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| Collage from her book titled Legend by Christina Fez-Barringten |
(Axioms about metaphor’s application to the broad field of architecture
and design management)
By Barie Fez-Barringten
www.bariefez-barringten.com
Please email your coments to: bariefezbarringten@gmail.com
Axiom’s contextual
forms
Three levels of axioms matching three levels of disciplines:
- Multidiscipline: Macro most general where the metaphors and axioms and metaphors used by the widest and diverse disciplines, users and societies. All of society, crossing culture, disciplines, professions, industrialist arts and fields as mathematics and interdisciplinary vocabulary.
- Interdisciplinary axioms are between fields of art [I] whereas metaphors in general inhabit all these axioms drive a wide variety and aid in associations, interdisciplinary contributions and conversations about board fields not necessary involved with a particular project but if about a project about all context including city plan, land use, institutions, culture and site selection, site planning and potent ional neighborhood and institutional involvement.
- Micro Discipline: Between architects all involved in making the built environment particularly on single projects in voting relevant arts[I], crafts, manufactures, engineers, sub-con tractors and contactors. As well as owners, users, neighbors, governments agencies, planning boards and town councils.
Abstract:
Early monographs were steeped in
deductive reasoning since we could not find new information pertaining to
metaphors. This included analyzing and explaining the syllogism:
- Art[I] is the making of metaphors
- Architecture (design) is an art [I]
- Therefore architecture (design) is the making of metaphors.
Till now we did nothing to reason
why art [I] is the
making of metaphors nor why architecture is an art. Since 1967 I proceeded to analyze
the presumptions and find its many applications. This new information by Andrew
Ortony first published in 1979, provides information to support inductive reasoning and to this end each
axiom is its own warrant to the inferences of the above syllogism and the answer
to why metaphor is the stasis to any of the syllogism’s claims and
implications. The axioms are presented in labeled paragraph and subparagraphs
format for easy reference and applications.
Keywords:
metaphor, architecture, thought, commonality,
commonplace, dubbing, cognitive, knowing, stasis, art , [I] linguistic analogy, equilibrium, equipoise, topoi,
top-down, frame conflict, appreciate, conduit, parte, design system, modified
culture, mapping, structure, domain,
signs, apparatus, spaces, volumes, shapes, forms, metaphorical mappings, invariance principle, alive, dead,
onomatopeics, surrogates, appetite, desire, mind, indirect use, direct use, vision,
gestalt, formulae, grand design, psychological, processes, metaphor
comprehension, memory, mnemonics, encoding,
mapping, categorizing, inference, assimilation, accommodation, attribution,
inferential import, structured
programming, stability, referential specificity, general acceptance of terms,
vividness thesis, difference, identity, comparison sensible, communications.
Biographical note:
Design Manager for Barwa City in
Doha in 2008; 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.
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.
Institutional
affiliation:
Global University ;American Institute of Architects; Florida Licensed
Architect; 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.
Axioms: (8,052
words)
These axioms indicated by Roman numerals
are self-evident principles that are accepted on face-value as true basis for
argument since they have already been proven and described by the noted referent
for each. Here they are postulates (or inferences) without their warrants. As
such each is noted as to source and location for reference gleaned from “Metaphor and Thought” (footnoted
as 1._._ throughout).There additional references noted in the footnotes. The
footnotes are sub-axioms meant to both support the axiom while also being
useful as an independent principle. The below axioms are predominantly derived
from “Metaphors and Thought” by
Andrew Ortony, earlier mentoring by Dr. Paul Weiss and are in addition to over
forty years of work about my stasis to architecture
as art being that “architecture as
the making of metaphors” (please see background below after the
monograph for your information).
Axioms (shown in Roman numerals) are self-evident principles
that I have derived out of Ortony’s Metaphor
and Thought[1.0] and accept as true without proof as the basis for future
arguments; a postulates or inferences including their warrants (which I have footnoted as 1._._
throughout).These axioms are in themselves clarification, enlightenment, and illumination removing ambiguity where the derivative
reference (Ortony) has many
applications. Hopefully, these can be starting points from which other statements
can be logically derived. Unlike theorems, axioms cannot be derived by
principles of deduction as I wrote: "The metametaphor theorem" published by Architectural
Scientific Journal, Vol. No. 8; 1994 Beirut Arab University. The
below axioms define properties for the domain of a specific
theory which evolved out of the stasis defending architecture as an art and in that
sense, a” postulate" and "assumption" . Thusly, I presume
to axiomatize a system of knowledge
to show that these claims can be derived from a small, well-understood set of
sentences (the axioms). “Universality, Global uniqueness, Sameness,
Identity, and Identity abuse” are just some of the axioms of web
architecture. Francis Hsu of Rutgers
writes that “Software Architecture Axioms
is a worthy goal. First, let's be clear that software axioms are not
necessarily mathematical in nature”.
Furthermore, in his book titled The
Book of Architecture Axioms Gavin
Terrill wrote: “Don't put your resume ahead of the requirements Simplify essential complexity; diminish accidental
complexity; You're negotiating more often than you think ;It's never too early to think about performance and
resiliency testing; Fight repetition; Don't Control, but Observe and Architect as Janitor”. In “Axiomatic design in the customizing home building
industry published by Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management;
2002;vol 9; issue 4;page 318-324 Kurt Psilander wrote
that “the developer would find a tool very useful that systematically and
reliably analyses customer taste in terms of functional requirements (FRs).
Such a tool increases the reliability of the procedure the entrepreneur applies
to chisel out a concrete project description based on a vision of the tastes of
a specific group of customers. It also ensures that future agents do not
distort the developer's specified FRs when design parameters are selected for
the realization of the project. Axiomatic design is one method to support such
a procedure. This tool was developed for the manufacturing industry but is
applied here in the housing sector. Some hypothetical examples are presented”. Aside
from building-architect’s axioms directing that “form follows function”; follow
manufacturers requirements and local codes and ordinances, AIA standards for
professional practice architectural axioms are few and far between. Each has
been summarized, paraphrased and translated into architectural terms.
Axioms:
Axiom
I. Parte, model and concept: After
assimilating the program in the process of making a habitable conceptual
metaphor, the very first step in the design process is to develop a “parte’ as [A] 3.0 (presumptive) resolutions
of the argument.
It is a “top-down” approach later followed by designs which
meet the parte. Alternatively, the parte may follow the design process and
be presented to defend the design.
The 1.1 generative metaphor is “carrying –over” perspectives from one
domain of experience to another where you build one thing in terms of another
where the other is the model, and, what you build is the application, the model
being 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.
Axiom
II. 1.2.1 Peculiarization, personalization and authentication are required
for a metaphor to live. This the way the user metaphorize the using process,
the user and the work empathize. In this
is the art of making metaphors for the architect of public works. His metaphor
must “read” the cultural, social and rightness of the metaphor’s proposed
context.
A dead metaphor is one which really does not contain any fresh metaphor
insofar as it does not really “get
thoughts across”; designs without concerns for scale, hierarchies,
scenarios, surprise, delight, vistas, etc will be “dead”.
They are “techne”
driven, engineering a building without metaphoric concerns. Such a work is a techne driven design with craft-like knowledge.
Techne
is actually a system of practical knowledge. As a craft or art technê
which is informed by knowledge of forms
such as the craft of managing a firm of architects where even virtue is a kind of
technê of management and design practice, one that is based on an
understanding of the profession, business and market and technai are such activities as drafting, specifying, managing, negotiating,
programming, planning, supervising, and inspection; by association with
these technai, we can include house-building,
mathematics, plumbing, making money, writing, and painting. So much so that the study and practice of
design is devoid from the humanities and downplays theories of architecture
developing rather the crafts, skill and
understandings needed to engineer, plan, sketch, draw, delineate, specify,
write, and design.
Axiom
III. . 1.2.2/1.2.3
A conduit is a minor framework which
overlooks words as containers and allows ideas and feelings to flow, unfettered
and completely disembodied, into a kind of ambient space between human heads.
Irregardless of the details the
overall concept is “transferred “from one to the other, irrespective of
sub-dominant and tertiary design elements.
1.2.2/1.2.3
Conduit City-wide metaphor: Geometry
of urban blocks and the location of building masses that reflect one anther is
a scheme to sharply define the volume and mass of the city block and experience
of city streets (Vincent Scully).
In New York City the grid and this
insistence on buildings reflecting the geometry of the grid is a metaphor of
city-wide proportions. The streets are defined by the 90 degree corners, planes
and tightness of the cubes and rectangles to the city plan. In this way the
metaphor of the overall and each building design no mater where it’s location
on the block; no matter when or in what sequence the metaphoric constraint of
appropriateness or zoning formulas, all lead the ideas to flow from one to
another architect. Furthermore, the reader is able to “appreciate” (to attach
importance to a thing because of its worth) the street, its geometry, limits
and linearity as an idea on the 1.2.2/1.2.3
conduit from the architect, through the metaphor and to the reader.
Axiom
IV. Architecture shapes the culture. Building shapes and forms tend to reflect
common geometry; building types tend to share common facilities; building code
use designations influence the selection of applicable code requirements,
architecture, forming clusters and community spaces create opportunities for
neighborhood identity and nurturing cultural identity. 1.3“It's a strange thought, that culture is a product of
man-made, unnatural things, that instead of culture shaping the architecture,
architecture shapes the culture.
Axiom
V. Metaphor is a mental image. 1.4
Metaphor maps the structure of one domain
onto the structure of another”. 1.4.1 for
example, the “superimposition of the
image of an hour glass onto the image of a woman’s waist by virtue of their
common shape”. As before the metaphor is conceptual; it is not the works
themselves, but the mental images. In this case metaphor is a mental image.
“Each metaphorical mapping preserves image-schema structure:” In acting it is
called a” handle” where your whole character’s peculiarity is remember by one
acting device (accent, slang, twang, wiggle, walk, snort, etc) ;in architecture
the building’s roof top, cladding, silhouette, interior finishes, lighting,
gargoyles, entrance, rounded corners, etc.
If the facade of a building is designed
in one order of architecture you can presume the other parts are in like
arrangements where the whole may be of that same order including its’ plan, section and
details because of mapping and channeling one idea from one level to
another. 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 sat. In geometrical formal parts of an architectural
metaphor we note those common elements where fit, coupling and joints occur.
Axiom
VI. Since metaphor is the main mechanism through which we comprehend abstract
concepts and perform abstract reasoning:
1.4.3 what is built is first
thought and conceived separately from building, as thinking and conceiving is
separate from the outward expression, so metaphor is a process and
architectural metaphor is a process and what we see is what the process issues;
not the manifest metaphor.
Axiom
VII. The metaphor-building clarifies
our place, status and value.
As Metaphor is the main mechanism through which we
comprehend abstract concepts and perform abstract reasoning so works of
architecture inform our social, psychological and political condition.
Axiom
VIII. 1.4.4 Much subject matter, from the most mundane to the most abstruse
scientific theories, can only be comprehended via metaphor. The metaphor is
engrafted with knowledge about the state of contemporary technology, scientific
advancement, social taste and community importance, even an anonymous
Florentine back ally’s brick wall, carved door, wall fountain, shuttered
windows, building height, coloration of the fresco.
Axiom IX. 1.4.5 Metaphor is fundamentally conceptual,
not linguistic in nature. It is the difference between the thing and what we
perceive. Our perception of the building is the metaphor while the building is
the evidence of the design process and the keys to unlock our mind.
Axiom
X. 1.4.6 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.
Axiom XI. 1.4.7 Through 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 .
Axiom XII. 1.4.8 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.
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. 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).
Axiom XIII.
Commonalities are the keys to mapping
across conceptual domains 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 “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).1.4.9 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.
1.4. 10 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. 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.
1.4.11 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.
1.4.11
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.
1.4.11
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.
The buildings’ very existence is a metaphor and may not be
valued much more than an onomatopoeic.
1.4.12
a. Mappings are not arbitrary, but
grounded in the body and in every day experience and knowledge.
b.
Mapping and making metaphors are synonymous.
c. 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.
d.
In this way making metaphors is the process of empathizing.
1.4.13
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.
1.4.11 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 metaphor bridge from the
program, designs and contractors to a shelter and trusted habitat. The user
enters and occupies the habitat with him having formulated but not articulated
any of its characteristics. Yet it works.
1.4.11 “It makes sense, therefore, to speak
of
a. 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”.
b. “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 proclaims
c. 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.
d. 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. When this passage had been used as read as had
been other passages, corridors and links.
e. Like a linguistic, the building stands, like a
great, stone dagger, 1.4.11 emphatic against
the sky. The stair, the exit, the space
calls, gives emphasis and is strongly expressive.
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| Collage by Christina Fez-Barringten |
Axiom
XIV. Elegant architectural metaphors are those in which the big idea and the
smallest of details echo and reinforce one another. Contemporary architects
wrapping their parte in “green”,
“myths” and eclectic images” are no less guilty than was their predecessors of
the Bauhaus exuding asymmetry, tension and dissonance as were the classics and
renaissance insisting on unity, symmetry and balance. The architect’s parte and the user’s grasp of cliché parte were expected and
easy “fill-in” proving the learned mappings, learned inference trail and
familiarity with bridging.
1.5.1 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.
1.5.2
We see the architectural metaphor, we read its extent, we synapse, analogies
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.
1.5.3
Architecture is often more suggestive and trusting rather than being pedantic;
it leads and directs circulation, use 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 there 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.
1.5.4
Metaphor is in the mind: 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, a concerted effort on the part of the design team to
assemble the relevant and commonplace information.
1.5.5
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; Hospital surgical from outpatient and both from administration and
offices are obvious sets and subsets.
Axiom
XV. a. Shelter and its controlled creation contains sensual ,graphic and strategic information fulfilling shelter needs by real
deed rather than words of hope and future expectations.
b. The building and not its
metaphor is direct while its metaphor is indirect and being the sticks and
stones of its manifestation. Yet the metaphor may be explained with language it
would not accomplish the buildings shelter metaphor. The shelter prototype and
its incarnation is itself indirect since its referent is obscured by contextual
realities.
1.6.1
There is a difference between the
indirect uses of metaphor verses the direct use of language to explain the
world.
1.6.2
The distinctions and relationships
between
a.
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.
b.
Where articulation is being jointed together as a joint between two
separable parts in the sense of "divide (vocal sounds) into distinct and
significant parts" or
c. 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.
Axiom
XVI.
a. The two domains of the building
and its context may have analogies that relate to both, the site and the
building will absorb a high amount of pedestrian traffic: both are ambulatories
and both guide and protect the pedestrian. Like a building metaphor’s common
elements with an uncommon application the common connects to the unfamiliar and
the architect is able to find a way to bring them together and the user
discovers their relevance. The neighborhoods walkways and the access to and
through the building are analogous. As a child a Kresge 5 and 10 was built as
a huge and wide corridor diagonally connecting Westchester Avenue with Southern
Boulevard thus saving lots of steps, time and distance but providing a
wonderful weather-free comfort- zone cutting through this block. The joining
corners of the two avenues were filled with shops facing their streets which we
could alternately frequent as an alternate.
Alleys in big cities and Munich subway shopping malls are also examples
of these design analogies, called galleries, alleys, mews, etc.
1.7.1
Metaphors work by “reference to analogies
that are known to relate to the two domains”.
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| Collage by Christina Fez-Barringten |
a. A work of architecture has
integrity if the whole and the parts share the same architectural vocabulary
with respect to its building systems, materials and design philosophy. In a
building with dominant 90 degree, cube and squares we do not expect to find
plastic, curved and circular elements.
b. A built metaphor with all of its
metaphorical baggage call to mind another meaning
and corresponding set of truths.
c.
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.
1.8.1
A “problem of the metaphor concerns the
relations between the means of expression and design meaning, on the one hand,
and architect’s meaning or sketch 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”.
1.8.2.
What are the principles which relate built
design meaning to metaphorical design meaning” where one is comprehensive,
complete and coordinated while the other is merely an incomplete scanty
indication of a non specific.
1.8.3 How does on thing remind us of
another? The basic principle of an
expression with its literal meaning and corresponding truth-conditions can, in
various ways that are specific to the metaphor, call to mind another meaning
and corresponding set of truths”. 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 owners
are asked to translate a two dimensional set of drawings ass fulfilling their
design requirements to what might eventually be built.
Axiom
XVIII. Building style and decoration are often adaptations of a former and
existing building emphasizing economic and financial status, quest for status,
adaptations to local common ground of knowledge, beliefs, and attitudes. Choice
of structural, building systems, building height and color are often in the
vernacular of the building use (office, residential, commercial, industrial,
etc.) and the zoned and neighboring fashion.
1.9.1
a. Design is constrained by context
with few absolutes save the “sate of the art”, culture, precedence and social
opinion.
b. Human cognition is
fundamentally shaped by various processes of figuration (designs) (shaping
into a particular figure (design). The
ease with which many designs are
comprehended are as often been attributed to the constraining influence of the
context” ………..Including “the common
ground of knowledge, beliefs, and attitudes recognized as being shared by architects
and users (clients, public). One can say one’s design is affected; affected by
peer pressure (design profession) and the urge to communicate and adapt (win
awards, professional recognition). Medieval German, French and Italian cities
are replete with merchant building’s roofs configured, elongated and attenuated
to be higher than others. Near the Rhine, Germany’s Trier is a fine example.
Tropes are turn, twist, conceptual guises, and figurations
Axiom
XIX. A habitable metaphor is not meant for the user to fully, continuously and
forever recall all that went into its’ production. The fact that the roof
silhouette was to emulate a Belvedere in Florence, windows from a palace in
Sienna, and stucco from Tyrol is lost over time.
Even, the design principles so
astutely applied by the likes of Paul Rudolf, Richard Meier, or Marcel Breuer
may be unnoticed in favor of other internal focuses. These many design
considerations may be the metaphor that gave the project its gestalt that
enabled the preparation of the documents that in turn were faithful interpreted
by skilled contractors and craftsman. Yet at each turn it is the affect of
metaphor and not necessarily its specifics that make a good design not a great
work of architecture or a working metaphor.
1.10.1”
A metaphor involves a nonliteral use of language”. The building design and the
program cannot be a perfect mapping. A non-literal use of language means that
what is said is to have an affect and but may not be specific. At each moment in its use the metaphor may
mean different things, least of which may be any intended by its authors.
Axiom
XX.
a. Matching, copying and emulating
the design of other buildings or adapting the design of one to the current
project is adapted to the more familiar. 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.
b. Appreciation is when a built 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. My office is like my home.
1.11.1
The general public, users prefer the familiar, customary and traditional; forms
and uses which are prevalent rather than a new dissimilar design. 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).
1.11.2
“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.
Axiom
XXI. Buildings in one group often have more known versions than others. In one
city exposed wide flanged steel structures may be preferred to the reinforced
concrete in another, in Dubai and Qatar, the terms “high-rise”, “multi-story” and “iconic” are
synonymous and known to represent commercial buildings. “Iconic” is the trigger
for all the rest. High and rise used together recalls how the elevator and
quest for grated real estate earnings encouraged the higher number of floors
per single zoned building lot.
1.12.1 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 and Chicago are office building cities. I can
see only a flash glimpse and I will know it is Manhattan.
1.12.2 n/a
1.12.3
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. 1.12.3
“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”.
Axiom XXII. Without having 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. Escarlata
Partablela of Toledo brought me, a picnic lunch and her guitar to a small
mountain across from her city. She urged me to sketch while she serenaded.
After a while I noticed her wry smile as she scanned my sketches and when I
noticed how familiar they looked she confessed that she had sat me down on the
very spot El Greco sat to sketch “View Of Toledo”.
1.13.1
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.
1.13.2 Metaphor
is reasoning using abstract characters whereas reason by analogy is a straight
forward extension of its use in commonplace reasoning.
1.13.3 “In
processing analogy, people implicitly focus on certain kinds of commonalities
and ignore others”.
1.13.4 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.
1.13.5
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.
1.13.6
“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.”
1.13.7
“Thus, an analogy is a way of aligning and focusing on rational commonalities
independently of the objects in which those relationships are embedded.”
1.13.8
“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”.
1.13.9“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.”
Axiom XXIII. 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 then the obvious.
1.14.1
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.
1.14.2
Metaphors simply impart their commonplace not necessity to their
similarity or analogous.
 |
| Collage by Christina Fez-Barringten |
a.
Architectural metaphors are all about names, titles, and the access so that
the work provides the reader to learn and develop. At its best the vocabulary
of the parts and whole of the work is an encyclopedia and cultural building
block. The work incorporates
(is imbued with) the current state of man’s culture and society which is an
open book for the reader. The freedom of both the creator and reader to dub and
show is all part of the learning experience of the metaphor.
b. However objective, thorough and
scientific the designer and the design tools, the work gets dubbed with
information we may call style, personality, and identity above and beyond the
program and its basic design. It is additional information engrafted into the
form not necessarily overtly and expressly required.
c. Dubbing (imbuing) may occur in
the making of metaphors as a way in which the design itself is conceived and
brought together. Dubbing may in fact be the process which created the work as
an intuitive act.
d. Imbuing is often what
distinguishes the famous from the ordinary architect and the way the architect
dubs is what critics calls the art of architecture.
1.15.1When 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
(way of design, proportioning, arranging spaces, selections of materials,
buildings systems, etc. can be dubbed to enhance an otherwise “plain vanilla”
solution.
Axiom
XXV. 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.
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.
1.16.1
a. consider new concepts as being
characterized in terms of old ones (plus logical conjunctives)”
b. 2.0 As William J. Gordon points
out we make the strange familiar by talking
about one thing in terms of another.
1.16.2 We would not 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 author’s messages. We
learn the work. “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”.
1.16.3
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 .
1.16.4
Architects can express in design what cannot be expressed in words. About the
difference between words (which are limited and specific to concepts
Pylyshyn notes: “…in the case of words
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.
1.16.5
A work of architecture may begin with a design with our parte or program and
the find ideas which fit. 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.
1.16.6
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.
1.16.7
Vocabulary and reality about a building metaphor not coincide as the
perceptions and descriptions may only be to communicate and what communicates
may not be the reality of the experiences of a work of architecture. “The difference between literal and
metaphorical description lies primarily in such pragmatic consideration as (1)
the stability, referential specificity, and general acceptance of terms: and
(2) the perception, shared by those who use the terms, that the resulting
description characterizes the world as it really is, rather than being a
convenient way of talking about it, or a way of capturing superficial
resemblances”.
1.16.8
Pylyshyn asserts that: “metaphor induces
a (partial) equivalence between two known phenomenons; a literal account
describes the phenomenon in authentic terms in which it is seen.
Axiom
XXVI. Modern architecture wants to express the truth about the building’s
systems, materials, open life styles, use of light and air and bringing nature
into the buildings 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 movement.
1.17.1
“Analogical transfer theory (“instructive metaphors create an analogy between a
to-be-learned- system (target domain) and a familiar system (metaphoric domain
Axiom
XXVII. 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 sub-urban; they actually learn from the
metaphors that make up the context.
a. Visiting, sketching and writing
about over seventy European cities I noted the character and ambiance 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 no enjoyed in the present. In
this context there are the natives who experience these metaphors all their
lives and the visitor who is fist 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 the visitor the very same
metaphor may be interactive, creating the similarity under construction.
b. 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.
1.18.1
“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.
Axiom
XXVIII. 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 their
language is beyond speech and to the peculiar craft of their art of which their
practice and exercise develops new capacity and opportunity to teach and
express thought outside of the linguistics but is nevertheless perhaps as
valuable and worthy.
1.19.1 Metaphors have a way of extending our
capacities for communications.
1.19.2
“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.”
1.19.3
Metaphor is the solution insofar as it encodes and captures the information:”
transferring chunks of experience from well –known to less well known contexts;
1.19.4
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;
1.19.5 One picture is worth a thousand
words and how valuable are the arts as makers of who we are as a people,
society and time explains 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.
1.19.6
Built metaphors are vivid and indelible messages.” The mnemonic function of metaphor as expressed by Ortony’s vividness
thesis also points to the value of metaphor as a tool for producing durable
learning from unenduiring speech.”
Post script:
When kingdoms created dynasty’s iconic buildings
the architect and artisans took their ques from the reigning monarch. Buildings
were glorified vaults, fortresses and icons of power and identity. In our
modern pluralistic society the free reign of ideas and opinions about contexts
and their meanings are diverse. Now architects not only design public and commercial;
but housing, mixed use developments and even whole communities, towns and cites.
Not only is my childhood quest to find the whys and wherefores of buildings,
streets and rooms relevant but the essence of the responsibility of today’s architect
who not only reasons the technical but individually reasons the conceptual. It
is to the architect that society turns to be informed about the shape and form
of the context in which life will be played. With this charge the need to know that we know and do by reasoning
what science verifies by the scientific method to know that we know about the buildings, parks, and places we set
into the environment. It is a public and private charge included in the
contract for professional services but unspoken as professional life’s
experience; to prove the relevant, meaningful and beneficial metaphors that
edify encourage and equip society as well as provide for its’ health, safety
and welfare. So it is critical to realize, control and accept as commonplace
that the role of the architect is to do much more than build but build masterfully.
The commonality of all arts is that
they express something in terms of their peculiar craft and thus they (all
arts) are technically metaphoric, metaphors because they transfer, carry-over
and express one thing (some idea) in terms of another (the craft), as art is the
expression according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing,
or of more than ordinary significance. While all art is not expressed as a
linguistic metaphor all arts are metaphoric.
Not the fine arts[I] collectively which often excludes architecture
and is meant to ascribe value to a work as the “finest” (better than all the
rest), but all the arts are the principles or methods governing any craft or
branch of learning and to say that art is the making of metaphors is to state
it both expresses something in a language above common conversation and
peculiar to its genre as painting, sculpture, writing, dance, music, etc. The
same thing may be expressed by each art in such a different form peculiar to
its media that the commonality of the content is obscured; obscured or not, the
essence common to both is inherent in the work. Architecture can contain the
work of many different artist and art forms while it being a singular art. In
any case architecture as all art is a metaphor, made metaphorically and makes
metaphors. The principles of the transfer and how this applies to architecture
is summarized in the above axioms.
These axioms are the facts
supporting the claim of the stasis that it is not sufficient to claim that
architecture is an art [I] but by this linguistic analogy of the science
of linguistics, cognition and psychology derive new ways of creating, using and
perceiving built metaphors.
Citations listed alphabetically:
Boyd, Richard; 1.14.0
Conrad, Ulrich; 1.3
Fraser, Bruce; 1.10.0
Gentner, Dedre ;
1.13.0
Gibbs,
Jr., Raymond W.; 1.9.0
Glucksberg,
Sam; 1.12.0
Jeziorski, Michael; 1.13.0
Kuhn, Thomas S.; 1.15.0
Keysar,
Boaz; 1.12.0
Lakoff, George;
1.4
Mayer,
Richard E.; 1.17.0
Miller,
George A.; 1.11.0
Nigro, Georgia;
1.5.0
Ortony,Andrew;1.0
Oshlag,
Rebecca S.; 1.18.0
Petrie,
Hugh G; 1.18.0
Pylyshyn, Zeon W.; 1.16.0
Reddy.
Michael J.; 1.2
Rumelhart, David E.; 1.7.0
Sadock, Jerrold M.; 1.6.0
Schon, Donald A. ; 1.1
Searle, John R.; 1.8.0
Sternberg,
Robert J.; 1.5.0
Thomas
G. Sticht; 1.19.0
Tourangeau,
Roger; 1.5.0
Weiss,Paul; 1.4.11
 |
| Collage by Christina Fez-Barringten |
Footnotes:
1.0 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
1.1 Generative metaphor: A perspective on
problem-setting in social policy: by Donald A. Schon
1.2 The conduit
metaphor: A case of frame conflict in our language about language: by Michael
J. Reddy.
1.3 In Programs and Manifestoes on 20th-Century
Architecture about Glasarchitektur Ulrich Conrad'
1.4 The contemporary
theory of metaphor by George Lakoff
1.4.11 "Surrogates," published by Indiana
University Press. By Paul Weiss
1.5.0 Metaphor, induction, and social policy: The
convergence of macroscopic and microscopic views by Robert J. Sternberg, Roger
Tourangeau, and Georgia Nigro
1.6.0 Figurative
speech and linguistics by Jerrold M. Sadock
1.7.0 Some problems
with the emotion of literal meanings by David E. Rumelhart
1.8.0 Metaphor by John
R. Searle
Section on “Metaphor and Representation”:
1.9.0 Process and
products in making sense of tropes by Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr.
1.10.0 Interpretation
of novel metaphors by Bruce Fraser
1.11.0 Images and
models, similes and metaphors by George A. Miller
1.12.0 How metaphors
work by Sam Glucksberg and Boaz Keysar
1.13.0 In the Metaphor
and Science section of the book: The
shift from metaphor to analogy in Western science by Dedre Gentner and Michael
Jeziorski
1.14.0 Metaphor and theory change: What is”
metaphor” a metaphor for? By Richard Boyd
1.15.0 Metaphor in science by Thomas S. Kuhn
1.16.0 Metaphorical imprecision and the “top
down” research strategy by Zeon W. 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)
1.17.0 The instructive metaphor: Metaphoric
aids to students’ understanding of science by Richard E. Mayer
1.18.0 Metaphor and learning by Hugh G Petrie
and Rebecca S. Oshlag
1.19.0 Educational uses of metaphor by Thomas
G. Sticht
References:
[A] 3.0
“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] # =Wikopedia on the www.
[C] 4.0 WWW
[D] 5.0 “Difference and Identity” : 4.0 Gilles Deleuze (French pronunciation: [ʒil
dəløz]), (18 January
1925 – 4 November 1995) was a French philosopher of the late 20th century.
Deleuze's main philosophical project in his early works (i.e., those prior to
his collaborations with Guattari) can be baldly summarized as a systematic
inversion of the traditional metaphysical
relationship between identity and
difference.
Traditionally, difference is seen as
derivative from identity: e.g., to say that "X is different from Y"
assumes some X and Y with at least relatively stable identities. To the
contrary, Deleuze claims that all identities are effects of difference. Identities are neither
logically nor metaphysically prior to difference, does Deleuze argue,
"given that there are differences of nature between things of the same
genus." That is, not only are no two things ever the same, the categories
we use to identify individuals in the first place derive from differences.
Apparent
identities such as "X" are composed of endless series of differences,
where "X" = "the difference between x and x'", and
"x" = "the difference between...” and so forth. Difference goes all the way down. To
confront reality honestly, Deleuze claims, we must grasp beings exactly as they
are, and concepts of identity (forms, categories, resemblances, unities of
apperception, predicates, etc.) fail to attain difference in itself. "If philosophy has a positive and direct
relation to things, it is only insofar as philosophy claims to grasp the thing
itself, according to what it is, in its difference
from everything it is not, in other words, in its internal difference."
In analyzing a metaphor we
ask: “What are its commonalities and
significant differences and what are
the characteristics common to both”.
[E] 6.0 Webster’s
standard dictionary
[G] 8.0 The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor: a perspective from Chinese by Ning Yu
[I] 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.
[H] 9.0 Background:
The first lectures "Architecture as the Making of Metaphors (C)" were organized and
conducted by Barie Fez-Barringten near the Art and Architecture building at the
Museum of Fine Arts Yale University 11/02/67 until 12/04/67. The guest speakers
were: Paul Weiss, William J. Gordon, Christopher Tunnard, Vincent Scully,
Turan Onat, Kent Bloomer, Peter Millard, Robert Venturi,
Charles Moore, Forrest Wilson, and John Cage.
Three major questions confront both
the student and the practitioner of architecture: First, what is architecture?
Second, why is architecture an art? Third, what 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.
In 1967, a group of master students gathered to discuss the issuance of Perspecta 12, Yale's architectural journal - a discussion which summarized the sad state of the profession as well as the major environmental problems society was generating and failing to solve.
In 1967, a group of master students gathered to discuss the issuance of Perspecta 12, Yale's architectural journal - a discussion which summarized the sad state of the profession as well as the major environmental problems society was generating and failing to solve.
The group had already been exposed
to studies on the creative process, on contradictions of form, on the
comprehension of relevant facts of an existing life style, on planning systems,
in educational theories, and in building methodologies, yet it seemed that
fundamental question inherent in the profession were being skirted rather than
directly attacked.
During the series of colloquia at
Yale on art[I] , 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. Out of this concern grew the proposal for a lecture series
wherein professional and scholars would not only bring forward the uses of
metaphor but would also produce arguments against its use. For obviously there
can be dissent from the metaphorical method; in this case the dissent (which
focuses upon the possibility that the metaphor might obscure reality) actually
reinforces the metaphor's wide structural applicability.
Thus developed the
symposium, which was presented by the Department of Architecture at Yale in the
same year. 1967, with the intent "to illuminate, in order to refine and
develop, the idea because it makes metaphors; that a work of architecture is a
metaphor because it too blends certain programmatic specifics with concerns
implicit to its own medium. "Those exploring these possibilities included
Paul Weiss, William J. Gordon, Peter Millard, Robert Venturi and Charles Moore;
the following statements are edited transcriptions of a small portion of the
talks which were contributed to this discussion.
Published in Main Currents in
Modern Thought
J. Other titles in this 2009 series:
- Language
of architecture about metaphors
- Toward
a new architectural language based on metaphor.
- Axioms
about metaphors influencing Architecture
- Metaphor
and Cognition
- Metaphors and Architecture
- The
science supporting the stasis to architecture being an art:
- The
Principles of Art’s [I] & Architecture’s Technical and
Conceptual Metaphors.
- The
arguments (and resolutions) about architecture and metaphors
- Metaphor
axioms of art[I] ,
architecture and aesthetics
- Aesthetic
principles of metaphor, art and architecture
- Architecture is an art [I] because, as art, it too, makes metaphors
K. Full
Length Books:
1. B. Fez-Barringten, "Project
Manual Standards"
John Wiley
and Sons, (Contract to publish-only- New York
2. B. Fez-Barringten, "72 European Cities
Unpublished. Privately purchased.
3. B. Fez-Barringten, "Leipzig
4. B. Fez-Barringten, "A
metaphoric perspective of the Arabian Built-Environment" Unpublished.
5. B. Fez-Barringten, "Boats and
Buildings of Tarot Island
Book
Reviews:
"Evolution of the House/From
caves to Co-ops" by
Stephen Gardner; MacMillan Publishing Co. New York, 1974 (Not yet published)
Researched
Publications: Refereed and Peer-reviewed Journals:
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" Unpublished, 1993
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,
1993
8."The conditions of Arabia in
metaphor" Unpublished, 1993
9. "The
metametaphor theorem"Architectural Scientific Journal, Vol. No.
8; 1994 Beirut Arab University.
10. "Arabia’s metaphoric images" Unpublished, 1993
11."The context of Arabia in metaphor" Unpublished, 1993
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
16. WordGram #9
Permafrost:Vol.31 Summer 2009
Universty of Alsaka Fairbanks; ISSN: 0740-7890; page 197
17.. "Metaphors and Architecture."
ArchNet.org. October, 2009.MIT press
 |
| Collage by Christina Fez-Barringten |
L. TOC: Metaphor 2009
Monographs
- Deriving
the Multidiscipline axioms from Metaphor and Thought [1]
- Metaphor
and Cognition
- The
science supporting the stasis to architecture being an art [I]:
- Language
of metaphors applied to multidisciplined 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’s & Architecture’s Technical and Conceptual
Metaphors
- Framing
the art [A] vs. architecture argument
- Metaphoric Evidence
- Managing the benefits and risks of architectural artificial intelligence
M. Architecture: Originally meant master
builder; today the product and not the
act identifies the work as an act of things created by man that have an
independent life, consciousness and intelligence; things that work and affect
others. So as building designed by architects are tools for users so are
devices, systems and utilities having “artificial intelligence”.
