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| Collage by Christina Fez-Barringten |
Included in recently published book published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing:"Architecture:the making of metaphors"
“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.
By Barie Fez-Barringten:
Bariefezbarringten@gmail.com
7,885 words on 30 double spaced pages
www.bariefez-barringten.com
Abstract: 148 words
[1] Argument via Sign/ClueThe notion that certain types of evidence are symptomatic of some wider principle or outcome. For example, smoke is often considered a sign for fire. Some people think high SAT scores are a sign a person is smart and will do well in college.
[1] Argument via Sign/ClueThe notion that certain types of evidence are symptomatic of some wider principle or outcome. For example, smoke is often considered a sign for fire. Some people think high SAT scores are a sign a person is smart and will do well in college.
Metaphor “sign
inferences establish that there is a relationship between two factors, so that
one can be predicted from knowledge of the other. This relationship is called
correlation”. While metaphor states one is the other, has characteristics of
the other and informs one of the other their likeness is not apparent, is
seemingly unrelated and yet has an essence common to both. The parallels
between effective and literary reasoning reveal the technical and conceptual
metaphor’s science. Using both literary and architectural cases the metaphor explains
the two realities they diversely express and therefore we learn how the
metaphor works when it is a sign which correlates and not a form which causes. This monograph cites only one of
the nineteen scientists from A. Ortony’s, Metaphor and thought honing in on the
work of George Lakoff, an American cognitive linguist and professor of
linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley.
Biographical note: (88 words)
Columbia
University coursework in behavioral psychology under Ralph Hefferline and
others in voice Linguistics, Bachelor’s of Fine Arts from Pratt Institute and
Master of Architecture from Yale University where I was mentored in metaphors
and metaphysics by Dr. Paul Weiss.
For research I
founded the New York City not-for–profit corporation called Laboratories for
Metaphoric Environments (LME). In
addition to authoring over fifteen published monographs by learned journals
I have spent 20
years in Saudi Arabia and have written a book containing pen and ink drawings
on perceptions of 72 European cities. I have had one book on project management
published by John Wiley and sons;NYC
Institutional affiliation:
Global University ;American Institute of
Architects; Florida Licensed Architect; former Programming Chairperson for the Gulf
Coast Writers Association; National Council of Architectural Registration
Boards; Al-Umran association of Saudi Arabia, American Society of Interior
Designers; and founding president of Architects International Group of the
mid-east.
[1] “Sign inferences establish that there is a
relationship between two factors, so that one can be predicted from knowledge
of the other. This relationship is called correlation”. While metaphor states
one is the other, has characteristics of the other and informs one of the other
their likeness is not apparent, is seemingly unrelated and yet has an essence
common to both. In fact with a metaphor
one cannot predict the other with knowledge of the first. Unlike casual
inferences, sign inferences are fallible, the inference depends on probability.
However in the case of the metaphor the two factors are disparate, unrelated
and predictably dissimilar. Because of the two are framed as an analogy, the
presumption is that they will correlate. However, in an effort to correlate we
seek the essence common to both and in so seeking gain the knowledge of the
second by the first and vice’ versa.
Sign reasoning are
used to infer the unknown from the known, to predict outcomes, to rely on the
judgmental experts authorities and to make the strange familiar.
However, in the
metaphor this warrant brings together two apparently unrelated factors which
have an essence common to both, where each segment of a metaphor is likened to
the other. Not only do they tell something about each other but each is a sign
In a metaphor or sign inference we
infer that something can be predicted from the occurrence of something else. Wide
flange steel beams sections, their flanges and webs relate as the web and
flange inference to form a section. The web is a sign of the flange and the
flange a sign of the web and they both are a sign of the section and the
section a sign of the possible web and possible flange.
End user macro metaphor
perception, understanding and reading the end product.
“Sign inferences
involve correlations-patterns, occurrences, or changes that vary in relation to
each other”. “The basic inference that something can be predicted from the occurrence
of something else”. The building metaphor
is the “occurrence of something else” leading the reader to seek the other leg
and the essence of the metaphor. Compare a walk though a New York City street
with a “ticky-tack” sub-urb where both metaphors lead to seek the other leg and
the essence but with very different results. Each and every building in the city
will have a unique and sovereign authority, author and referent while the
sub-urb a single referent.
In ether case the building compels readers
to both compare the whole of the metaphor to its apparent parts and the whole
to its latent and less apparent referent.
While
the technical metaphor of the whole tends to be infallible and can be asserted
with certainty the conceptual metaphor of the whole metaphor is fallible and
less certain.
However, “the underlying warrant,
therefore, is that there is a predictable relationship between variables” and these variable may be inductive or
deductive, fallible or infallible and while the technical could be predictable
and certain the conceptual may be inductive, fallible and uncertain. Reading
the technical metaphor of a given work may be more satisfying while the
conceptual more tedious. [1] “The
prototype case of a sign relationship is a surface characteristic or property
that is regarded as a sign of some deeper, underlying essence”.
For example [2] “about
novel images and image metaphors “by mapping the structure of one domain onto
the structure of another” there 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
mental 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”. “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.
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. In a city of sky scrapers architects parallel their new
shafts with those adjacent to with space between to form the architectonic of
verticality, canyons and shafts where the commonalty of all the vertical shafts
bind them together. The red tile roofs of the Italian Riviera, California’s
Mission Architecture are other such examples of commonalities, commonalities
which are synonymous with their identity and expected class. We note the 90
degree angles and shape that slide into one another. We note the way like
metals, clips and angles fit; the way ceiling ducts are made to fit between
structures and hung ceiling, etc.
While it is less
possible to spontaneously imagine the way we could relate the human form to a
building when we circulate through its halls, rooms and closets its
accommodation to our needs and necessities; to our self preservation and the
maintenance of the building become apparent. We can map the building structure
to ours by finding the one commonality amongst all the others. Very often we
will hear someone say this place is” me”. The common image has been located and
the fit made. Describing generic
specific structure is under the invariance principle which is a way to
arrive at generic-level schemes for some knowledge structure by extracting its
image-schematic structure. This is
called the Generic Specific Structure. Which is an extremely common mechanism
for comprehending the general from the specific? So what you can deduce for
part you can assume is true of the whole.
So if the facade
of building is in one order of architecture you can presume the other part are
in a like arrangement and that the whole is of the classic order including its
plan, section and details. What are involved here are mapping, channeling and
one idea from one level to another. [1]
“Although inferences from sign assert a predictable relationship between
variables, they do not account for it; they are thus less powerful than causal inferences”.
[2] “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.
Metaphor is the main mechanism through which we comprehend abstract
concepts and perform abstract reasoning”. For example, as this is so for
linguistics(spoken or written), then I infer that it must be true for non
linguistics ,and I give as evidence the built habitats and their architectural
antecedents, being as how what is built is first thought and conceived
separately from building as thinking and conceiving is separate from the
outward expression . Whether it is one or thousands public cultures are
influenced, bound and authenticated by its’ metaphors. Not withstanding
“idolatry”, the metaphors are the contexts of life’s dramas and as our physical
bodies are read by our neighbors finding evidence for inferences about social,
political and philosophical claims about our culture and its place in the
universe.
One of many
warrants is recognizing, and operating the front door of a castle as we would
the front door of our apartment; another warrant is the adaptive uses of
obsolete buildings to new uses as a factory to multi- family residential uses,
etc. We see the common space and structure and reason the building codes
written to protect the health , safety and welfare of the general; public can be applied and the
found to be re-zoned to fit the new uses
in the fabric of the mixed-use zoned area; “comprehend abstract concepts
(building codes, design layouts, and building codes) and perform abstract reasoning”.
The most mundane
to the most abstruse scientific theories can only be comprehended via metaphor.
Even an anonymous Florentine back ally’s brick wall, carved door, wall
fountain, shuttered windows, building height, coloration of the fresco. Metaphor is fundamentally conceptual, not
linguistic, in nature. After many years living in Saudi Arabia and Europe and
away from Brooklyn I visited Park Slope.
I saw the stoops ascending to their second floors, the carved wood and
glass doors, the iron grilles, the four story walls, the cementous surrounded
and conventionally pained widows but what I saw was only what I described. I
did not recognize what it was; it was all unfamiliar like a cardboard stage
setting. I did not have a link to their context nor the scenarios of usage and
the complex culture they represented. I neither owned nor personalized what I
was seeing. All of this came to me without language but a feeling of anomie for
what I was seeing and me in their presence, years later I enthusiastically
escorted my Saudi colleagues thorough Washington, DC’s Georgetown showing them
the immaculately maintained townhouses. I was full of joy, perceptually excited
but my colleagues laughed and were totally disinterested.
These were not
their metaphors and they could hardly wait to leave the area to find a good
Persian restaurant to have dinner. They, like my self years before did not see
what I saw and more relevantly did not “get-the-concept”. Both of the above anti-metaphor cases were
conceptualized without words as would be positive cases of metaphor. [2] Metaphorical language is a surface
manifestation of conceptual metaphor.
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.
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. For example in the last 20 years store front's
tempered glass has been enhanced, thickened, strengthen and is now used in
large quantities as frameless curtain walls on private and massive public
properties. A non-metaphorical building product with one used in one context
has been taken out of a non-metaphorical understanding of properties and use to
apply to another. Our primary
experiences grounded in the laws of
physics of gravity , plasticity, liquids, winds, sunlight, etc all contribute
to our metaphorical understanding often the conceptual commonality accepting
the strange .
In Belize, faced
with a an unskilled workforce and the government wanting fancy houses for its
government staff I choose a plethora of pre-engineered building components form
non architectural catalogs as gigantic drainage
pipes , sawn in half and used for roofs and in Tennessee relocated the
country look of indignities building with US Plywood's "texture
1-11". [2] 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. Owner
occupied specialized works of architectural metaphors may begin with long
periods of research, observations, and analysis ; conclusions and redesign and
re-thinking of existing or utility of new systems; setting our system
feasibility, pricing and meeting budgets, palling and programming, diagramming
and design of sub systems and systems but when complete the metaphor is
accessible, usable and compatible.
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 identify the
Greeks and the Romans derived an Order of Architecture which we now call the
Classical order of Architecture.
A classical order
(originally derived from Egypt) is one of the ancient styles of building design
in the classical tradition, distinguished by their
proportions and their characteristic profiles and details, but most quickly
recognizable by the type of column
and capital employed. Each style also has its
proper entablature,
consisting of architrave, frieze
and cornice. From the sixteenth century onwards,
theorists recognized five orders.
From its inception
design professionals will look outside of their field and the field of the
proposed project to find organism, technologies provides a conceptual handle as
the inner working of microchips, mainframes, submarines, rockets and jet
propulsion, circus, markets, battleships and air-craft carriers, etc. 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 Suzan because of my
experience in Chinese restaurants and selling Lazy Suzan’s as a young sales
assistant in a gift store in the Bronx.
As a result of the
overall design of which this was one part the company’s business increased and
prospered. One of the executive vice presidents befriended me and late went on
to head the New York Stock Exchange. The installation was a success and was
used until the company closed its doors many years later. The architect’s metaphor is often instinctive,
impulsive and intuitive [2] like the onomatopeics metaphor’s mappings of
conceptions override the overt spoken and descriptive and rely much more on mnemonics
(something intended to assist the memory, as a verse or formula). [2] The
assistance comes from something much more primordial (constituting a beginning;
giving origin to something derived or developed; original; elementary: primordial forms of life) to the person’s or societies
experiences. These become the matrix (encyclopedic) of schemas (in argument;
the warrants {where a warrant is a license to make an inference and as such
must have reader's agreement} supporting the inferences (mappings) where in the
metaphor becomes real). In this way the reader maps, learns and personalizes
the strange into the realm of the familiar. The reader does so by the myriad of
synaptic connections he is able to apply to that source. Hence architects translate their
architectural conception from philosophy, psychology, sociology, etc into two
dimensional scaled drawings and then to real life full scale multi dimensions
convention consisting of conventional materials, building elements (doors,
windows, stairs, etc).
[2] As maps are the result of cartographers rendering
existing into a graphics for reading so is mapping to the reading of metaphors
where the reader renders understanding from one source to another.
Doing so mentally and producing a rendition of understanding
(as a pen and ink of a figure) not as a graphic but a conceptual
understanding. Reader sees in a critical
way the existing culling through and encyclopedia of referents to make the true
relationship; the mapping which best renders the reality; the relationship
which informs and clarifies as the map the location, configuration and
characteristic of the reality. As the
cartographer seeks lines, symbols and shadings to articulate the reality so the
reader choices of heretofore unrelated and seemingly unrelated are found to have and essence common to both
the reality and the rendition so that the metaphor can be repeated becoming the
readers new vocabulary .
In fact architects do the opposite as graphic renditions are
made of synapses between amorphic and seemingly desperate information. Yet the
process of mapping is no less intense as architect review the matrix of
conditions, operation , ideal and goals of the thesis to find similarities and
differences , commonalities, and potential for one to resonate with another to
make a “resolution” on the experience of a cognitive mapping which becomes the
metaphor, parte and overwhelming new reality.
The new reality is the target of the source and finally can
be read. In the case of the birth of an
infant metaphor readers may find a wide variety of source information which is
germane to their own experience. 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. Mapping
is critical at this read to assure that the architect’s rendering of the
program is faithful to the cognitive, lawful, physical and legal
realities. It s like a map which gets
tested by scientist, navigators , pilots and engineers before they build a
craft to use the map, or set out on a journey using the map.
Like a landscape
artist [a] 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. [2]
In cognitive linguistics, conceptual metaphor, or cognitive
metaphor, refers to the understanding of one idea, or conceptual domain,
in terms of another, for example, understanding quantity
in terms of directionality (e.g. "prices are rising"). A
conceptual domain can be any coherent organization of human experience.
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.
[2]
Each mapping (where mapping is the systematic set of correspondences that exist
between constituent elements of the source and the target domain. Many elements
of target concepts come from source domains and are not preexisting. To know a
conceptual metaphor is to know the set of mappings that applies to a given
source-target pairing.
Schemas 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. 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 side 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.
The latter half of
each of these phrases invokes certain assumptions about concrete experience and
requires the reader or listener to apply them to the preceding abstract
concepts of love or organizing in order to understand the sentence in which the
conceptual metaphor is used.
In linguistics and cognitive science,
cognitive linguistics (CL)
refers to the school of linguistics that understands language creation, learning, and usage as best
explained by reference to human cognition in general. It is characterized by adherence to
three central positions. First, it denies that there is an autonomous linguistic faculty in the
mind; second, it understands grammar in terms of conceptualization; and third, it claims that knowledge of
language arises out of language use.
Therefore the metaphor of architecture is
inherent not in the media of the building’s presence, parts or bits and pieces
but in the mind of the reader and that the articulation of the metaphor as
thinking and third that our use of the metaphor increases our know ledge of the
metaphor and reading metaphors comes out of practice.
The more we view paintings, ballets, symphonies, poetry, and
architecture the better we become at their understanding and its metaphor
further dwells in the reader while the building and its parts exist with out
being understood.
Extrapolating: the writer of the speech is as the architect
and the speaker is as the reader of the metaphor where the metaphor can only be
experienced to be understood. Walk though
an unlit city at night and feel the quite of the building’s voices because the
readers have no visual information and with access to the closed buildings the
metaphor is a potential with being a reality. Yet the potential for cognition
does exist and is real but is not understood apart from its experience [2] Humans
interact with their environments based on their physical dimensions,
capabilities and limits. The field of anthropometric
(human measurement) has unanswered questions, but it's still true that human
physical characteristics are fairly predictable and objectively measurable.
Buildings scaled to human physical capabilities have steps, doorways, railings,
work surfaces, seating, shelves, fixtures, walking distances, and other
features that fit well to the average person.
[2] Humans also interact with their environments based on
their sensory capabilities. The fields of human perception systems, like perceptual psychology and cognitive psychology, are not exact sciences,
because human information processing is not a purely physical act, and
because perception is affected by cultural factors, personal preferences,
experiences, and expectations, so human scale in architecture can also describe
buildings with sightlines, acoustic properties, task lighting, ambient
lighting, and spatial grammar that fit well with human senses. However, one
important caveat is that human perceptions are always going to be less
predictable and less measurable than physical dimensions. [2] Basically the
scale of habitable metaphors is the intrinsic relation between the human figure
and his surroundings as measured, proportioned and sensed.
It is dramatically
represented by Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man
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
the whole is then encased in a circle and a square.
[2] Piranesi
vision takes on a Kafkaesque,
Escher-like
distortion, seemingly erecting fantastic labyrinthian structures, epic in
volume, but empty of purpose. They are cappricci
-whimsical aggregates of monumental architecture and ruin). Many of my pen and
ink drawings were inspired by the Piranesi metaphor. In St. Peters the spaces are so real that
they imply the potential for all mankind to occupy. The scale of the patterns
on the floor are proportional to the height and widths enclosing the space they
overwhelm the human figure as does the Baldachino whose height soars but is
well below the dome covering the building.
The metaphor is
instinctively perceived, mapped and sorted by mnemonic schemas as is New York’s
Radio city Music Hall designed by my former employer Edward Durrell Stone and
the entrance to the Louver by IM Pei. The surrounds of offices and shops by
Michael Angelo feature window and door propositionally designed to man’s scale
and perfectly mitigate the universal scale of the 1.4.11 Piazza did San
Marco (St. Marks Plaza). Recalling the plazas of Italy Stone designed
and I developed the State University of New York in Albany which featured
metered arches, columns and pilasters on buildings to mitigate the various
scales of both the large and small plazas.
I remember my interview for the job
where Bob Smith, his office manager proudly entertained Mr. Stone and his board
with an array of my portfolio, covering all four walls of his executive
conference room.
The project gave
me the opportunity to plan, design and details many plazas, monumental and
convenience stairs as well as the way they would be enclosed and encased to demark
the plazas, plinths, terraces and porticos of the galleries and circulation
areas. Like Radio City this project was a grand public works metaphor recalling
the Parthenon, Rome, Venice and the many tiny urban villages I had visited
including Lucca, Sienna, Florence, etc.
[2] 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. The thing does not have but the
persons have the experiences. 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 the commonality by practice.
Architects learn to associate, create and produce by years of education
and practice while users have a longer history approaching and mapping for use
and recognition. Yet new metaphors are difficult to assimilate without daily
use and familiarity.
Often the owners
of new building will provide its regular occupants with orientation,
preliminary field trips and guided tours. Many buildings restrict users’ access
by receptionist, locked doors and restricted areas.
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
the generic nature of the cues are anticipated.
[2] A conceptual
system contains thousands of conventional metaphorical mappings which form a
highly structured subsystem of the conceptual system. Over the year’s society, cultures, families
and individuals experience and store a plethora of mapping routines which are
part of our mapping vocabulary. As a
potential user when encountering a new building type such as a hi-tech
manufacturing center we call upon our highly structured subsystem to find
conceptual systems which will work to navigate this particular event. Another
example is as a westerner encountering a Saudi Arab home which divides the
family from the public areas of the house as private. In the high tech building
doors will not open and corridors divert visitors away form sensitive and
secret areas. In the Arab home the visitor is kept in area meant only for
non-family members and where the females may not be seen.
There is a common conventional
metaphorical mapping which uses a highly structured subsystem of the conceptual
system. There is a similarity and an ability to accept and the
constraints. The metaphor or the work of
architecture includes each and every nut and bolt, plane and volumes, space and
fascia, vent and blower, beam and slab, each with there mappings parallel to
operational sequences, flows representations, openings and enclosures so that
they operate in tandem and compliment one another. The conventions come from
the experiences of doors that open, elevators that work, stairs that are
strong, floors that bear our weight, buildings that don’t topple, and basic
experiences that prove verticality, horizontality, diagonals, weights of
gravity, etc.
[2] There are two types of mappings:
conceptual mappings and image mappings; both obey the Invariance Principle. “A.
Image metaphors are not exact “look-alikes”; many sensory mechanisms are at
work, which can be characterized by Langacker’s focal adjustment (selection,
perspective, and abstraction); B. images and Image-schemas are continuous; an
image can be abstracted/schematized to various degrees; and C. image metaphors
and conceptual metaphors are continuous; conceptual metaphorical mapping
preserves image-schematic structure (Lakoff 1990) and image metaphors often
involve conceptual aspects of the source image.
(“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
fitting, coupling and joints occur), again this simultaneity of ideas and image
operating in tandem where we see and know an idea simultaneously; where the
convention of the architectural space and the metaphor of the conception
converge.
Architecturally,
users encounter a habitable metaphor with their experience engrafted in a
particular mapping inherent in their catalog of mappings. This mapping has its
own language , vocabulary say of the way doors, windows floors, stairs and rooms
names work and the user brings this vocabulary into, the target metaphor, say a
new office building. Of course there
will be all sorts of incongruities, similarities and differences. However this
principle points out that the office building vocabulary will retain its basic
structure. This means that while the vocabulary the user brings to the target
from the source will be unchanged still keeping the images of doors, windows,
etc as they were in the residential the office will be unchanged and unaffected.
For example when
an architect designs a bank from his source in the size, décor and detail of
medieval great hall the target of banking with all its vocabulary of teller
windows, manager’s carols, customer’s areas, vaults, etc will not change into medieval
ways of serving, storing and managing the business. When I designed a precinct police station for
Bedford Stuyvesant I brought the community, park and community services onto
the street and public pedestrian sidewalks while housing the police offices,
muster and patrol functions to the back and under the building. While the building metaphor is now a
community service police station mapping components of meaning from the source
language of user and community friendly, human scale, public access and service
which remained in the target police station. The vocabulary of all the police
functions remained coherent, perceived and understood and did not vary. The
problem is particularly interesting when the metaphor of a shopping mall with
commercial retail shops brings its language to a target context of a hotel with
service support. The front and back of the hotel, the rooms and maintenance and
the transience of guest will remain coherent, overlaid with malls covered,
circulation and service area. The separated spaces will face the ambulatory and
be separately accessible to visitors. Such a combination you can see art work
in airport terminals being open shops and passenger circulation to a common
metaphor. The airport is still an airport but an airport with a mall. The
Munich subway and underground shopping center are another such examples.
Underground subway language, structures, ventilation, circulation is sustained
while being influenced but not overriding the source.
[1] “The prototype
case of a sign relationship is a surface characteristic or property that is
regarded as a sign of some deeper, underlying essence. [2] 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. [2] It seems that
onomatopeics are metaphors and can be
onomatopoeic (grouping of words that imitates the sound it is
describing, suggesting its source object, such as "click",
"bunk", "clang", "buzz", "bang", or
animal noises such as "oink", "moo", or "meow") ?
In this case an assemblage instead of a sound.
As a non-linguistic it has impact beyond words and is still a metaphor.
Then a metaphor is much more than the sum of its parts and is beyond any of its
constituent constructions, parts and systems, its very existence a metaphor.
[3] Consider the
way people related to each other through symbols, language, intonation, art and
music. How do ordinary experience stands in some dynamic relationship with a
second dimension, which provides focus, interruption, significance, or grounds
for the first. [4] “A surrogate 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 contractors a
shelter and trusted habitat. The user enters and occupies the habitat with him
having formulated but not articulated any 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. “We have that ability”. “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. In my early
twenties I diagrammed a being as “”appetite”, “desire” and “mind”. I defined
each and described there interrelationships and support of one another.
Metaphor is one and all of these and our first experiences of sharing life with
in to what are outside of us.
[4] As with our
mother, language and other primary things we too ascribe like relations with
objects and even buildings assigning them the value from which we may benefit
and which may support. [4] We cannot separate these three from each other so
that it follows that we may find it impossible to separate us from the external
metaphors. Inferences that are not yet warranted can be real even before we
have the evidence. “Metaphors are accepted at face value and architecture is
accepted at face value”. It is surely desirable to make a good use of
linguistic surrogates” “ A common language contains many usable surrogates with
different ranges, all kept within the limited confines that an established
convention prescribes” It is amazing how
that different people can understand one another and how we can read meaning
and conduct transaction with non-human extents, hence architecture.
Architecture is such a “third party” to our experience yet understandable and
in any context. 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.
Assembling the
ambulatory we assume the occupancy, frequency and destinations. We each are
surrogates to one another yet fitted into one message. When this passage had
been used as read as had been other passages, corridors and links. Like a
linguistic the building stands, like a great, stone
dagger, emphatic against the sky. The stair, the exit, the space calls, gives emphasis
and is strongly expressive. Despite their styles, periods, specific operations,
conditions, operations and goals; despite their building types, country,
national language, weather , climate, culture, etc. doors, openings, windows,
stairs, elevators, floors, walls, roofs, ramps, landscaping, cladding,
decoration, furniture, curtains, etc are all immediately understood and mapped
from past to present , from other to present context and form individual to
community of uses. A door in a private house is a door in a public concert
hall. In fact its differences are naturally assimilated and unconsciously
enjoyed.
[1] Sign
architectural metaphors infer the unknown from the known where constructs are
unknowable abstractions such as intelligence, economic health and happiness.
The public presumes buildings are the incarnation of the maker’s wealth, intelligence
and power. Height, finishes, volume and spaces portray signs of these
abstractions. The building is a kind of multidimensional graphical story. Readers
can infer the nature of their own personality as well as the author’s personality
as well the nature of a regime, company or family; as well as their norms and
policies. Building with flat roof in a neighborhood with all pitched, adding
steeples and retrofits to rooftops, and ornate cladding are some examples.
[1] Like
Renaissance religious artwork metaphoric buildings reify authority and
expertise presuming a sign of accuracy, trustworthiness regarding the particular matters about which the
expertise testifies as banking, manufacturing, environment, medical, etc. While
it is unlikely that the building signs get tested, bankruptcy, criminal actions, scandalous
behavior can change users and readers perceptions and consequently buildings
can loose their metaphoric value and be removed and replaced by new and fresh metaphors
1. 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
* 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
2 *The contemporary theory of metaphor by George Lakoff
3. Emphatics by Paul Weiss
4. Surrogates by Paul Weiss; published by Indiana University Press
Footnotes:
a. 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.
b. TOC: Metaphor 2009 Monographs
- Deriving the Multidiscipline axioms from Metaphor and
Thought
- Metaphor and Cognition
- The science supporting the stasis to architecture
being an art :
- Language of metaphors applied to multidiscipline
architecture
- Metaphor’s interdisciplinary Axioms
- Metaphoric Axioms for
Micro disciplinary Architecture
- Complex Structure: art and architecture stasis
- Metaphor axioms of art, architecture and aesthetics
- Aesthetic principles of metaphor, art and
architecture
- The Six Principles of Art & Architecture’s
Technical and Conceptual Metaphors
- Framing the art verses architecture argument
- Metaphoric Evidence
- Managing the benefits and
risks of architectural artificial intelligence
- The Link Between AI and
Architecture
15 Negotiate with
Metaphoric Communication Tools
16. Project
management’s Metaphoric Axioms
17. The six
principles of interior designs technical and conceptual metaphors
18. The six
principles of designs technical and conceptual metaphors
19.”Metaphors and
Architecture." Published by MIT pressArchNet.org. Oct, 2009.
20. Metaphor
cause and effect
c. Background:
The first lectures
"Architecture as the Making of Metaphors" was organized and conducted
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.
During the series
of colloquia at Yale on art, Irving Kriesberg had spoken about the
characteristics of painting as a metaphor. It seemed at once that this
observation was applicable to architecture, to design of occupiable 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.
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;
Cambridge
Scholars Publishing
Published:
Feb 2012
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:
Ortony, architecture, Architecture:the making of metaphors, metaphor, correlation, image metaphors, metaphor, Metaphors, novel images, philosophy, sign inferences,Barie Fez-Barringten,Yale University
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