(Linguistic metaphor [b] can cause an architectural metaphor and more).
By Barie Fez-Barringten
9,449 total words (including
references and footnotes) and four illustrations (1,635 words non-article) on
40 double spaced pages
email:bariefezbarringten@gmail.com
Abstract: (195 words)
After researching
the many conceptual and technical qualities of metaphor, it still remained to reason
the process by which metaphors impact actual buildings, professional practice,
design, perception, and actual use. Was there a cause and effect relationship
between the making and the reading of metaphors, and, architectural metaphors? Because it was no accident that architecture
is a metaphor, it was reasonable to seek
its cause. Otherwise it would only be a correlation, [a] where architecture was
a metaphor without any consequent cause and would then would be unreliable and
inconsistent.
Actually, architecture
is the result of both technical and conceptual metaphors. The challenge was to
articulate metaphors into the design process so they achieve the goal of the
product for the end user. Since cause is an inference that one factor somehow
exerts influence on another; the inference not only asserts a predictable
relationship between the factors but also accounts for it.
After introducing
the general cause and effect of ideas and metaphors, I present specific cause
and effect relationships between the technical architectural tools, such as
programs, drawings, models, and contacts, as well as the conceptual metaphoric
tools of analogies, ideas, and culture.
Keywords:
Cause, effect, metaphor,
architecture, thought, commonality, commonplace, dubbing, cognitive, knowing, art,
linguistic analogy, equilibrium, equipoise, top-down, frame conflict,
appreciate, conduit, parte, design system, , mapping, structure, domain, signs, apparatus, spaces, shapes,
forms, metaphorical mappings,
invariance principle, onomatopoeic, indirect use, direct use, vision,
gestalt, psychological, processes, metaphor comprehension, memory, mnemonics, encoding, mapping, categorizing, inference,
assimilation, accommodation, attribution, inferential import, structured
programming, stability, vividness thesis, difference, identity, communications.
Beginning of the article (7,889 words)
Introduction:
Because it is no
accident that architecture is a metaphor, it is possible to find its cause, otherwise
it would only be a correlation[a] (*Zarefsky, D. pg 69[a] Argumentation)where
architecture was a metaphor without any consequent cause and would then be
unreliable and inconsistent. Actually, architecture
is the result of both technical and conceptual metaphors. The challenge is to
articulate metaphors into the design process, so they achieve the goal of the
product for the end user. Since cause is
an inference that one factor somehow exerts influence on another; the inference not only asserts a predictable
relationship between the factors but also accounts for it. There can be a
parallel between the users and makers metaphors. The design process can include
user metaphors thus causing a predictable end result. The cause and effect
relationship between design and use can be metaphorically created by the commonplace.
Metaphor not only proceeds
programming and is implicit in the process; but, also all design products and
architecture’s buildings are themselves metaphors (intended or unintended).
Metaphor is an influence
which must be inferred because it cannot be observed directly. Causal
inferences[a] follow with
probability, not certainty. There can be many causes for one effect, and there
can be effects which are not intended.
There is a consequent mapping
between project teams’ observations, analysis, and program (condition,
operation, ideal and goals) and the design diagrams, schematics, preliminary
and final design documents and the built metaphor. The more the metaphor is incorporated
and tracked throughout the process, the
greater the fidelity to end users assuming that their requirements have been
made part of the initial metaphor.
Metaphors allow seemingly unrelated
and desperate issues to be likened and assimilated.
Because causal
inferences both identify and explain relationships, the architectural metaphor
can be both perceived and read, revealing the readers own authenticity and the
roots of the design. The inference [a] is that by making metaphors not only
will there be a design, but also a work of architecture and shelter to be used
and read. However, the claim would
follow certainly, and the argument would be deductive, only if all other
possible influences could be controlled, which is highly unlikely. Hence, the metaphoric
cause and effect argument relies on the warrant that one phenomenon has
influence on another since this influence cannot be observed but is inferred.
This is an
inductive inference which warrants that
if any one of the metaphoric axioms is true, then it (is with certainty it) will affect design, where design is an
intentional, controlled, and planned
effort which seeks to reconcile commonalities and differences and find a
dimension common to both.
By very definition
design is a metaphor. It is one thing to research, observe, analyze and program
but another to compose these findings into metaphors and finally into a single
metaphor called a work of architecture.
Ideally, the
general metaphor of the end user begets the metaphor to initialize the design
process while during the design process on metaphor begets another. The process
is triangulated from both the top down and the bottom up. The way metaphors are
charted and combined horizontally and vertically are metaphoric insofar as each
metaphor makes the strange familiar and maps one metaphor in terms of the
other. The below four illustrations portray the horizontal design process of a
typical project.
Illustration #1 Program Development
Process
Illustration #2 Design Process
Illustration #3 COIG Design Process
Illustration #4 COIG Definitions
Cause and effects of metaphors
on works of architecture
Overview of metaphor:
Shelter and its
controlled creation contain sensual, graphic, and strategic information
fulfilling shelter’s needs by real deed physical manifestation rather than ethereal
words of hope and future expectations. The building and not its metaphor is
direct while its metaphor is indirect being the sticks and stones of its
manifestation. Yet while the metaphor may be explained with language, it would
not accomplish the building’s shelter metaphor. The shelter prototype and its
incarnation is itself indirect since its referent is obscured by contextual
realities. There is a difference [c] between
the indirect uses of metaphor verses the direct use of language to explain the
world. Both the literal and architectural metaphor causes an effect
but in different ways. While they both must be read, the architectural metaphor
must also be used while the literal metaphor is experienced when applied to
life. Literal metaphors cause mental connections while architectural metaphors
cause a shelter. The kind of habitat metaphor depends on the intention,
artistry, and competence of the metaphor’s maker as to specifically what effect
it will have.
The quality, size
and scope of the created metaphor are not proportionate to the effect but are
factors in the material product. Also, metaphors may be large or small, loud or
soft, simple or complex; intended or unintended but in any case metaphor has an
affect. [c] “The distinctions and relationships between
micro and macro metaphors and the way they can inform one another” is as
the form of design may refer to its program, or a connector reflects the
concept of articulation as a design concept.
Where articulation
is being joined together as a joint 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 desperate and seeming unrelated parts to join into parts and
sub parts to make a whole as when the two domains of the building and its
context have analogies that relate to both as when the site and the
building absorbs 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. The architect is able to find a way to bring them
together and the user discovers their relevance. The neighborhoods walkways and
the access to and through the building are analogous.
Metaphors work by [d] “reference
to analogies that are known to relate to the two domains”. A work of architecture has integrity if the
whole and its parts share the same vocabulary of building systems, material,
and design philosophy. In a building with dominant 90 degree, cube and squares
we do not expect to find plastic, curved and circular elements (not that there
aren’t many successful introductions of unlike geometries). On the other hand if we can reason these
differences, we still would question this disparity to the expression of that
incongruous relationship in the final work .For this reason we have design
juries, inspections and rejects of design and during the course of
construction, to stop a part or incongruity between the design and the
construction and between a part and the whole.
Buildings designed
to be seen from the highway or visited for a fleeting moment are designed with
one set of expectations while a home, terminal, office, etc 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. Cause and effect claim does
not guarantee fidelity and accuracy of created intentions designed to cause specific
effects. There are no guarantees that if a designer does one thing to cause one
effects that very same effect will happen. However, in architectural, fashion, product
and interior design, designers count on the behavioral sciences to induce
specific affects with such devices as compressed spaces, color to shrink or
heighten sizes, scale of furniture, length of hemlines, textures, lighting volumes,
etc. While the intention and the cause are designed, there may be unintended
consequences, but effects, nevertheless the work is a metaphor! In the end it stands
alone, sovereign and subject to work as icon, shelter, and context.
A[e] “problem of the metaphor concerns the relations between the word and
sentence meaning, on the one hand, and speaker’s meaning or utterance meaning,
on the other, Whenever we talk about the metaphorical meaning of a word,
expression, or sentence, we are talking about what a speaker might utter it to
mean, in a way it that departs from what the word, expression or sentence actually
means”. To some, Johnson’s glass house engages its rural environment. To
others it is cold and forbidding. To some Manhattan’s skyscrapers represent
power, strength and beauty. To others they are forbidding hostile and
overbearing.
The complaint
against Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fifth Avenue Guggenheim Museum was the inferior
quality of the concrete pours resulting in uneven and mottled surfaces. The design and the expression are sometime
incongruous and out of the control of the architect. To know
the way metaphor causes architecture, we must find [e] “the
principles which relate literal sentence meaning to metaphorical utterance were
meaning” is comprehensive, complete and coordinated while the other is
merely an incomplete scanty indication of a nonspecific. The presumption of
both the literal and architecture metaphor is [e] how
does one thing remind us of another? [e] 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”. Unlike
a legal brief, specification and engineering document a work of architecture
with all its metaphors tolerates variety of interpretations, innuendo and
diverse translations.
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 of the building
use (office, residential, commercial, industrial, etc.) and the zoned and
neighboring fashion. Metaphors are intentional,
designed and subject to the colloquial of their context as [f] tropes (turn, twist,
conceptual guises, and figurations) where “human
cognition is fundamentally shaped by various processes of figuration”.
Modern
architecture wants to express the truth about the building’s systems,
materials, open life styles, use of light and air to bring nature into the building’s environment, not to
mention ridding building of the irrelevant and time worn cliches of building
design decoration, and traditional principles of classical architecture as
professed by the Beaux-Arts [D] movement.
For equipoise “unity,
symmetry and balance” were replaced by “asymmetrical tensional relationships”
between, “dominant, subdominant and tertiary” forms and the results of science
and engineering influence on architectural design, a new design 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. [h] “Analogical
transfer theory states that “instructive
metaphors create an analogy between a to-be-learned- system (target domain) and
a familiar system (metaphoric domain). Metaphorical
teaching strategies often lead to better and more memorable learning than do
explicit strategies which explains why urbanites have a “street smarts” that is
missing from suburbanites. 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, play grounds, main streets, broadways,
avenues, streets, 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 known in our home
context. Metaphors make the strange
familiar as we find the factor common to both.
While visiting,
sketching and writing about over seventy European cities, I noted the character
and ambience of each and the differences between one and another. 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 natives who experience these metaphors all their lives and the
visitor who is first learning the lesson of these metaphors. Both experience
these in different ways. The native knows the place and comprehends 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 (this
is my word) may “well be acquiring one of
the constitutive or residual metaphors of the place (this is my word) at the
same time; same metaphor, different experiences. [i] “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. 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. As most artists language is beyond their speech
favoring the peculiar craft of their art.
Their practice and exercise develops new capacity and opportunity to teach and
express thought outside of the linguistics but is nevertheless perhaps as
valuable and worthy. The technical
metaphor can complement, overwhelm or compensate for the weakness, existence or
contradiction of the conceptual metaphor.
Architects both
compose the program and reify its contents from words to diagrams and from diagrams
to two dimensional graphics and three dimensional models to reify and bring-
out to (educate) the user’s mind to
fulfill unspoken and hidden
needs. Needs, many of 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. Metaphors made with buildings, called
architecture are not only valuable possessions, contextual features, and icons,
but also they teach us how to communicate.
[h] Metaphors
have a way of extending our capacities for communications. “Speech
is a fleeting, temporarily linear means of communicating, coupled with the fact
that 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.”
Metaphor is the
solution insofar as it encodes and captures the information transferring chunks
of experience from well –known to less well known contexts. [h] The vividness thesis, which
maintains that metaphors permit and
impress a more memorable learning due to the greater imagery or concreteness or
vividness of the “full-blooded experience” conjured up by the metaphorical
vehicle [h] and the inexpressibility thesis, in which it
is noted that certain aspects of natural experience are never encoded in
language and that metaphors carry with them the extra meanings never encoded in
language. One picture is worth a thousand words demonstrating how valuable the arts are as makers of who we are as a
people, society and time.
[h] “The mnemonic (intended to assist the memory) function of metaphor as
expressed by [f] Ortony’s vividness thesis also points to the value of metaphor
as a tool for producing durable learning from unenduiring speech.
Specific:
Program: [k]
What is built is first thought and conceived separately from building as
thinking and conceiving is separate from the outward expression. As metaphor is
a process so architectural metaphor is a process and what we see is what the
process issues; not the manifest metaphor. [k] Metaphorical language (building)
is a surface manifestation of conceptual (program, design and contact
documents) metaphor. The built metaphor is the residue, excrement,
product and periphery of the deep and complex reality of the building’s
creative process and extant reality. As we don’t know the inner workings of our
car and yet are able to drive so we can use our building. What we design and
what we read not the metaphor but a surface manifestation of the concept
metaphor. A concept which we can only
know as well as we is able to discern metaphorical language. The construction
and the metaphor beneath are mapped by the building being the manifestation of
the hidden conceptual metaphor. To know the conceptual metaphor we must read
the building. [k] 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 homogenizes all
these diverse and disjointed systems and operations into a well working
machine. [k] 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.
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 and then to real-life full-scale multi dimensions conventions
consisting of conventional materials, building elements (doors, windows,
stairs, etc). [k] 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 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.
As Weiss [b] proclaims
that 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.
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.
Climbing the
stairs of a pyramid in Mexico City or a fire stair in a high rise is
essentially the same except for the impact of its context and what the stair
connects (create and base) and the object on which the stair ascends and
descends. Little old ladies in the
tiniest Italian village can tell in the minutest detail all about every
building, street and area. They have learned and passed on the “knowledge” from
their ancestors and are as trained as
its creators but in a totally different way. Theirs is the act of perception
and reader, who must recreate and challenge their memory and recollections. They do not have to work at design but at reliving and
imagining the design process to find the details and the whole of the building
and its social, political and chronological context. 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 specific.
Architecture
combines and confirms the secular (of this time), “how things really are” with
the gestalt of personal, social, community and private importance. If art is
the making of metaphors and it has no real use, then how significant is architecture with both
“reality” and fantasy (imagination combined and confirmed by its very existence).
[l] Consider new
concepts as being characterized in terms of old ones (plus logical
conjunctives)” [B] As William J.J Gordon
(Metaphorical Way of Knowing, Gordon,
Cambridge Press) points out we make the strange familiar by talking about one thing in terms of another.
[l] "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. “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.
In the Greek literature knowing was synonymous with suffering and experience. This was the Greek
ideal proved in Oedipus; “through suffering man learns”. We know that we know.
Therefore, when we observe that architecture
makes metaphors we mean that we know that we know that works exists, and we
can read authors messages. We learn the work.
[l] Pulling from three dimensional and two
dimensional means and methods, from
asymmetrical and symmetrical, and from spatial and volumetric design
principles, the architect assembles metaphor metaphorically by associating and
carrying-over these principles applying to the program at hand to lift and
stretch the ideas into space and across the range of disassociated ideas and
concepts making a new and very strange metaphor unlike anything ever created
yet filled with thousands of familiar signs and elements that make it work . [l] About the difference between words (which are limited and
specific to concepts there is a
component of reason and choice which mediates between cognitive content and
outward expression. I can choose what words I use, whereas I cannot in the same
sense choose in terms of which I represent the world. So architects and readers
deal with materials, structures, systems and leave the concepts to a variety of
possible outcomes.
[l] About a “top-down strategy” called “structured programming” in computer
science allows for a point of entry into a the development of a new idea where
you begin with an idea and after testing and developing that idea bringing
everyday knowledge to bear on the development of theoretical ideas with some
confidences that they are new either incoherent nor contradictory, and
furthermore with some way of exploring what they entail. [l] Explaining this approach as a “skyhook-skyscraper"
construction of science from the roof down to the yet un-constructed
foundations” describes going from the general to the specific in and decreasing
general to an increasing amount of detail and pragmatic evidence, referents,
claims and resolutions.
The physical
evidence of the architectural metaphor endures through time, personal and
public perceptions. After it is conceived, the metaphor affects the standards
of its context.
The making of the
metaphor embodies the peculiar characteristics common to both its makers and
the end users and as such causes the end metaphor. [l] “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”. [l] Pylyshyn asserts that: “metaphor induces a (partial) equivalence
between two known phenomenons; a literal account describes the phenomenon in
authentic terms in which it is seen. The architect's building will contain a
plethora of resolutions between strange, unrelated and disparate clients whose
perceived existence affects the reader and the end product. These metaphors
will both cause the reader’s metaphor and the building’s design.
Drawings:
The metaphor is
engrafted with knowledge about the state of contemporary technology, scientific
advancement, social taste and community importance, including selecting materials,
systems, etc. [k] Whether the drawings are made by hand or machine these lines,
dimensions and letters are two dimensional graphic incarnations which limit and
bound spaces (b) with the details of how the boundaries will be built and attached.
The drawings are a
two-dimensional rendition of what will be built in a multidimensional world. By
metaphor, designers liken each wall, connecting to something in another domain,
anticipating that readers will reconstruct the metaphor in shop drawings and ultimately
on site.
Models:
The metaphor of a
reduced scale version can be the result of construction the idea from drawings
or the very medium for design formation. While it aptly shows the design, it is
not in the scale of the human; and
therefore the reader compares miniature
figures to his or her own experience in like circumstances to experience the
metaphor. Computer Aided Design (CAD)
three-dimensional and animated renderings reenacting the experience
still requires the reader to link his eyes to the views of the three
dimensional views. Miniaturization tends to diminish the effects of scale and
drama of forms, spatial sequencing and relationships of one to another space,
color and context. Yet the model metaphor is itself a metaphor bridging the drawings
to the final building and the user to the designer. It makes the strange familiar
by shooing the literary and graphic ideas in multi directional forms.
Users/perception of metaphor:
[m] People ascertain the deep metaphor that
underlies one or more surface metaphors by filling in terms of an implicit
analogy. A unique building metaphor may be reckoned by its apparent
similarity to another from a previous experience. As a grain silo is to a
methane gas plant and to oil tank storage, what may be implicit are the shapes,
appurtenances, and locations.
[m] We see the architectural metaphor, we read
its extent, we synapse, analogize and
metaphorize absorbing its information, contextualizing and as much as possible
resurrecting its reasons for creation.
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. [m] Architecture
is often more suggestive and trusting rather than being pedantic. It leads and
directs circulation, user recognition while abstracting shapes and forms
heretofore unknown but ergonometric.
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 type a warehouse
of expectations and similes to this metaphor from others. In this way they are
the perceived and the representations they perceive which represents when explored
and inert what we call beautiful , pleasurable and wonderful. Upon entering a
traditional church in any culture we anticipate finding a common vocabulary of
vestibule, baptistery, pews, chancel, and choir area including transepts,
chapels, statuary, altar, apse, sacristy, ambulatory and side altars.
[m] So while architecture is the making of metaphors and
architects are making metaphors,
their works, though metaphoric, are not themselves the metaphors but the shadow
of the metaphor which exists elsewhere in the minds of both the creator and the
user, and, it is there that the creator and the user may have a commonality
(not commonplace) . Ideally, if I design my own house, decorate my own room
there will likely be that commonality.
If an architect is
selected from a particular neighborhood his metaphor will likely be sympathetic
(common) to the culture of the area, or, the outcome of a concerted effort on the part of the design
team to assemble the relevant and commonplace information. [m] Architects make a spatial representation in which local subspaces can be mapped into
points of higher-order hyper-spaces and vice versa is possible because they
have a common set of dimensions.
Architects
organize broad categories of operations and their subsets seeing that they are
different from each others so as to warrant a separate group and that their
subsets fit because they have common operational, functional conditions,
operations, models and object is. Hotel front and back-of-the-house operations
and a hospital’s surgical from outpatient, and both from administration and
offices are obvious sets and subsets.
Observations and assumptions (pre-programming)
A single work of
architecture may have a single or multiple metaphors which may be the result of
a single or multiple cause metaphor. Some of the metaphor’s attributes
described below may be used by architects and readers. Metaphor makers may
employ parte, and yet the reader may not read that parte in the end product. Mapping,
employing the commonplace, should result in the user reading the commonplace, but metaphor in the
creative process does not always translate to be read in the end product as
these are metaphors of process.
But there is a difference
between a product whose makers employed dubbing
and copying depending on the way
systems and materials are integrated rather than outward forms and styles.
Metaphors incorporating abstract shapes and forms rather than eclectic classic
should result in metaphors containing those attributes.
[k] 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 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 .
Parte:
[n]Generative metaphor is “seeing” -as, the “meta-pherein” or
“carrying –over” of frames or perspectives 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 yields an
architectural configuration (building manifestation).
Once achieved the “parte” (concept/gestalt) manifests and
can be articulated.
Personalization:
[o] Peculiarization,
personalization and authentication are required for a metaphor to live. This
too is the way the user reads the metaphor as part of the using process. The
user and the work empathize. In this is
the art [D] of making metaphors for
the architect of public works. His metaphor must “read” the cultural, social
and rightness of the metaphor’s proposed context.
Knowing the
desired effect, by incorporating the metaphor of the cultural, the designer causes the work to be the
metaphor of the users. He makes the strange work familiar by designing the work
in terms of the users. The process and the product are a metaphoric designed
metaphorically.
Mapping:
Metaphor maps the structure of one domain onto the structure of another.
[k] Sifting through the program, the architect seeks the “commonality” between
the reality and experience to make the metaphor. Mapping is only possible when he knows the “commonplace”, the
commonality, the characteristic common to both, the terms that both the source
and the target have in common in which the mapping takes place. The architect’s
design agenda and the user’s requirements find 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 heretofore unrelated and
distant contexts but are themselves metaphors [k] “mapped across conceptual domains”.
Architects translate their architectural conception from
philosophy, psychology, sociology, etc. into two dimensional scaled drawings
and then to real life full scale, multi
dimensions conventions consisting of conventional materials, building elements
(doors, windows, stairs, etc). [k] 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.
As the cartographer seeks lines, symbols and shadings to
articulate the world reality, so the reader’s choices of heretofore unrelated
and seemingly unrelated are found to
have an essence common to both the reality and the rendition so that the
metaphor can be repeated becoming the readers new vocabulary. As the reader can
describe the route, he can identify the building.
[k]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. 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.
[k] 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 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. An informed user can read the building’s history from its
inception to opening day.
[k] 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.
[k]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 society’s 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.
Copying:
Matching, copying
and emulating the design of other buildings or adapting the design of one to
the current project is adapting to the more familiar. In fact, this is a matter
of replicating metaphors. In the Tyrol, offices are often housed in larger
chalets with all the roof, hardware, doors and flower boxes of the more typical
residence. The new building is made to appear like the others. Often the
signature of the original dominates the new. 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.”) designed to
appreciate similarities and analogies. [p] In psychology “appreciation”
(Herbert (1898)) was a general term for those mental process whereby an
attached experience is brought into relation with an already acquired and
familiar conceptual system (Encoding, mapping, categorizing, inference,
assimilation and accommodation, attribution, etc).
[p] Miller sites Webster’s
International Dictionary (2nd edition): “a metaphor may be regard as a compressed simile, the comparison
implied in the former being explicit in the latter. In the making the
comparison explicit is the work of the designer and reader”. [p] “In
principle, three steps, recognition, reconstruction, and interpretation, must
be taken in understating metaphors, although the simplest instance the
processing may occur so rapidly that all three blend into a single mental act.”
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. 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. In Dubai and Qatar high
rise and multi story and iconic are synonymous and know to represent commerce
buildings. Iconic is the trigger for all the rest. High and rise used together
recalls how the elevator and quest for grated real estate earnings encouraged
the higher number of floors per single zoned building lot. [q] Prototype theory is a mode of graded categorization in cognitive science, where some members of a
category are more central than others.
For example, when
asked to give an example of the concept furniture, chair is more
frequently cited than, say, stool.”
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 and not the “church “building shape has come to be a
metaphor of the city. New York is an office building city. I can see only a
flash glimpse and I will know it is Manhattan.
[q] Their metaphor “cigarettes are time bombs” cigarettes are
assigned to a category of time bombs, what the time bomb being a prototypical
example of the set of things which can abruptly cause serious damage at some
point in the future.” [q] “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. Metaphors are not just nice, they are necessary. They are
necessary for casting abstract concepts in terms of the apprehendable, 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 exceptions of amorphic and ergonometric) and present the
completed design as its offspring and/or compounded variations. The built variation certainly refers to its
base and vice versa. It is not just nice but necessary; otherwise it could not
be built. Most building types and classical orders from Egypt, Greece and Rome
to the skewed iconic towers of the emirates hearken back to their essence as a
kind of rectangle. Without have an apriori parte a design may evolve until a
final design is achieved which is no more representative as whole from any
other building of its type.
Architects choose
building elements from catalogs and in the most metaphoric circumstances design
elements from scratch. Metaphor buildings may or may not be composed of element
metaphors and buildings, which are analogies, may of or may not have elements
designed metaphorically. However, it is less likely that an analogues design
will contain metaphorical elements. Architects and clients begin their
conversation by finding both the abstract and commonplace to condition, model,
and purpose and describe the operations. Selecting existing commonplace and
choosing special design is determined by which can be analogous and which do
not exist. [r] Much of architectural making of metaphors is a
matter of mapping, diagramming and combining to conclude the validity of
combining and matching unlike materials, shapes, & systems. In this way any
one of the metaphors and the whole system of bridging and carrying over is
metaphoric. [r] Metaphor is reasoning
using abstract characters whereas reason by analogy is a straight forward
extension of its use in commonplace reasoning. [s] “In processing analogy,
people implicitly focus on certain kinds of commonalities and ignore others”. [r] An
analogy is a kind of highly selective
similarity where we focus on certain commonalities and ignore others. The
commonality is no that they are both built out of bricks but that they both
take in resources to operate and to generate their products.
On the creative
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 [r] “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.” [r] “Thus, an analogy is a way of aligning and focusing on rational
commonalities independently of the objects in which those relationships are
embedded.” [r] “Central
to the mapping process is the principle of “systematicity: people prefer to map
systems of predicates favored by higher-order relations with inferential import
(the Arab tent), rather that to map isolated predicates. The systematicity principle
reflects a tacit preference for coherence and inferential power in interpreting
analogy”.
[r] “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.” More often
than not designers are influenced by the existence of similar types than to
re-invent themselves from scratch. Architects design by translating
concepts into two dimensional graphics that which ultimately imply a
multidimensional future reality. She tests the horizontal and vertical space
finding accommodation and commonality of adjacency, connectivity and
inclusiveness. It is the commonplace
and not the abstract necessity that communicates more readily. The architect is
challenged to imbue in the design the more subtle analogy than the obvious.
[s] 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” (ordinary;
undistinguished or uninteresting; without individuality: a commonplace person.); about 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.” [s] Metaphors simply impart their commonplace not necessity to their
similarity or analogous.
Dubbing
[t] “Dubbing” is to invest with any name, character, dignity, title; or
style; and “epistemic access” is
relating to, or involving knowledge as cognitive.” When dubbing is abandoned the link between language and the
world disappears”. 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. Today’s works of architecture are minimal and
only by dubbing the program can functionally superficial non-minimal features
be added. However, the architect’s artistry [D] (way of design, proportioning, arranging
spaces, selections of materials, buildings systems, etc) can be dubbed to
enhance an otherwise “plain vanilla” solution. Whether the dubbing is done in
the programming stage or after the fact results in some designs being either inherently
or superficially metaphoric, superficially, when the metaphors are achieved
through decoration and application rather than the very structure of the
building.
Conclusion:
Citations listed alphabetically:
Boyd, Richard; [s]
Fraser, Bruce; [g]
Gentner, Dedre
[s]
Gibbs,
Jr., Raymond W. [j]
Glucksberg,
Sam; [r]
Jeziorski, Michael [r]
Kuhn, Thomas S. [t]
Keysar,
Boaz; [q]
Lakoff,
George; [k]
Miller,
George A.; [p]
Nigro,
Georgia; [m]
Ortony, Andrew [f]
Oshlag,
Rebecca S. [i]
Petrie,
Hugh G; [i]
Pylyshyn, Zeon W.; [l]
Reddy,
Michael [o]
Rumelhart, David E.; [d]
Sadock, Jerrold M.; [c]
Schon, Donald A.; [n]
Searle, John R.; [e]
Sternberg,
Robert J.; [m]
Thomas
G. Sticht; [h]
Tourangeau,
Roger; [m]
Weiss, Paul; [b]
Zarefsky, David [a]
Footnotes listed chronologically:
[a] “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
[b] “Surrogates," published by
Indiana University Press. By Paul Weiss
[c] Figurative speech and
linguistics by Jerrold M. Sadock
[d] Some problems with the emotion
of literal meanings by David E. Rumelhart
[e] Metaphor by John R. Searle
[f] Metaphor and Thought by Andrew
Ortony
[g] Interpretation of novel
metaphors by Bruce Fraser
[h] Educational uses of metaphor by Thomas G. Sticht
[i] Metaphor and learning by Hugh G
Petrie and Rebecca S. Oshlag
[j] Process and products in making
sense of tropes by Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr.
[k] The contemporary theory of metaphor by George
Lakoff
[l] Metaphorical imprecision and the “top down”
research strategy by Zeon W.
[m] Metaphor, induction, and social
policy: The convergence of macroscopic and microscopic views by Robert J.
Sternberg, Roger Tourangeau, and Georgia Nigro
[n] Generative metaphor: A perspective on problem-setting
in social policy: by Donald A. Schon
[o]The conduit metaphor: A case of
frame conflict in our language about language: by Michael J. Reddy.
[p] Images and models, similes and
metaphors by George A. Miller
[q] How metaphors work by Sam Glucksberg and
Boaz Keysar
[r] In the Metaphor and Science section of the book: The
shift from metaphor to analogy in Western science by Dedre Gentner and Michael
Jeziorski
[s] Metaphor and theory change: What is” metaphor” a
metaphor for? By Richard Boyd
[t] Metaphor in science by Thomas S. Kuhn
Pylyshyn
Zenon W. Pylyshyn is Board of
Governors Professor of Cognitive Science at Rutgers Center for Cognitive
Science. He is the author of Seeing
and Visualizing: It's Not what You Think (2003) and Computation and Cognition: toward a
Foundation for Cognitive Science (1984), both published by The MIT
Press, as well as over a hundred scientific papers on perception, attention,
and the computational theory of mind.
Metaphor and Education is the final
section:
Readers may wish to review my
monograms on Schools and Metaphors (Main Currents in Modern Thought/Center for
Integrative Education Sep.-Oct. 1971, Vol. 28 No.1, New Rochelle, New York
and The Metametaphor of architectural
education", (North Cypress, Turkish University. December, 1997)
References:
A. Metaphor and Thought: Second
Edition
Edited by Andrew Ortony[f]: 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
B Background:
The first lectures
"Architecture as the Making of Metaphors" [3] were 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 [b],
William J.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 are the
architecture's organizing principles? 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 [C] 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. Out of this concern grew the proposal for a lecture series wherein
professional and scholars would bring forward the uses of metaphor
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.
D. 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.
F. 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 upon Tyne
15."Teaching the techniques of making
architectural metaphors in the twenty-first century.” Journal of King Abdul Aziz University Engg...Sciences; Jeddah: Code:
BAR/223/0615:OCT.2.1421 H. 12TH
EDITION; VOL. I and
“Transactions” of
Cardiff University, UK. April 2010
16. “Word Gram #9” Permafrost: Vol.31 Summer 2009 University of Alaska Fairbanks;
ISSN: 0740-7890; page 197
17. "Metaphors
and Architecture." ArchNet.org. October, 2009.at MIT
18. “Metaphor as an
inference from sign”; University of Syracuse
Journal of Enterprise
Architecture; November 2009: and nominated architect of the year in special
issue of Journal of Enterprise Architecture explaining the unique
relationship between enterprise and classic building architecture.
19. “Framing the art
vs. architecture argument”; Brunel University (West London); BST: Vol. 9
no. 1: Body, Space & Technology Journal:
Perspectives Section
20. “Urban Passion”:
October 2010; Reconstruction & “Creation”;
June 2010; by C. Fez-Barringten;
http://reconstruction.eserver.org/;
21. “An architectural
history of metaphors”: AI & Society: (Journal of human-centered and
machine intelligence) Journal of Knowledge, Culture and Communication: Pub:
Springer; London; AI & Society located in University of Brighton, UK;
AI & Society. ISSN
(Print) 1435-5655 - ISSN (Online) 0951-5666 : Published by Springer-Verlag;; 6 May 2010 http://www.springerlink.com/content/j2632623064r5ljk/
Paper copy: AIS Vol. 26.1. Feb. 2011; Online ISSN 1435-5655; Print ISSN
0951-5666;
DOI 10.1007/s00146-010-0280-8; :
Volume 26, Issue 1 (2011), Page
103.
22. “Does
Architecture Create Metaphors?; G.Malek; Cambridge; August 8,2009
Pgs 3-12 (4/24/2010)
23. “Imagery or
Imagination”:the role of metaphor in architecture:Ami Ran (based on
Architecture:the making of metaphors); :and Illustration:”A Metaphor of
Passion”:Architecture oif Israel 82.AI;August2010pgs.83-87.
24. “The sovereign
built metaphor”: monograph converted to Power Point for presentation to
Southwest Florida Chapter of the American Institute of Architects. 2011
25.“Architecture:the
making of metaphors”:The Book;
Contract to publish: 2011
Cambridge
Scholars Publishing
12 Back Chapman Street
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE6 2XX
United Kingdom
12 Back Chapman Street
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE6 2XX
United Kingdom
Edited
by
Edward Richard Hart,
0/2 249 Bearsden Road
Glasgow
G13 1DH
UK
Lecture:
="http://globaluniversity.academia.edu/BarieFezBarringten/Books/1449761/Architecture_The_Making_Of_Metaphors">http://globaluniversity.academia.edu/BarieFezBarringten/Books/1449761/Architecture_The_Making_Of_Metaphors
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