaphor where metaphors work by applying
to the principle (literal) subject of the metaphor a system of “associated
implications” characteristic of the metaphorical secondary subject. These
implications are typically provided by the received “commonplaces” (Zarefsky,D.)
which are alluded to by the secondary subject: “The success of the metaphor
rests on its success in conveying to the listener (reader) some quieter defined
respects of similarity or analogy between the principle and secondary subject.”
Metaphors simply impart their commonplace) (Boyd, R).
Axiom XXIV. Publically perceived architectural
metaphors are all about names, titles, and the access that the work provides
for the reader to learn and develop. At its best the vocabulary of the parts
and whole of the work is an encyclopedia and cultural building block. The work
incorporates (is imbued with) the current state of man’s culture and society
which is an open book for the reader. The freedom of both the creator and reader
to dub and show is all part of the learning experience of the metaphor. In the
1960s, I dubbed this popular architecture – “Pop Arch”.
However objective, thorough and scientific the
designer or the design tools, the work gets dubbed with information we may call
style, personality and identity above and beyond the program and its basic
design. It is additional information which is grafted into the form but is not
necessarily overtly and expressly required. Dubbing (imbuing) may occur in the
making of metaphors as a way in which the design itself is conceived and
brought together. Dubbing may in fact be the process which created the work as
an intuitive act. Imbuing is often what distinguishes the famous from the
ordinary architect and the way the architect dubs is what critics calls the
“art of architecture”.
“Dubbing”
(to invest with any name, character, dignity, or title; style; name; call) and “epistemic access” (relating to, or
involving knowledge; cognitive).”When dubbing is abandoned the link between
language and the world disappears” (Kuhn,
T, S(1993); adding a sound track to a film is the best use of the word
where the picture remains but the experience of the whole is changed. Now we
have both picture and sound.
Certain contemporary works of architecture are minimal and
only by dubbing the program can functionally superficial non-minimal features
be added. However, the architect’s artistry (way of design, proportioning,
arranging spaces, selections of materials, buildings systems, etc.) can be
dubbed to enhance an otherwise “plain vanilla” solution. Like fashion stylists,
buildings, too, have stylists whose formal signatures are unmistakably peculiar
them. You can recognize a Frank Lloyd Wright building from an Eero Saarinen; a
le Corbusier from an I. M. Pei; a Bauhaus from a Beaux Artes; a Mies van der
Rohe from a Louis Kahn and a Norman Foster from a Frank Gehry etc.
Axiom XXV. Structural engineers design from the
top down so as to accumulate the additive loads to the consecutive lower members
and ultimately the foundation which bears it all. Conceptual design and first
impressions both begin with the general and go to the particular . Pylyshyn, Z. W) Explaining this
approach as a “skyhook-skyscraper" construction of science from the roof down
to the yet un-constructed foundations, describes the process of going from the
general to the particular before looking in detail at specific evidence,
referents, claims and resolutions.
“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.” 1.16.8
Pylyshyn asserts: “Metaphor induces a (partial) equivalence between two known
phenomena; a literal account describes the phenomenon in authentic terms in
which it is seen.” (Pylyshyn, Z. W).
As Pylyshyn
explains: “… consider new concepts as being characterized in terms of old
ones (plus logical conjunctives).” William J. Gordon points out that 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 where knowledge would not itself be
conceptual or be expressed in the medium of thought, and therefore it would not
be cognitively structured, integrated with other knowledge, or even
comprehended. Hence, it would be intellectually inaccessible”. In other words
we would not know that we know (
Pylyshyn, Z. W).
This was the Greek ideal as evinced in Oedipus.
Through suffering man learns and becomes aware. Therefore, when we observe that
architecture makes metaphors we mean that we know that we know that works exist
and we can read them. We learn the work. From using two and three dimensions,
asymmetry and symmetry, spatial and volumetric design principles, the architect
assembles metaphors by applying these sometimes diffuse and dissonant elements
into something coherent (Pylyshyn, Z.
W).|
Section on Metaphor and Education
Axiom XXVI. “Analogical transfer theory” concerns the
role that the instructive metaphor plays in creating an analogy between a
to-be-learned system, a target domain, and a familiar system, the metaphoric
domain. Not unlike classical Gothic, modern architecture wants to express the
truth about the building systems, materials, open lifestyles, use of light and
air and bringing nature into the building’s environment, not to mention ridding
buildings of the irrelevant and time-worn design clichés and principles
professed by the Beaux Arts movement. For equipoise, “unity, symmetry and
balance” were replaced by “asymmetrical tension” between, “dominant,
sub-dominant and tertiary” forms as the influence of science and engineering
was brought to bear on architectural design. A new metaphor was born. The
Bauhaus found the metaphor in all the arts, the commonalities in making jewelry,
furniture, architecture, interior design, decoration, lighting, industrial
design, etc (Mayer, R. E) .
Axiom XXVII. Metaphorical teaching strategies often
lead to better and more memorable learning than do explicit strategies. This
explains why city dwellers are “savvy” compared with their suburban
counterparts; they actually learn from the metaphors that make up the context.
Of course this is in addition to the social aspects of urbanity which is again
influenced by the opportunities of urban metaphors: parks, playgrounds, main
streets, broadways, avenues, sidewalks, plazas, downtown, markets, street
vendors, etc. 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 know in our home context.
Visiting, sketching and writing about over seventy
European cities, I noted the character and ambiance of each and the differences
between them. Each metaphor was of the past’s impact on the future with the
unique design of crafts, building materials, and skills that were peculiar to
their times but were not enjoyed in the present. In this context there are the
locals who experience these metaphors all their lives and the visitor who is
first learning the lesson they have to offer. Both experience these in
different ways. The locals knows the place and comprehend both the old and the
new knowledge domains, whereas to the visitor the very same metaphor may be
interactive, creating the similarity under construction. The visitor may well
acquire one of the constitutive or residual metaphors of the place at the same
time; same metaphor, different experience.
(Oshlag, R. S.) “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, R. S) .
Axiom XXVIII. “Speech is a fleeting, temporarily
linear means of communicating, coupled with the fact that, as human beings, we
are limited in how much information we can maintain and process at any one time
in active memory, means that as speakers we can always benefit from tools for
efficiently bringing information into active memory, encoding it for
communication, and recording it, as listeners, in some memorable fashion.” (Sticht,T.G.)
Many architects can make metaphors to overcome cognitive limitations and resort
to graphics rather than language to explain the metaphor. Metaphor as a design
act serves as a graphic tool for overcoming cognitive limitations.
Metaphors have a way of extending our capacity for
communication .
Architects, like most artists, use language beyond speech.
Their genre and its practice give them the opportunity to develop new ways of
seeing, ‘speaking’ and experiencing which lie beyond the norm. It also gives
them the ability to learn and express thought outside of the confines of
linguistics but in a form which is no less valuable or accessible.
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 in the user’s mind the 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. Then
it is subject to further tests of time, audience, markets, trends, fashions,
social politics, demographic shifts, economics, and cultural changes. (Sticht,T.G.) Metaphor is the solution insofar as it encodes
and captures the information; transferring chunks of experience from well known
to less well known contexts. The “vividness thesis”, maintains that metaphors
permit and impress a more memorable learning process owing to the greater
imagery or concreteness or vividness of the “full-blooded experience” conjured
up by the metaphorical vehicle. It also offers the “inexpressibility thesis”,
which determines that certain aspects of experience are never encoded in
language. One picture is worth a thousand words and how valuable are the arts
as makers of who we are (Sticht,T.G.)
The mnemonic (intended to assist the memory) function of metaphor as
expressed in Ortony’s vividness thesis, also points to the value of metaphor as
a tool for producing durable learning from unenduring speech.
Conclusion
When ancient civilizations created iconic buildings,
the architect and artisans took their cue from the reigning elite. They
converted these verbal instructions into habitable iconic cognitions, places to
store and represent their wealth and places to defend their dominions. The
referents were clearly monetarily valued as in “more is better” or “security
and privacy”. With the introduction of civil codes, architecture became
concerned about the health, safety and welfare of the general public. In
certain modern pluralistic societies the free reign of ideas and opinions as to
contexts and their meanings are diverse.
Today’s architect not only reasons the technical but
individually reasons the conceptual. It is to the architect that society turns
to be informed about the shape and form of the context in which life will be
played out.
It is a public and private charge included in the
contract for professional services but unspoken as professional life’s
experience; to prove the relevant, meaningful and beneficial metaphors that
edify, encourage and equip society as well as provide for its health, safety
and welfare. So it is critical to realize, control and accept as commonplace
that the role of the architect is to do much more than build but build
masterfully.
References cited
Boyd, Richard; 1.14.0 Metaphor and theory change: What
is” metaphor” a metaphor for?
Conrad, Ulrich; 1.3 In Programs and Manifestoes on 20th-Century
Architecture about Glasarchitektur
Fraser, Bruce; 1.10.0 Interpretation of novel metaphors
Gentner, Dedre ; 1.13.0 The
shift from metaphor to analogy in Western science by
Gibbs, Jr., Raymond W.; 1.9.0 Process and products in making sense of tropes
Gordon, W.J.J.; The Metaphorcial
Way:Synectics:Cambridge Press
Kuhn, Thomas S.; 1.15.0 Metaphor in science
Keysar, Boaz; 1.12.0 How
metaphors work
Kriesberg, Irving: C..{C} Irving
Kriesberg; the American painter 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 exhibit.
Lakoff, George; 1.4 The
contemporary theory of metaphor
Mayer, Richard E.; 1.17.0 The instructive metaphor: Metaphoric aids to
students’ understanding of science
Miller, George A.; 1.11.0 Images and models, similes and metaphors
Ortony,Andrew;1.0 Metaphor and Thought: Second Edition; 1993; Published
by Cambridge University Press: School of Education and social Sciences and
Institute for the learning
Sciences: North Western University
Oshlag, Rebecca S.; 1.18.0 Metaphor and learning
Petrie, Hugh G; 1.18.0 Metaphor and learning
Pylyshyn, Zeon W.; 1.16.0 Metaphorical imprecision and
the “top down” research strategy
Reddy. Michael J.; 1.2 The conduit
metaphor: A case of frame conflict in our language about language:.
Rumelhart, David E.; 1.7.0 Some problems with the emotion of literal
meanings
Sadock, Jerrold M.; 1.6.0 Figurative speech and linguistics
Schon, Donald A. ; 1.1Generative metaphor: A perspective
on problem-setting in social policy:
Searle, John R.; 1.8.0 Metaphor
Thomas G. Sticht; 1.19.0 Educational uses of metaphor
Weiss,Paul; 1.4.11 "Surrogates," published by Indiana
University Press; Empatics; and the Metaphorical Process pubished in Main
Currents in Modern Thought 1971;
Zarefsky,David; “Argumentation: The
Study of Effective Reasoning, 2nd Edition; Northwestern University and
published by The Teaching Company, 2005 of Chantilly, Virginia
Background:
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.
Three major questions confront both the student and the
practitioner of architecture: First, what is architecture? Second, why is
architecture an art? Third, what is architecture’s organizing principle? Many
answers to these questions have been provided by scholars and professionals,
but seldom with enough rigors to satisfy close scrutiny. Nor have the questions
been attached to proven and workable forms, so that the art could be developed
beyond the limits of personal feelings.
During the series of colloquia at Yale on art, Irving
Kriesberg [1] had spoken about the
characteristics of painting as a metaphor. It seemed at once that this
observation was applicable to architecture, to the design of habitable forms.
An appeal to Paul Weiss drew from him the suggestion that we turn to English
language and literature in order to develop a comprehensive, specific, and
therefore usable definition of metaphor. But it soon became evident that the
term was being defined through examples without explaining the phenomenon of
the metaphor; for our purposes it would be essential to have evidence of the
practical utility of the idea embodies in the metaphor as well as obvious
physical examples. Out of this concern grew the proposal for a lecture series
wherein professional and scholars would not only bring forward the uses of
metaphor but would also produce arguments against its use.
Thus developed the symposium, which was presented by
the Department of Architecture at Yale in the same year. 1967, with the intent
to illuminate, in order to refine and develop, the idea because it makes
metaphors; that a work of architecture is a metaphor because it too blends
certain programmatic specifics with concerns implicit to its own medium.
Those
exploring these possibilities included Paul Weiss, William J.J. Gordon, Peter
Millard, Robert Venturi and Charles Moore; the following statements are edited
transcriptions of a small portion of the talks which were contributed to this
discussion.
The beginning was steeped in deductive reasoning
since we could not find new information pertaining to metaphors. This included
analyzing and explaining the syllogism:
1
Art {2} is the making of metaphors
2
Architecture is an art
3
Therefore architecture is the making of metaphors.
Till now we did nothing to reason why art is the
making of metaphors, why architecture is an art nor why architecture is an art.
Since 1967, I proceeded to analyze the presumptions and find its many applications.
This new information by Andrew Ortony first published in 1979, provides
information 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 question
of why metaphor is the stasis to any of the syllogism’s claims and
implications.
1. Irving
Kriesberg; the American painter 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 1930s he spent many days
sketching the work of the great masters Titian & Rembrandt when visiting
The Art Institute of Chicago. In the late 1930s he came under the influence of
modern art via School of Paris exhibit.
2. 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, prisons 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.
3 Axiom’s
contextual forms
Three levels of axioms matching three levels of
disciplines:
1. Multidiscipline:
Macro most general where the metaphors and axioms and metaphors used by the widest
and diverse disciplines, users and societies. All of society, crossing culture,
disciplines, professions, industrialist arts and fields as mathematics and
interdisciplinary vocabulary.
2. Interdisciplinary:
Between art fields Where as metaphors in general inhabit all these axioms drive
a wide variety and aid in associations, interdisciplinary contributions and
conversations about board fields not necessary involved with a particular
project but if about a project about all context including city plan, land use,
institutions, culture and site selection, site planning and potential
neighborhood and institutional involvement.
3. Micro
Discipline: Between architects all involved in making the built environment
particularly on single projects in voting relevant arts, crafts, manufactures,
engineers, sub-con tractors and contactors. As well as owners, users,
neighbors, governments agencies, planning boards and town councils.
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 nomnated architect of the year in speical
issue of Journal of Enterprise Architecture.Explainging 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 soverign
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:
 |
| Rube Kali (red desert;empty quarter) photo by Barie Fez-Barringten |
Architecture is a metaphor, cognition, education, learning, linguistics, metaphor, Metaphors, philosophy, psychology, thought,axioms
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