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| Collage by Christina Fez-Barringten |
“Architecture: the making of metaphors”
By Barie Fez-Barringten
Email:bariefezbarringten@gmail.com
www.bariefez-barringten.com
www.bariefez-barringten.com
As metaphors are central to thinking, perception and
cognition The science (evidence) supporting the stasis to architecture being an art
[I]: “Architecture is the making of
metaphors” directly
contributes to the formulation of scientific issues and theories in the
areas of memory, language comprehension and production, and cognitive
processes. Special emphasis is given to the axioms I derived from “Metaphor and
Thought” providing new theoretical insights based on a carefully laid empirical
foundation. I believe you will find The science (evidence) supporting the stasis
to architecture being an art a
significant theoretical paper of significant interest to your readers
interested in the language of art, buildings, places and the process that make
them.
The science (evidence) supporting the stasis to architecture being an art is a valuable tool for cognitive scientists, including psychologists, linguists, and others interested in memory and learning, language, reading, and speech. After all of the research is by scholars in these fields.
The science (evidence) supporting the stasis to architecture being an art is a valuable tool for cognitive scientists, including psychologists, linguists, and others interested in memory and learning, language, reading, and speech. After all of the research is by scholars in these fields.
How does a work of art, owners, inhabitants, designers,
government’s approval agencies communicate through works of art and
architecture? What is the role of Metaphor in the process of making works of
art and architecture?
The scope of The science (evidence) supporting the stasis
to architecture being an art [I]: “Architecture is the making of metaphors is that until now we did nothing to reason why art is the making
of neither metaphors nor why architecture is an art. Since 1967 I proceeded to
analyze the presumptions and find its many applications. This new information
in “Metaphor and Thought” by Andrew
Ortony first published in 1979, provides information to support inductive
reasoning and to this end each axiom is a part inferences of the above
syllogism and the answer to questions of why metaphor is the stasis to any of
the syllogism’s claims and implications. I warrant that what is true of the
part is true of the whole and there fore the evidence support the claims that
support the resolution that architecture is the making of metaphors. The science supporting the stasis that
architecture is the making of metaphors; resolving why architecture is an art; that architecture is an art
because it too makes metaphors.
I do not now have a corresponding author since my mentor
Paul Weiss is deceased. While he did not work on this manuscript he was
instrumental in its basics. I have based all of my findings on this work from Dr.
Paul Ortony and those in my citations.
Abstract:
Early monographs were
steeped in deductive reasoning since we could not find new information
pertaining to metaphors. Many of my monographs included analyzing and
explaining the syllogism:
- Art
is the making of metaphors
- Architecture
is an art
- Therefore
architecture is the making of metaphors.
Till now we did
nothing to reason why art [I] is
the making of metaphors, why architecture is an art nor why architecture is an
art [I]. Since 1967 I proceeded to analyze
the presumptions and find its many applications. This new information in Metaphor and Thought by Andrew Ortony
first published in 1979, provides information to support inductive reasoning
and to this end each axiom is a part inferences of the above syllogism and the
answer to questions of why metaphor is the stasis to any of the syllogism’s
claims and implications. I warrant that what is true of the part is true of the
whole and there fore the evidence support the claims that support the
resolution that architecture is the making of metaphors.
The science supporting the stasis that architecture is the making
of metaphors; resolving why architecture is an art [I]; that architecture is an art [I] because it too makes metaphors.
Introduction
The
many facets of metaphor and art [I]. The
below is predominantly developed from a study “Metaphors and Thought” by
Andrew Ortony, and are in addition to over forty years of work about
“architecture as the making of metaphors” (please see background after the
monograph for your information). I warrant that if these specifics are true
then my general claim must also be true. In this monograph I go from the
specifics to the general, so this is generalized reasoning.
The commonality of all arts [I]
is that they express something in terms of their peculiar craft and thus
they (all arts[I] ) are technically metaphoric, metaphors
because they transfer, carry-over and express one thing (some idea) in terms of
another(the craft). While all art [I] is
not expressed as a linguistic metaphor all arts [I] are metaphoric. Likewise, if architecture is the making of
metaphors what are the linguistic, psychological, and cognition science’s
commonalities between architecture and metaphors? This monograph is linguistic
analogy transferring from linguistic, psychological and cognitive fields to art
and architecture what has been scientifically studied. This is the “stasis”
(the state of equilibrium {equipoise} or inactivity caused by opposing equal
forces) of the controversy of architecture being an art; that if architecture
behaves, acts, looks and works like art [I]
than it too must be an art [I].
Why? Because it, too, makes metaphors, and those metaphors are
varied in depth, kind, scope and context. It is the stasis because it is
where art and architecture meet. The metaphor is the conceptual focal point.
While many claim that the architect is the “techne” artist being a
crafts man point has been conceptual and so useful as to bridge, carry-over and
provide both artist and architect a common authority over the making of the
built environment. As stasis, Architecture as the making of metaphors enables
the center of the dispute to be argued with common purpose. So this is a stasis
in definition which concedes conjecture. While there may be other concepts
justifying the relationship between art and architecture the metaphor is the
stasis, common ground and commonality apparent to me. It not only is apparent
but I have found has wide and broad applications to a variety of arts and
architectural definitions, practices and contexts. There may have been a time
when the architect was the “master builder” and the lead craftsman but that is
only true by his skill in drawing, design and specifying and not his skill as
master carpenter.
Discussion:
Before solidifying our hypothesis about architecture and metaphors
we both compare architecture to the art of sculpture reflecting Christina’s
work as a sculptress and my work as an architect and designer. It soon became
apparent that while we could easily agree that buildings were “sculptural”,”
colorful”,” lyrical”, “graceful”, ”rhythmic” etc. these were illusive and
neither a field, base, or what was it? A true commonality to all the arts [I], including sculpture and
architecture; so
The commonality of all arts is that they technically express
something in terms of their peculiar craft and thus they are metaphoric.
However technically metaphoric, how does architecture conceptually make
metaphors and is there an influence between the technical and the conceptual
architectural metaphor?
“If the walls could only speak”; they do! Are you listening?
“If the walls could only speak”; they do! Are you listening?
In 1967, during the series of
colloquia at Yale on art, Irving Kriesberg had spoken about the characteristics
of painting as a metaphor. It seemed at once that this observation was
applicable to architecture and to the 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. However, since
then, in 1977, a group of leading philosophers, psychologist, linguists, and
educators gathered at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to
participate in a multi disciplinary conference on metaphor and thought which
was attended by nearly a thousand people. Our symposium at Yale was had a
smaller attended and our proceedings were transcribed and later in 1971
partially published in Main Currents in Modern Thought. 1979 research
has been completed and documents in Andrew Ortony’s compendium book on metaphor
and thought to advance this metaphoric comparison.
With all the controversy around "knowing"; how do we
know we know and the inaccuracy of language and dubious nature of scientific
conclusions I have written over twenty monographs about architecture as the
making of metaphors? This is the first with the sciences of linguistic,
psychology and cognition definitions of the metaphor and therefore a set of
facts by which to base our comparison.
It is my hope that these commonalities will provide substantive
reasons to allow the metaphor linking architecture to metaphors as my theorem:
"architecture is the making of metaphors”. “If art is the making of metaphors
and architecture is an art [I] then
it too must make metaphors”. But until now, aside from this logic we have not
shown the informal logic, argument and evidence of this proposition. The axioms
also warrant the inference connecting the evidence to the claim and is a
deduction generalizing from specific evidence to the topoi.
The below is an
excerpt from my monograph of paradigms and axioms about architecture based on Metaphor and Thought. In each of the
below cases I have fist paraphrased the scientist's conclusions and based on a
notable commonality to architecture, described an architectural process or
product in the terms of each finding. Out of these comparisons I derived topoi
(3.0 A traditional theme or motif; a literary convention.) which I used to
describe architecture (scientist's conclusions and based on a notable
commonality to architecture).
1.1 Generative
metaphor: A perspective on problem-setting in social policy: by Donald A. Schon
Generative metaphor and the “parte”. In his “paintbrush as pump” discussion as a metaphor
Schon claims that by attaching to the paintbrush the “way” (processes) of a
pump the researchers were able to better improve the design of the paintbrush
as an instrument which pumps paint on the surface. By describing painting in an
unfamiliar way they were able to make dominant what was already somewhat known.
They then saw the brush as a pump. Before then they seemed to be different
things now they were the same. To arrive at this conclusion they had to observe
the working of the brush and make the observation and then apply it to the
mechanism. The paintbrush was now seen as a pump and the act of painting,
pumping. Schon refers to this a generative metaphor.
The generative metaphor is the name for a process of
symptoms of a particular kind of seeing-as, the “meta-pherein” or “carrying
–over” of frames or perspectives from one domain of experience to another. This
process he calls generative which many years earlier 2.0 WJ Gordon
called the Metaphoric Way of Knowing and 2.1 Paul Weiss called associations.
In this sense both in interior design
and architecture after assimilating the program the very first step in the
design process is to develop a “parte’ (An ex parte presentation is a
communication directed to the merits or outcome of a proceeding …it’s the
resolution of the argument consisting of claims, inferences, evidence and
warrants to the inference) .
It is a “top-down” approach later followed by designs which meet
the parte. The parte may follow the design process and be presented to sell the
product.
Commercial retail shops maximize both visual and physical access
to their merchandise by the use of glass and positioning entrances convenient
to potential shoppers’ paths of travel. Attached or detached the idea of the
shop as a flickering flame and welcoming transformed shops prior image as
formidable container into which one ventured for surprise and possible
revelation. With this is in mind designers of malls extend this accessibility
to nodes on highways to be close to their prime markets. Commercial retail is
now perceived as an attractive recreational experience and as such provides
shoppers with a secondary perception of the metaphor; shoppers now “carry-over”
from play, rest and relaxation to fulfilling their needs and necessities.
“Michael Angelo” mall in Qatar is designed in a Renaissance style with a huge
domed entry, shop facades and themes of the period, paintings, sculptures and
decoration reminding patrons that they are as royalty and in the lap of luxury.
This was also adopted by the Loews theatre chain when all of their
theatres were decorated with red velvet wallpaper, huge mahogany Tudor chairs;
chandeliers, plush Aubusson rugs, beautiful crystal and porcelain lamps and
accessories. During the depression and recovery patrons would come and spend
the day in the theater (Palace was not just the name of one of the down town
theaters but its description) to not only see the movie, but buy refreshments
and lounge in the many beautiful parlors and lounges.
In the middle of the twentieth century William Levitt
revolutionized and created the home building business as an industry applying
mass production of the home ideal containing what the Park Ave penthouses had;
built-in closets, complete kitchens with dishwashers, and even better, an
attached garage. Not only that but every single house was identical so that all
were part of a harmonious single minded community. It was called Levittown,
the miracle suburb on Long Island that opened the way for the middle class to
move out of New York City. They came to escape crowds and own their own home,
cook with their own appliances and mow their own lawns. They had GI loans in hand, babies on the way, and
a ‘50s brand of pioneering spirit.
Similar stories can be told of the
way the modern office building was catapulted by Otis’s invention of the
fly–wheel elevator and the conversion from iron to steel for building
structures. These inventions increased
real estate profits in as many as there are layers by building office space in
layers up to the sky as zoning, elevator and engineering would allow.
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
4.0 WWW; “In Europe the Grand
Central Railroad Terminal were built and then a clone brought to New York
City as part of the Park Ave Manhattan
Development Project including ten underground floors bringing freight,
shopping, auto parking, etc underground and into the center of the city
providing a hub extending from the thirties up to the nineties under Park Ave.
This grand scheme was only partially carried out but forever transformed Park
Avenue from a boulevard of swanky three story mansions to a sophisticated
high-rent district of high-rise residences and prestigious office buildings.
The first Grand Central Terminal was built in 1871 by shipping and
railroad magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt. A "secret" sub-basement known
as M42 lies under the Terminal, containing the AC to DC converters used to
supply DC traction current to the
Terminal designed to replicate the galleried hall of a 13th-century Florentine
palace. The train shed, north and east of the head house, had two innovations in U.S. practice: the
platforms were elevated to the height of the cars, and the roof was a balloon
shed with a clear span over all of the tracks.
In order to accommodate ever-growing rail traffic into the
restricted Midtown area, William J. Wilgus, chief engineer of the New York Central Railroad took advantage
of the recent electrification technology to propose a novel scheme: a bi-level
station below ground. Arriving trains would go underground under Park Avenue,
and proceed to an upper-level incoming station if they were mainline trains or
to a lower-level platform if they were suburban trains. In addition, turning
loops within the station itself obviated complicated switching moves to bring
back the trains to the coach yards for servicing. Departing mainline trains reversed
into upper-level platforms in the conventional way. Necessity being the mother
of invention burying electric trains underground brought an additional
advantage to the railroads: the ability to sell above-ground air rights over the tracks and platforms for real-estate
development. With time, all the area around Grand Central saw prestigious
apartment and office buildings being erected, which turned the area into the
most desirable commercial office district of Manhattan”.
In each of the above instances a metaphor was created by attaching
another concept to the primary function. Once the projects were thought of in
that added way the metaphor was born and under it the many metaphorical
spin-offs and sub-metaphors.
Not to mention the metaphor of the Empire State and the overall
iconic image of Manhattan and it’s New York State. Even today when we say New
York we mean downtown Manhattan. The city is” being pumped” by its metaphors.
1.2 The conduit metaphor: “A case of frame conflict in our language about language”: by Michael J.
Reddy.
1.2.1 A dead metaphor is one
which really does not contain any fresh metaphor insofar as it does not really
“get thoughts across”; “language seems rather to help one person to
construct out of his own stock of mental stuff something like a replica, or
copy, of someone’s else’s thoughts”.
The landscape is replete with an infinite number of inane replicas
which render readers dull, passive and disinterested (How many times will you
read the same book?) Mass housing, commercial office
buildings and highways are the main offenders leaving the owner designed and
built residence, office, factory, fire station, pump house, as unique and
delightful relief’s in an otherwise homogenized context. The reader stops
reading because it is the same as before. Not reading the copy yet seeing the
copy and the collective of copies focuses rather on the collective as the
metaphor as the overall project which also may be “dead”.
In its time, Levittown’s uniqueness and the sub-structures
sameness were its’ metaphor. It was alive and today still lives as new
residents remodel upgrade and exhume their “dead” to become a “living”
metaphor.
Disregarding this, the architects of public housing created dead
metaphors and blamed the lack of pride of ownership for their (the projects,
the architects, the public housing authority, and the federal housing authority
and US congress) failure. In revitalization, teams of revivalist have
discovered there is more than turf and proprietorship. Peculiarization,
personalization and authentication are required for a metaphor to live. In this
is the art of making metaphors for the architect of public works. His metaphor
must “read” the cultural, social and rightness of the metaphor’s proposed
context. In modern architecture no one was better able than Phillip Johnson in
his Seagram Building and Museum of Modern Art (MOMA). Johnson's early influence
as a practicing architect was his use of glass; his masterpiece was the Glass House (1949) he designed as his own residence in New Canaan, Connecticut, a profoundly
influential work.
The concept of a Glass House set in a landscape with views as its
real “walls” had been developed by many authors in the German Glasarchitektur
drawings of the 1920s, and already sketched in initial form by Johnson's mentor
Mies. The building is an essay in minimal structure, geometry, proportion, and
the effects of transparency and reflection. Johnson was the head of my Yale
thesis jury and my primary design associate on a project in Puerto Rico and
when I returned to Manhattan he invited me to work with him on the design of
Roosevelt Island.
Defining the operation of metaphor Reddy says that 1.2.2 “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. There are also individual pipes which allow mental content
to escape into, or enter from, this ambient space.
Thoughts and feelings are reified into an external 1.2.3 “idea space” and where thoughts and
feelings are reified in this external space, so that they exist independent of
any need for living human beings to think or feel them”. This most
closely resembles works of architecture and what goes inside and outside works.
“Somewhere we are peripherally aware that words do not really have insides (“it is quit foreign to
common sense to think of words as having “insides” ……………major version of the
metaphoric in which thoughts and emotions are always contained in something”) .
In his examples one can see a variety of putting ideas onto paper meaning that
the ideas are out of the head of the creator and onto paper to be read and then
transferred.
Architecturally this is best
reflected in the example pointed out by Vincent Scully describing the geometry
of urban blocks and the location of building masses that reflect one anther is
geometry to sharply define the volume and mass of the block and experience of
city streets. 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 matter where it’s location
on the block; no matter when or in what sequence the metaphoric constraint
appropriateness, zoning formulas, all lead the ideas to flow from one to
another architect. Furthermore, the reader is able to “appreciate” the street,
its geometry, limits and linearity as an idea on the conduit from the
architect, through the metaphor and to the reader.
Likewise a visit to the Tyrol will
immediately locate the conduit of design style as practically all chalets,
houses and villas have identical roofs, walls, balconies, windows, flower boxes
and doors. The conduit dominates and connectors builders, designers,
contractors, suppliers and buyers.
That conduit is the dominant
theme that unites all the villages. Interior decoration in the Bronx and
Brooklyn in the middle of the twentieth century was dominated by wall to wall
drapes, cornices, valences, upholstered furniture covered with slip covers,
ketch and bric-a-brac figures and “charkas” known affectionately as “Bronx
Renaissance”. The conduit that connected these outcomes were a system of
city-wide gift stores, national gift market, central fabric suppliers and
workshops and the heroic drapery hangers (of which I was one) completed their
work.
Conduit is the parte and design system from which choices in
structure, finishes, colors, textures, etc. follow. A really good design and
good designer can produce a set of documents and its detail follows easily as a
development of the logic found in the whole.
1.3 In Programs and Manifestoes on
20th-Century Architecture about Glasarchitektur Ulrich Conrad' writes: 1.3.1 “It's a strange thought, that
culture is a product of man-made, unnatural things, that instead of culture
shaping the architecture, it is the architecture (the environment) that shapes
the culture. I would guess it makes sense after some x amount of years....maybe
its in cycles: At first, culture creates the architecture, x years pass by, and
then the architecture-environment modifies the culture. Then new modified
culture creates new architecture, etc. (2):
But then if we only build steel, glass structures, wouldn't we suffer from the
glass metropolis in the future, when another form or material is introduced to
replace steel, concrete and glass?” The
affect of the metaphor on other metaphors with all its links and consequences
is manifest in the conduit which leads to one after the other and a
continuation of the first.
1.4 The contemporary theory of metaphor by George Lakoff:
About novel images and image metaphors he quotes 1.4.1 Andre
Breton’s “My wife……whose waist is an hourglass” he says: “By mapping the structure of one domain
onto the structure of another”, “This is a superimposition of the image
of an hour glass onto the image of a woman’s waist by virtue of their common
shape. As before the metaphor is conceptual; it is not the works
themselves, but the metal images.
Here, we have the mental image of an hour glass and of a woman and
we map the middle of the hourglass into the waist of the woman. The words are
prompts for us to map from one conventional image to another”. Lakoff
concludes that “ all metaphors are invariant with respect to their cognitive
topology, that is, each metaphorical mapping preserves image-schema structure:”
Likewise when we look at the geometrical formal parts of an architectural
metaphor we note those common elements where fit, coupling and joints occur. We
remember that which exemplified the analogous match.
This observation of the metaphor finds that the commonality,
commonplace and similarity are the chief focus of the metaphor. As Frank Lloyd
Wright designed his Prairie Architecture
with dominant horizontal axis thrust to his structure as common to the
horizontal axis of the land upon which the building sits.
Thus the two horizontal axes, the land and then the building were
wed by their commonality of horizontality.
In a city of sky-scrapers architects parallel their new shafts with those
adjacent with space between to form the architectonic of verticality, canyons
and shafts where the commonalty of all the vertical shafts bind them together.
The red tile roofs of the Italian Riviera, California’s Mission Architecture
are other such examples of commonalities; commonalities which are synonymous
with their identity and expected class.
We note the 90 degree angles and
shape that slide into one another. We note the way like- metals, clips and
angles fit; the way ceiling ducts are made to fit between structures and hung
ceiling, etc. While it is less possible when we circulate through its halls,
rooms and closets to spontaneously imagine the way we could relate the human
form to a building. Yet, its accommodation to our needs and necessities to our
self preservation and the maintenance of the building become apparent. We can
map the building structure to ours by finding the one commonality amongst all
the others. Very often we will hear someone say this place is” me”. The common
image has been located and the fit
made.
Describing generic specific structure he notes that they
are under the Invariance Principle and concludes that the way to arrive
at generic-level schemes for some knowledge structure is to extract its image
its image-schematic structure. This is called the Generic is Specific
Structure. He adds that it is an extremely common mechanism for
comprehending the general from the specific.
So what you can deduce for part you can assume is true of the whole.
So if the facade of building is in
one order of architecture, vernacular, and building system you can presume the
other parts are in a like arrangement and that the whole is of the classic
order including its plan, section and details. What are involved here are
mapping, channeling and one idea from one level to another.
1.4.2 According to Lakoff “plausible
accounts rather than scientific results” is why we have conventional
metaphors and why conceptual systems contain one set of metaphorical mappings
than another. An architectural work establishes its own vocabulary which
once comprehended become the way in which we experience the work, finding its
discrepancies and fits and seeking the first and all the other similar elements.
We do judge the work as to have consistency, integrity and aesthetics.
Buildings which do not have these characteristics do not work as metaphors.
The relevance of studying architecture as the making of
metaphors is to provide practitioners, owners, and mainly those that shape
the built environment that they have a somber and serious responsibility to
fill our world with meaning and significance, That what they do matters as in
this first of Layoff’s results (Please note the application of Layoff’s vocabulary,
definitions and descriptions related to linguistics metaphorically applied to
architecture): Summary of results:
1.
1.4.3 Metaphor is the main mechanism through which we comprehend abstract
concepts and perform abstract reasoning. For
example, as this is so for linguistics(spoken or written), then I infer that it
must be true for non linguistics ,and I give as evidence the built habitats and
their architectural antecedents, being as how what is built is first thought
and conceived separately from building as thinking and conceiving is separate
from the outward expression . Whether it is one or thousands public cultures is
influenced, bound and authenticated by its’ metaphors. Not withstanding
“idolatry”, the metaphors are the contexts of life’s dramas and as our physical
bodies are read by our neighbors finding evidence for inferences about social,
political and philosophical claims about our culture and its place in the
universe.
One of many warrants is recognizing, and operating the front door
of a castle as we would the front door of our apartment; another warrant is the
adaptive uses of obsolete buildings to new uses as a factory to multi- family
residential uses, etc. We see the common space and structure and reason the
building codes written to protect the health, safety and welfare of the
general; public can be applied and the found to be re-zoned to fit the new
uses in the fabric of the mixed-use zoned area; “comprehend abstract concepts
(building codes, design layouts, and building codes) and perform abstract
reasoning” (design and planning).
2.
1.4.4 Much subject matter, from the most mundane to the most abstruse
scientific theories, can only be comprehended via metaphor, even an anonymous Florentine back ally’s brick wall, carved door,
wall fountain, shuttered windows, building height, or coloration of the fresco.
3.
1.4.5 Metaphor is fundamentally conceptual, not linguistic, in nature.
After many years living in Saudi Arabia and Europe and away from
Brooklyn I visited Park Slope. I saw
the stoops ascending to their second floors, the carved wood and glass doors,
the iron grilles, the four story walls, the cementous surrounded and
conventionally pained widows but what I saw was only what I described. I did not recognize what it was; it was all
unfamiliar like a cardboard stage setting. I did not have a link to their
context nor the scenarios of usage and the complex culture they represented. I
neither owned nor personalized what I was seeing. All of this came to me without
language but a feeling of anomie for what I was seeing and me in their
presence, years later I enthusiastically escorted my Saudi colleagues through
Washington, DC’s Georgetown showing them the immaculately maintained
townhouses. I was full of joy, perceptually excited but my colleagues laughed
and were totally disinterested. These were not their metaphors and they could
hardly wait to leave the area to find a good Persian (they were Saudi Arabs)
restaurant to have dinner. They, like my self years before did not see what I
saw and more relevantly did not “get-the-concept”. Both of the above
anti-metaphor cases were conceptualized without words as would-be positive
cases of metaphor.
4.
1.4.6 Metaphorical language is a surface manifestation of conceptual metaphor.
As language is to
speech so are buildings to architecture where each has a content and inner
meaning of the hole as well as each of its parts. As each word, each
attachment, plain, material, structure had first been conceived to achieve some
purpose and fill some need. Hidden from the reader is the inner psychology,
social background, etc of the man when speaking and the programming deign and
contacting process from the reader of a building metaphor. As in completing an
argument the reader perceives the inferences with its warrants and connects the
evidence of the seen to the claims to make the resolution of the whole, all of
which are surmised from the surface.
5.
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.
The science of the
strength of materials, mathematics, structures, indeterminate beams, truss
design, mechanical systems, electricity, lighting, etc. are each understood
metaphorically and their precepts applied metaphorically but with often random
selections, trials and feasibility are random and rather in search of the
metaphor without knowing it is or is not a match and fit to be part of the
metaphor at hand. On the other hand we may select one or another based on
non-metaphorical, empirical tests and descriptions of properties. We then try
to understand the metaphor in the selection, its commonality, how it
contributes to the new application, how its properties within itself which
are alone, strange and unrelated; yet, when coupled with the whole or part of
the created metaphor contribute to metaphor.
For example, in the last 20 years store front's tempered glass has
been enhanced, thickened, strengthen and is now used in large quantities as
frameless curtain walls on private and massive public properties. A
non-metaphorical building product with one used in one context has been taken
out of a non-metaphorical understanding of properties and use to apply to
another. Our primary experiences grounded in the laws of physics of
gravity , plasticity, liquids, winds, sunlight, etc all contribute to our
metaphorical understanding often the conceptual commonality accepting the
strange .
In Belize, faced
with a an unskilled workforce and the government wanting fancy houses for its
government staff I choose a plethora of pre-engineered building components
from non architectural catalogs as
gigantic drainage pipes , sawn in half and used for roofs and in Tennessee
relocated the country look of indignities building with US Plywood's
"texture 1-11".
6. 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.
Owner occupied
specialized works of architectural metaphors may begin with long periods of
research, observations, and analysis ; conclusions and redesign and re-thinking
of existing or utility of new systems; setting our system feasibility, pricing
and meeting budgets, planning and programming, diagramming and design of
sub-systems and systems but when complete the metaphor is accessible, usable
and compatible.
The whole of the metaphor is designed in such a way as to clarify,
orient and provide “concrete” reification of all the design parameters into a
“highly structured’ work, a work which homogenizes all these diverse and
disjointed systems and operations into a well working machine. Building types
such as pharmaceutical, petrochemical laboratories, data research centers,
hospitals, space science centers, prisons, etc.
are such relatively abstract unstructured uses which only careful
assembly can order. Faced with both housing and creating identify the Greeks
and the Romans derived an Order of
Architecture which we now call the Classical
order of Architecture.
A classical order (of which Egypt was the first) is one of the
ancient styles of building design in the classical tradition, distinguished by their
proportions and their characteristic profiles and details, but most quickly
recognizable by the type of column and capital employed. Each style also has its
proper entablature, consisting of architrave, frieze and cornice. From the sixteenth century onwards,
theorists recognized five classical orders.
From its inception design professionals will look outside of their
field and the field of the proposed project to find organism, technologies
provides a conceptual handle as the inner working of microchips, mainframes,
submarines, rockets and jet propulsion, circus, markets, battleships and
air-craft carriers, etc.
Long before the common use of computers, and after faced with the
complex ways that teams of service
clerks communicating on the phone, accessing and sharing files and instantly
recording all transactions, I invented a huge a round table where all clerks
would be facing the center where would be sitting a kind of “Lazy Susan”. I
choose the Lazy Suzan because of my
experience in Chinese restaurants and selling Lazy Suzan’s as a young sales
assistant in a gift store in the Bronx. As a result of the overall design of
which this was one part the company’s business increased and prospered. The
commonplace was the central and revolving common tray which now contained
stacked file dividers instead of dishes of shared
food, where sharing at random was the commonality. One of the executive vice presidents befriended
me and later went on to head the New York Stock Exchange. The installation was
a success and was used until the company closed its doors many years later.
Layoff’s observations emphasize the instinctive, impulsive and
intuitive nature of the architect’s metaphor that takes place in its creation
and use. 1.4.9 Like the onomatopeics
metaphors Lakoff’s mappings of conceptions override the overt spoken and
descriptive and rely much more on mnemonics (something intended to assist the
memory, as a verse or formula).
However, for Lakoff the assistance comes from something much more
primordial (constituting a beginning; giving origin to something derived as a
form of life) to the society’s experiences.
These become the
matrix (encyclopedic) of schemas (in argument; the warrants {where a warrant is
a license to make an inference and as such must have reader's agreement}
supporting the inferences {mappings} wherein the metaphor becomes real). In
this way the reader maps, learns and personalizes the strange into the realm of
the familiar. The reader does so by the myriad of synaptic connections he is
able to apply to that source. Hence architects translate their
architectural conception from philosophy, psychology, sociology, etc into two dimensionally
scaled drawings and then to real-life full-scale multi-dimensional conventions
consisting of conventional materials and building elements (doors, windows,
stairs, etc).
As maps are the result of cartographers rendering existing into a
graphics for reading so is mapping to the reading of metaphors where the reader
renders understanding from one source to another. Doing so mentally and
producing a rendition of understanding (as a pen and ink of a figure) not as a
graphic but a conceptual understanding.
Reader sees in a critical way the existing culling through and
encyclopedia of referents to make the true relationship; the mapping which best
renders the reality; the relationship which informs and clarifies as the map
the location, configuration and characteristic of the reality. As the
cartographer seeks lines, symbols and shadings to articulate the reality so the
reader chooses from amongst the heretofore unrelated. The 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 reader’s new vocabulary.
In fact architects do the opposite as graphic renditions are made
of synapses between amorphic and seemingly desperate information. Yet the
process of mapping is no less intense as architects review the matrix of
conditions, operation , ideal and goals of the thesis to find similarities and
differences , commonalities, and potential for one to resonate with another to
make a “resolution” on the experience of a cognitive mapping which becomes the
metaphor, parte and overwhelming new reality. The new reality is the target of
the source and finally can be read. In the case of the birth of an infant
metaphor readers may find a wide variety of source information which is germane
to their own experience.
Before the public ever sees the constructed metaphor Building
Officials, manufactures, city planners, owners, estimators, general contractors,
specialty contractors, environmentalist, neighbors and community organization
frost read the drawings and map their observations to their issues to form a
slanted version of the reality. Their
mappings are based on the warrants which they are licensed to perform. Each
warrant will support a different mapping (inference) and result in its own
metaphor. In effect each will see a kind of reality of the proposed in the
perspective of their peculiar warrant, where license is permission from
authority to do something. It is assumed if one gets permission it has met the
conditions, operations, ideal and goals of the proposed metaphor. Mapping is
critical at this read to assure that
the architect’s rendering of the program is faithful to the cognitive, lawful,
physical and legal realities.
It s like a map which gets tested by scientist, navigators ,
pilots and engineers before they build a craft to use the map, or set out on a
journey using the map. Before the contracts start committing men and material
the metaphor must map and be the metaphor meeting all expectations.
Before building,
the suppliers, contractors and specialist make “shop drawings” to map the
metaphor and present the graphic evidence that they can fill their claim to
build for compensation. The architect’s team now gathers reviews and
coordinates all of these warrants to assure their mappings do not interfere,
nullify but additively contribute to the reifying of the source to the target
and build the final product, on time, on budget and within the allowed
schedule.
After opening the public users have the opportunity to map any and
all the information that is superficially available form the shell to its nuts
and bolts. Many enjoy reading the project while it is being constructed to read
the work and conceptualize the final form, the bits and pieces they observe,
mapping a single task to its final outcome and so forth. So the mapping of
construction by onlookers and contractors is all part of the mapping process.
Like a landscape artist who gathers from the chaos of the nature
into selected items to the artist who organizes into the canvas so that the
viewers will find what the artist saw, and reconstructs, so the architect and
the user map their reality into a metaphor. In this way the conception of the
map is the metaphor and what is made by the cartographer is a
"graphic" to simplify the chaos to find the commonality.
Sifting through the program the architect seeks the “commonality” between the
reality and experience to make the metaphor. Mapping is only possible when we
know the “commonplace”, the commonality, the characteristic common to both, the
terms that both the source and the target have in common that the mapping takes
place.
As the architect
structures his program, design and specifications he simultaneously structures
the metaphor of his work of architecture. Architecture consists of program
specifics where the conditions, operations, goals and ideals are from
heretofore unrelated and distant contexts but are themselves metaphors “mapped
across conceptual domains”. He
searches and constructs the project’s parte.
As the architectural program the mappings are asymmetric and
partial. The only regular pattern is their irregularity, and, like a
person can be read and understood, once one is familiar with the
personality and character, vocabulary and references, and of course the context
and situation of the work, the work can also be read and
understood. About Lakoff, in cognitive linguistics conceptual metaphor, or
cognitive metaphor refers to the understanding of one idea or conceptual domain in terms of another, for
example, understanding quantity in terms of directionality (e.g. "prices are rising"). Therefore
a conceptual domain can be any coherent organization of human experience.
The regularity with which different languages employ the same
metaphors, which often appear to be perceptually based, has led to the
hypothesis that the mapping between conceptual domains corresponds to neural
mappings in the brain. This idea, and a detailed examination of the underlying
processes, was first extensively explored by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson in their work 1.4.9 Metaphors
We Live By. Other cognitive scientists study subjects
similar to conceptual metaphor under the labels "analogy"
and "conceptual blending."
Lakoff continues:
7. / 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) is a fixed set of ontological (relating to essence
or the nature of being) correspondences between entities in source domain and
entities in target domain.
1.4.11 *love is a journey
Life is a journey
Social organizations
are plants
Love is war.
1.4.11 there is a list of over 100 schemas in many categories
about basic human behavior, reactions and actions. These schemas are the realms
in which the mappings takes place much the same as the inferences in arguments
have warrants and link evidence to claims so do these schemas, architects
carry-over their experiences with materials, physics, art, culture, building
codes, structures, plasticity, etc. to form metaphor. Identifying conditions,
operations, ideals and goals are combined to form plans, sections and
elevations which are then translated in to contract documents. Later the
contractors map this metaphor based on their schemes of cost, schedule and
quality control into schedules and other control documents. It is not until
equipment, laborers and materials are brought to the site that the manifestation
of the metaphor starts to form. Once formed the only evidence for the user
(reader) are the thousands of cues from every angle, outside and inside to
enable use and understanding.
The latter half of each of these phrases invokes certain
assumptions about concrete experience and requires the reader or listener to
apply them to the preceding abstract concepts of love or organizing in order to
understand the sentence in which the conceptual metaphor is used.
Operationally,
the work’s entrance is the first clue about the sequence of experiences of
the metaphor taking us to the anticipated lobby, then reception followed by
sequences of increasingly private (non-communal) and remote areas until
reaching the terminal destination. The very size, context and location is
couple with theme of parks, gated communities, skyscraper’s roof tops and
cladding becoming a metaphor. The very outer edges of a metaphor portends of
its most hidden content. Once we understand the metaphor and the mapping from
the context to the form the mapping continues from entrance to the foyer and
mapping from the context and cladding to every detail. We carry-over and map
the metaphor as we delve deeper into its content and inner context always
mapping the first to the current metaphor.
In linguistics and cognitive science, cognitive linguistics (CL)
refers to the school of linguistics that understands language creation,
learning, and usage as best explained by reference to human cognition
in general.
It is characterized
by adherence to three central positions. First, it denies that there is an autonomous
linguistic faculty in the mind; second, it understands grammar in terms of conceptualization;
and third, it claims that knowledge of language arises out of language use.
Therefore the metaphor of architecture is inherent not in the
media of the building’s presence, parts or bits and pieces but in the mind of
the reader and that the articulation of the metaphor as thinking and third that
our use of the metaphor increases our knowledge of the metaphor and reading
metaphors comes out of practice. The more we view paintings, ballets,
symphonies, poetry [I], and
architecture the better we become at their understanding. Its metaphor further
dwells in the reader while the building and its parts exist without necessarily
being understood. As the writer of the speech extrapolates so does the
architect and the speaker as the reader of the metaphor where the metaphor can
only be experienced to be understood.
Walk though an
unlit city at night and feel the quite of the building’s voices because the
readers have no visual information and with access to the closed buildings the
metaphor is a potential while being a reality. Yet the potential for cognition
does exist and is real but will not understand apart from its experience.
1.4.11 Humans interact with their environments based on their
physical dimensions, capabilities and limits. The field of anthropometrics (human measurement) has unanswered questions,
but it's still true that human physical characteristics are fairly predictable
and objectively measurable. Buildings scaled to human physical capabilities
have steps, doorways, railings, work surfaces, seating, shelves, fixtures,
walking distances, and other features that fit well to the average person.
1.4.11 Humans also interact with their environments based on their
sensory capabilities. The fields of human perception systems, like perceptual psychology and cognitive psychology, are not exact sciences,
because human information processing is not a purely physical act, and because
perception is affected by cultural factors, personal preferences, experiences,
and expectations, so human scale in architecture can also describe buildings
with sightlines, acoustic properties, task lighting, ambient lighting, and
spatial grammar that fit well with human senses. However, one important caveat
is that human perceptions are always going to be less predictable and less
measurable than physical dimensions.
1.4.11 Basically the scale of habitable metaphors is the
intrinsic relation between the human figure and his surroundings as measured,
proportioned and sensed.
It is dramatically represented by Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man (see below illustration) is
based on the correlations of ideal human proportions with geometry described by
the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius, representation of the human
figure encircled by both a circumference encapsulating its’ feet to its
outstretched fingertips where part is then encased in a square.
This scale is read in elevations, sections, plans, and
whole and based realized in the limited and bound architectural space. These
spaces and their variations of scale are where the reader perceives the
architectural metaphors of compression, smallness, grandeur, pomposity,
equipoise, balance, rest, dynamics, direction, static ness, etc. In his Glass
House, Phillip Johnson extended that space to the surrounding nature, making
the walls the grass and surrounding trees, St. Peter’s interiors is a Piranesi
space. (The Prisons (Carceri d'invenzione or 'Imaginary
Prisons'), is a series of 16 prints produced in first and second states that
show enormous subterranean vaults with stairs and mighty machines.
1.4.11 Piranesi vision takes on a Kafkaesque and Escher-like distortion, seemingly erecting
fantastic labyrinthian structures, epic in volume, but empty of purpose. They
are cappricci -whimsical aggregates of monumental architecture and
ruin). Many of my pen and ink drawings were inspired by the Piranesi
metaphor. In St. Peters the spaces are so real that they imply the
potential for all mankind to occupy. The scale of the patterns on the floor are
proportional to the height and widths enclosing the space they overwhelm the
human figure as does the Baldachino whose height soars but is well below the
dome covering the building.
The metaphor is
instinctively perceived, mapped and sorted by mnemonic schemas as is New York’s
Radio city Music Hall designed by my former employer Edward Durrell Stone and the entrance to the Louver by IM Pei. The surrounds of offices and
shops by Michael Angelo feature
window and door propositionally designed to man’s scale and perfectly mitigate
the universal scale of the 1.4.11 Piazza did San Marco (St. Marks Plaza).
Recalling the plazas of Italy Stone designed and I developed the State University of New York in Albany
(SUNY) which featured metered arches, columns and pilasters on buildings to
mitigate the various scales of both the large and small plazas.
My interview for the job where Bob Smith, his office manager,
proudly entertained Mr. Stone and his board with an array of my portfolio
covering all four walls of his executive conference room.
The project gave me the opportunity to plan, design and details
many plazas, monumental and convenience stairs as well as the way they would be
enclosed and encased to demark the plazas, plinths, terraces and porticos of
the galleries and circulation areas. Like Radio City this project was a grand
public works metaphor recalling the Parthenon, Rome, Venice and the many tiny
urban villages I had visited including Lucca, Sienna, Florence, etc. My book on
72 European cities includes many pen and ink drawings of each city.
1.4.11 The below
is where human scale in architecture is deliberately violated:
2.0 For monumental effect. Buildings, statues, and memorials are
constructed in a scale larger than life as a social/cultural signal that the
subject matter is also larger than life. An extreme example is the Statue of
Liberty, the Washington Monument, etc.
2.0 For aesthetic effect. Many architects, particularly in the Modernist
movement, design buildings that prioritize structural purity and clarity of
form over concessions to human scale. This became the dominant American
architectural style for decades. Some notable examples among many are Henry Cobb's John Hancock Tower in Boston, much of I. M. Pei's
work including the Dallas City Hall, and Mies van der Rohe's Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin.
2.0 To serve automotive scale. Commercial buildings that are
designed to be legible from roadways assume a radically different shape. The
human eye can distinguish about 3 objects or features per second. A pedestrian
steadily walking along a 100-foot (30-meter) length of department store can
perceive about 68 features; a driver passing the same frontage at 30 mph (13
m/s or 44 ft/s) can perceive about six or seven features. Auto-scale buildings
tend to be smooth and shallow, readable at a glance, simplified, presented
outward, and with signage with bigger letters and fewer words. This urban form
is traceable back to the innovations of developer A. W. Ross along Wilshire Boulevard
in Los Angeles in 1920.
8. / 1.4.12 Mappings
are not arbitrary, but grounded in the body and in every day experience and
knowledge.
Mapping and making
metaphors are synonymous. The person and not the work make the metaphor.
Without the body and the experience of either the author or the reader nothing is
being made. The thing does not have but the persons have the experiences. As
language, craft, and skills are learned by exercise, repetition and every day
application so are mappings. Mappings are not subject to individual judgment or
preference: but as a result of making seeking and finding the commonality by
practice.
Architects learn to associate, create and produce by years of
education and practice while users have a longer history approaching and
mapping for use and recognition. Yet new metaphors are difficult to assimilate
without daily use and familiarity.
Often the owners of
new building will provide its regular occupants with orientation, preliminary
field trips and guided tours. Many buildings restrict users’ access by
receptionist, locked doors and restricted areas.
It is not hard to experience a built metaphor as it is an ordinary
fixture on the landscape of our visual vocabulary. It has predictable, albeit
peculiar and indigenous characteristics the generic nature of the cues are
anticipated.
9.
/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 our
mapping vocabulary. As a potential user when encountering a new building type
such as a hi-tech manufacturing center we call upon our highly structured
subsystem to find conceptual systems which will work to navigate this
particular event. Another example is as a westerner encountering a Saudi Arab
home which divides the family from the public areas of the house as private. In
the high tech building doors will not open and corridors divert visitors away
form sensitive and secret areas. In the Arab home the visitor is kept in area
meant only for non-family members and where the females may not be seen. There
is a common conventional metaphorical mapping which uses a highly structured
subsystem of the conceptual system. There is a similarity and an ability to
accept and the constraints. The metaphor or the work of architecture
includes each and every nut and bolt, plane and volumes, space and fascia, vent
and blower, beam and slab, each with there mappings parallel to operational
sequences, flows representations, openings and enclosures so that they operate
in tandem and compliment one another. The conventions come from the experiences
of doors that open, elevators that work, stairs that are strong, floors that
bear our weight, buildings that don’t topple, and basic experiences that prove
verticality, horizontality, diagonals, weights of gravity, etc.
And finally Lakoff
concludes the structure of metaphor claiming that:
10 / 1.4.14There
are two types of mappings: conceptual mappings and image mappings; both obey
the Invariance Principle. “A. Image metaphors are not exact “look-alikes”;
many sensory
mechanisms are at work, which can be characterized by Langacker’s focal
adjustment (selection, perspective, and abstraction); B. images and
Image-schemas are continuous; an image can be abstracted/schematized to various
degrees; and C. image metaphors and conceptual metaphors are continuous;
conceptual metaphorical mapping preserves image-schematic structure (Lakoff
1990) and image metaphors often involve conceptual aspects of the source image.
(“All metaphors are invariant with respect to their cognitive topology, that
is, each metaphorical mapping preserves image-schema structure:”
Likewise when we look at the geometrical formal parts of an
architectural metaphor we note those common elements where fitting, coupling
and joints occur), again this simultaneity of ideas and image operating in
tandem where we see and know an idea simultaneously; where the convention of
the architectural space and the metaphor of the conception converge.
Image
mappings in architecture finds schemes from a repertoire of superficial
conventions except in a Japanese or Arab house where we are asked to sit on the
floor or eat without knives and forks or find no room with identifiable
modality of uses, or a palace with only show rooms where living is behind
concealed walls. A hotel’s grand ballroom is both a room in a palace, a place
for royalty, we must be one of them, yet a congregation of guests in black ties
and gowns are contemporary and family celebrating a wedding. Incongruities
merge in continuous and seamless recollections.
# 1.4.11 In cognitive linguistics, the invariance principle
is a simple attempt to explain similarities and differences between how an idea
is understood in "ordinary" usage, and how it is understood when used
as a conceptual metaphor.
Kövecses (2002:
102) provides the following example based on the semantics
of the English verb
to give.
She gave him a
book. (Source language)
Based on the
metaphor causation is transfer we
get:
(a) She gave him a kiss.
(b) She gave him a headache.
However, the
metaphor does not work in exactly the same way in each case, as seen in:
(b') She gave him a
headache, and he still has it.
(a') *She gave him
a kiss, and he still has it.
1.4.11 The invariance principle offers the hypothesis that metaphor only maps components of meaning from
the source language that remain coherent in the target context. The components of meaning that remain
coherent in the target context retain their "basic structure" in some
sense, so this is a form of invariance.
Architecturally, users encounter a habitable metaphor with their
experience engrafted in a particular mapping inherent in their catalog of
mappings. This mapping has its own language , vocabulary say of the way doors,
windows floors, stairs and rooms names work and the user brings this vocabulary
into, the target metaphor, say a new office building.
Of course there will be all sorts of incongruities, similarities
and differences. However this principle points out that the office building
vocabulary will retain its basic structure. This means that while the
vocabulary the user brings to the target from the source will be unchanged
still keeping the images of doors, windows, etc as they were in the residential
the office will be unchanged and unaffected. For example when an architect
designs a bank from his source in the size, décor and detail of medieval great
hall the target of banking with all its vocabulary of teller windows, manager’s
carols, customer’s areas, vaults, etc will not change into medieval ways of
serving, storing and managing the business.
When I designed a precinct police station for Bedford
Stuyvesant I brought the community, park and community services onto the
street and public pedestrian sidewalks while housing the police offices, muster
and patrol functions to the back and under the building. While the building
metaphor is now a community service police station mapping components of
meaning from the source language of user and community friendly, human scale,
public access and service which remained in the target police station. The
vocabulary of all the police functions remained coherent, perceived and
understood and did not vary. The problem is particularly interesting when the
metaphor of a shopping mall with commercial retail shops brings its language to
a target context of a hotel with service support. The front and back of the
hotel, the rooms and maintenance and the transience of guest will remain
coherent, overlaid with malls covered, circulation and service area. The
separated spaces will face the ambulatory and be separately accessible to
visitors. Such a combination you can see art work in airport terminals being
open shops and passenger circulation to a common metaphor.
1.4.15 Of the eight aspects of metaphor Lakoff describes the two
most applies to architecture which is:
Our system of conventional metaphor is “alive” in the same sense
that our system of grammatical and phonological (distribution and patterning of
speech sounds in a language and of the tacit rules governing pronunciation.)
rules is alive; namely it is constantly in use, automatically, and below the level of consciousness and Our metaphor system
is central to our understanding of experience and to the way we act on that
understanding.
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, its very
existence a metaphor. In both his books on Emphatics and Surrogates Dr.
Weiss amplified this theory.
1.4.11 Before his death at 101 years of age completed a book
called "Emphatics," about the use of language. Dr. Weiss
worked in the branch of philosophy known as metaphysics, which addresses
questions about the ultimate composition of reality, including the relationship
between the mind and matter. He was particularly interested in the way people
related to each other through symbols, language, intonation, art and music. Emphatics,
(2000), which considers how ordinary experience stands in some dynamic
relationship with a second dimension, which provides focus, interruption,
significance, or grounds for the first.
1.4.11 "Surrogates," published by Indiana
University Press. Weiss says that: “A surrogate is "a replacement that is
used as a means for transmitting benefits from a context in which its’ user may
not be a part”. Architecture’s metaphors bridge from the program, designs and
contractors a shelter and trusted habitat. The user enters and occupies the
habitat with him having formulated but not articulated any its characteristics.
Yet it works. “It makes sense, therefore, to speak of two sides to
a surrogate, the user side and the context side (from which the user is absent
or unable to function). “ Each of us uses others to achieve a benefit for
ourselves. “We have that ability”. “None of us is just a person, a lived body,
or just an organism. We are all three and more. We are singulars who own and
express ourselves in and through them. In my early twenties I diagrammed a being
as “”appetite”, “desire” and “mind”. I defined each and described there
interrelationships and support of one another. Metaphor is one and all of these
and our first experiences of sharing life with in to what are outside of us.
As Weiss describes our mother language and other primary things we
too ascribe like relations with objects and even buildings assigning them the
value from which we may benefit and which may support. As Weiss 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. Weiss:” It is surely desirable to
make a good use of linguistic surrogates”. “A common language contains many usable
surrogates with different ranges, all kept within the limited confines that an
established convention prescribes”
It is amazing how that different people can understand one another
and how we can read meaning and conduct transaction with non-human extents,
hence architecture. Architecture is such a “third party” to our experience yet
understandable and in any context. In his search for what is real Weiss says he
has explored the large and the small and the relationships that realities have
to one another. Accustomed to surrogates architecture is made by assuming these
connections are real and have benefit. Until they are built and used we trust
that they will benefit the end user.
Assembling the ambulatory we assume the occupancy, frequency and
destinations. We each are surrogates to one another yet fitted into one
message. When this passage had been used as read as had been other passages,
corridors and links. Like a linguistic the building stands, like a great, stone
dagger, emphatic against the sky. The stair, the exit, the space calls, gives
emphasis and is strongly expressive.
Despite their styles, periods, specific operations, conditions,
operations and goals; despite their building types, country, national language,
weather , climate, culture, etc. doors, openings, windows, stairs, elevators,
floors, walls, roofs, ramps, landscaping, cladding, decoration, furniture,
curtains, etc are all immediately understood and mapped from past to present ,
from other to present context and form individual to community of uses. A door
in a private house is a door in a public concert hall. In fact its differences
are naturally assimilated and unconsciously enjoyed.
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. Both the
architects’ ant the public could not help but know the rules and seek
confirmation from one end to the other. 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 Paraphrasing: “people ascertain the deep metaphor that
underlies one or more surface metaphors by filling in terms of an implicitly
analogy”. It is the “filling in” wherein the synapse (a region where
nerve impulses are transmitted and received, encompassing the axon terminal of
a neuron that releases neurotransmitters in response to an impulse) takes
place.
1.5.2 Synapse is metaphor where two are joined together as the
side-by-side association of homologous paternal and maternal chromosomes during
the first prophase of meiosis. How this happens is as biblical as: “faith is
the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” where our
mental associations are themselves the metaphor, the evidence of the works we
do not actually see. We see the metaphor, we read its extent, we
synapse, analogies and metaphorize absorbing its information, contextualizing
and as much as possible and 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 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 represents which when
explored, inert what we call beautiful, pleasurable and wonderful.
1.5.4 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. Architects would not be known as artist nor
should their works be known as works of art [I]. Both their works are the “deep” while the owners deal with the
“surface”; the true architectural artisan has deep and underlying
metaphors predicated two and three dimensional space analysis, history,
culture, class, anthropology, geography etc. They all are often underlying the
surface of the choices of lighting, material, claddings, etc.
1.5.5 In a discussion of theories of representation Robert
J. Sternberg, Roger Tourangeau, and Georgia Nigro proposes that a spatial
representation in which local subspaces can be mapped into points of
higher-order hyper-spaces and vice versa and that is possible because they have
a common set of dimensions.
In this way the many architectural elements are fitted and combine
to make a unity. It can be argued that the seen is not at al the metaphor but
the transfers, bridges and connections being made apart from the building. In
filling in the terms of the analogy lies the metaphor. My design of a New Haven
Cultural Center Concert Hall brought the visitors form entrances on the plaza
under the stage and orchestra and up a ramp into the theatre facing the
audience where they would be after socializing. One seated they world be
watching the stage and the very access back to the street. This would also be
the place where refreshments were served and all would observe. The audience
was planned to be the entertainment along with the musicians on stage. The
architects have tools to control the metaphor and allow the users to replay
precisely what was intended by the architect. My proposal for an exhibit
called: Contemporary Theories of the Universe” consisted of a giant
sphere enclosing a continuous ramp on the inner circumference going from top to
bottom around a three dimensional mobile of our galaxy.
The entry elevators brought visitors to the top and as they made
their way down they could see were overhead and side exhibits telling the story
of the various theories of cosmology and the creation of the universe. From the
metaphor of the idea, a sphere containing the universe about the universe to
the design of the entrance, elevators, ramps, exhibits and central galaxy the
mapping of the experience was from the design to the perception. (P.S. Many
years later I was to find one of my former professors design a similar building
for the New York City Museum of Natural History as an adjunct the to the famous
Hayden Planetarium) .
1.6.0 Figurative speech and
linguistics by Jerrold M. Sadock apologizes for the inconsistencies, lack
of derivatives and many unexplained changes in linguistics to explain the way
metaphor is used and understood, misused and misunderstood.
Likewise, the street talk that permeated my childhood was a string
of “sayings, clichés, proverbs and European linguistic slang. This was
contrasted by the poetry of songs and medieval literature. The architecture was
the only source of my identity having consistency, reputation and allusions
toward science, logic and consequence. I just know there was something out side
of this circus. Although I could not derive what I saw I could document and
retain the types and details of each type. My hunger and thirst to know what,
why and how to make these spurned each morning waking before dawn and doing
reconnaissance from the time I was three till I was in my teens.
My tours were capricious and free roaming (my version of play) but
not my curiosity where the metaphors fed me with my identity and certainty of a
reality. The neighborhood authenticated my persona, family and location. Later
my study of architecture was organically adjunctive while reason for study was
to further my own metaphor. Figurative or not , the metaphors I perceived then
are still my “boiler-plate” and when I scrutinized and sketched over seventy
European cities I was able to find metaphors, similes, and analogies. All was
helped by preceding studies under architectural historians as: Ross, Popiel,
Maholy Nage and Vincent Scully (to name a few). However, Sadock’s examples and apologies only remind me
that my work to derive the phenomenon of architecture as the making of
metaphors is in its’ infancy, beginning to develop a vocabulary and
understanding for the architectural profession and its’ allies. There are none
known to me that today regards the social psychological building metaphors in a
way that translates into practice. As a result, as Sadock bemoans he also apologizes for the
inconsistencies, lack of derivatives and many unexplained changes in
linguistics.
1.6.1 He thus discusses the difference between the indirect use
of metaphor versed the direct use of language to explain the world. . In some circles this is referred to tangential
thinking, that approaching a subject from its edges without getting to the
point. Users can accept works which are vague, inane, and non-descript,
evasive, and disorienting. Public housing, “ticky-tack” subdivisions, anonymous
canyons of plain vanilla towers with countless nameless windows, offices with a
sea of desks, nameless workstations and the daunting boredom of straight
highways on a desert plain. This too applies to works of architecture
which assembles a minimum and constructs the minimum in a stoic fashion
considering the least needed to produce a work that fills the minimum economy
of its commission. As such many architectural works escape the many and various
realities settling for a minimum of expression of and otherwise prolific
potential.
1.6.2 He distinguishes and draws relationships between micro
and macro metaphors and the way they can inform one another as the form of
design may refer to its program, or a connector may reflect the concept of
articulation as a design concept. The way one 45 degree angle may reflect all
the buildings geometry. More the way the design concept, design vision drawn on
a napkin can be the vision, gestalt, formulae, and “grand design” of a
particular project. Such an ideal can be the seed, fountainhead and rudder
guiding all other design decisions.
The macro metaphor
drives the micro while they both inform one another. Classic, Egyptian, Greek,
Roman, Empire, Bedemier, Renaissance, Modern, Baroque, Rocco, Gothic, Tudor,
etc are examples of styles and periods where a macro design imperative controlled
micro decisions. And, vice versa, where construction means and methods
determined certain design and style as the flying buttress and buttress of the
Gothic’s, the arch for the Romans.
The renaissance not only was informed by discoveries of the Roman
classics but by the intellectual and spiritual exuberance so well rendered in
music, art, sculpture and in architecture by the eccentric articulation and
bulging of figures in pediments, capitals and the form of the plans and
sections. Likewise the macro Bauhaus and
its principles doggedly produced the architecture of Mies, Johnson, Breuer,
Corbusier, Gropius, and Meier turning away from fanciful experimentation, and
turned toward rational, functional, sometimes standardized building.
In a lesser way the design vernacular of Frank Lloyd Wright was a
macro design approach from which micro design of particular spaces, details and
decoration.
1.7.1 Metaphors work by “reference to analogies that are known
to relate to the two domains”. In other words there is apriori knowledge of
these before they are spoken and when heard they are immediately found. 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.
1.8.0 Metaphor by John R. Searle is concerned with “how metaphors work”. As we are concerned with
how architectural metaphors work we can draw some analogies.
1.8.1 A” problem of the metaphor concerns the
relations between the word and sentence meaning, on the one hand, and speaker’s
meaning or utterance meaning, on the other” “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”.
With the exception of major corporate brands, churches, specialty
building in architecture the examples is in infinite as most works designed are
with no intended message, meaning or referent. Many are in the class of others
of its types and generally convey their class while others are replicas and
based on a model. Furthermore most architects have a design vocabulary which is
foreign to the user. Conversely, in public buildings, the user’s expectations,
use and expectations are foreign to the architect. At its best the architect
may connect the vocabulary of his design to some exotic design theory which,
results I a very beautiful and appealing building to which the user finds
beautiful but has no idea about the intended making of the whole or its parts.
But some how it works!
After formulating a program of building requirements and getting agreement
that the words and diagrams are approved by the client. If the architect
built-work can meet this program and come to be the building the client
intended is such an example of the work of architecture as a metaphor and
metaphorical work. (They carry-over, bridge, and are each others
advocate).
Limited to meeting the program and the fulfilling the design
contract says nothing about the unintended consequences of the building on the
context and the way the metaphor outcome impacts for users, community and the
general public. In some ways this is the job of municipal Departments of
Community Services, town fathers, zoning boards and building departments and
their building codes. All contribute to honing the metaphors and their outcomes
which is this relationship of intended words to spoken words and the chasm
between the two.
We are told to
think before we speak, picture what you are going to say then speak, still
whatever we speak, in tone, emphasis, timing(meter) and pitch can carry its own
meanings; this was also one of the final fields of investigation for my late
mentor, Dr. Paul Weiss.
1.8.2 Searle’s “task in constructing a theory of metaphor is to
try to state the principles which relate literal sentence meaning to
metaphorical utterance meaning”. In like manner the architect tries to find
a way that program relates to design and design the final product.
A good example of
unappreciated excellent metaphors is the cases of the many non-New Yorkers who
visit the city and find no interest in the buildings. Whereas its’ natives have
the language, vocabulary and years of incremental experience to know both the
words and the metaphors of each and the collective of building –types. Searle
adds:”
1.8.3 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 anther meaning and corresponding set of
truths” In other words:” how does one thing remind us
of another”. Without apparent rhyme
of reason metaphors of all arts have a way of recalling other metaphors of
other times and places. In my mind I recall Brooklyn brick warehouses on
Atlantic Ave. with turn of the century Ford trucks and men adorned in vests,
white shirts and bow ties loading packages from those loading docks under large
green metal canopies. The streets are cobble stones. I can cross to this image
when seeing most old brick buildings in Leipzig, San Francisco, or Boston. No
matter the claims of mansion, palace, castle I will never mistake any such
titled commercial building with the likes of Versailles, Fontainebleau, etc.
yet seeing any view of formal gardens, great castles my mind’s eye will return
me to Schloss
Schönbrunn outside of Vienna (the palatial home
of Maria Theresa and the Hapsburg Empire).
In the case of building metaphors it is the familiarity with not
only the building- type, materials, context and convention but the
architects, contactor’s and owner’s personas which increase the understanding
of the metaphor. In the case of Dubai and other such contexts it is the lack of
such familiarity and tolerance for the strange that makes the metaphor
acceptable on face value. The metaphor is accepted yet not understood. As many
beautiful things they are awesome, forbidding, and indicative of some greater
condition as being a stranger in one’s own context. Buildings are perceived as
cars manufactured by some idioms indicative of their species with little
conscious relevance to the user’s context. It is very strange. Building designed
for people who before this generation found tents to be their habitat metaphor.
In the Metaphor and
Thought’s section on “Metaphor and Representation”:
1.9.0 Process and products in making sense of tropes by Raymond W.
Gibbs, Jr.
1.9.1 Explaining tropes (turn, twist, conceptual guises, and
figurations) ‘Human cognition is fundamentally shaped by various processes
of figuration”. “The ease with which many figurative utterances are
comprehended are has often been attributed to the constraining influence
of the context” ………..Including “the common ground of knowledge, beliefs,
and attitudes recognized as being shared by speakers and listeners (architects
and users(clients, public) As speakers architects, designers and makers “can’t
help but employ tropes in every day conversation (design) because they
conceptualize (design) much of their experience through the figurative
schemes of metaphor (design).
It explains the standard and traditional building types found in
various contexts as the chalet in the Alps and the specific style of each found
in each of the Alp’s counties and villages, etc. Psychological processes
in metaphor comprehension and memory by Alan Paivio and Mary Walsh say that
Susanne Langer writes that:” Metaphor is our most striking evidence of abstract
seeing, of the power the human mind to use presentational symbols”.
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.
On visiting the Marseille
Block I was struck by a plethora of innovation and lack of care and
relative poor quality than I was about standing in a Corbu building. Yet in
Gaudi’s Barcelona apartment block the affect of the sculpture was ever-present.
I could not even remember what particular theory or design principle governed,
it was just a Gaudiesque experience. It is this observation that allows
us to make parallel references to painting, music, dance, painting, sculpture
and architecture as metaphor since they are involves a nonliteral use of
language. Except the specifications, titles and performance descriptions a work
of architecture metaphor is open to interpretation and random perceptions in
time and space. What the maker might have intended and its perception may not be
exact but can be understood in a very general use of the common functions
necessary as finding the entrance, elevators, stairs, exits, toilets,
etc.
At some point Alvar Aalto chided members of his design team
wanting to distort a part of his final design to which he replied something
like I would prefer you do so that it would be less precious and still valid
after intervention. Aalto did not
rely on modernism's fondness for industrialized processes as a compositional
technique, but forged an architecture influenced by a broad spectrum of
concerns. Alvar Aalto’s early work was influenced by contemporary Nordic
practitioners such as Asplund and Ragnar Ostberg, as well as by the simple
massing and ornamentation of the architettura mirwre of northern Italy. His
work evolved from the austere quality of the Railway Workers Housing (1923), to
the more Palladian inspired Workers Club (1924-1925) (both in Jyvaskyla), and
from there to the deftly refined and detailed Seinajoki Civil Guards Complex
(1925), Jyvaskyla Civil Guards Building (1927), and the Muurame Church
(1927-1929).
Composed of simple, well proportioned volumes rendered in stucco
or wood, these works are characterized by their sparse decoration and selective
use of classical elements. Whether you know any of these things when you in one
of Aalto’s work you are in awe of its space and simplicity. The same may be
said of the work of Louis Isadore Kahn.
1.11.0 Images and models, similes and metaphors by George A.
Miller
Defends a metaphor
as an abbreviated simile to appreciate similarities and analogies which is
called “appreciation”.
1.11.1 In psychology “appreciation” (Herbert (1898)) was a
general term for those mental process whereby an attached experience is brought
into relation with an already acquired and familiar conceptual system.
(Encoding, mapping, categorizing, inference, assimilation and accommodation,
attribution, etc). Miller explains how reading metaphors build an image in
the mind. That is to say we “appreciate” what we already know. I have always
contended that we do not learn anything we already do not know. We learn in
terms of already established knowledge and concepts. We converse reiterating
what we presume the other knows, otherwise the other party would not
understand. The other party understands only because he already knows. The architect who assembles thousands of
bits of information , resifts and converts form words to graphics and
specification documents communicates the new proposed (the strange new thing)
in terms of the known and familiar. The first recipients are the owner,
building officials; contractors must read seeking confirmations of known and
confirm its adherence to expectations. After its construction the users read
familiar signs, apparatus, spaces, volumes, shapes and forms. The bridge
carries over from one to another what is already known .Even the strange that
becomes familiar are both known but not in the current relationship. For
example when we apply a technology used on ships to a building or a room which
is commonly associated with tombs as a bank, etc. Both are generally known but
not in that specific context. We could not appreciate it if it were not known
.It is what Weiss calls commonalities and is the selection between commonalities
and differences that makes a metaphor. About understanding and discerning
between what is” true in fact” and “true in the model” Miller says: Metaphors
are, on a literal interpretation, incongruous, if not actually false-a robust
sense of what is germane to the context and what is “true in fact” is necessary
for the recognition of a metaphor, and hence general knowledge must be
available to the reader (user, public).
“We try to make the world that the author is asking us to imagine
resemble the real world (as we know it) in as many respects as possible.
Offices, bedrooms, lobbies, toilets, kitchens are such models which are built
to specific situations in images of yet some other context.
Kitchen is a social
gathering place, toilet is the baths of Rome, and the deck is top of a ship.
The architect accommodates all the realities of the goal of the room into the
model of the foreign context. By analogy what Miller distinguishes between what
the architect designed and what he thought are different. The architects of the
Renaissance tried to resurrect the grandeur of the classic building they
discovered and resurrected. The contemporary architect faces a vernacular of
design principles which are reified in to conventional building types. The
convention is the model whiles the specific application in the strange. Often
new buildings are likened to the first model or the prototype. The reader
knows the building type and is able to recognize the new version. About the
metaphor
1.11.2 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”. “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.
1.12.0 How metaphors work by Sam Glucksberg and Boaz Keysar distinguishes between (italics are Gluksberg and Keysar) “metaphor
topic” and “metaphor vehicle (predicate)” “The vehicle being a prototypical
exemplar (cigarettes) of that attributive category (time bomb).
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 is an office
building city. I can see only a flash glimpse and I will know it is
Manhattan.
1.12.2 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.” It is for this reason that the
landscape is filled with many metaphoric topics (applications) based on few
metaphor vehicles (building types) not only true in functions and goals but
also in characteristic building systems and structures. Office (metaphor topic)
Building (metaphor vehicle) metaphor topic as a house may be a hotel, grand
estate, small or large private residence depends on the predicate. Carried with
each are also, social, psychological, political and geographic inferences.
1.12.3 “Metaphors are generally used to describe something new
by references 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. In another sense when an architect creates a metaphor it a
building which takes on the attributes of all buildings and if it is work of
art, as a building metaphor it takes on the attributes of the calls of
buildings which are more than a tin box but a statement of complex ideas which
demands reading and is an opportunity to be read.
How do I know it is an “office building”?
1. It is located in
the neighborhood of other office buildings
2. It does not have
balconies and, curtains in the windows,
3. It has an open
and wide public plaza and unrestricted wide openings
4. Its glazing,
cladding and skin are high tech, impersonal and large scale.
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
Part on “The
alchemists they describe a system of triangulation I developed, taught and
applied at Pratt Institute which is as: “Metals were often held to consist
of two components: mercury, which was fiery, active and male, and sulpher,
which was watery, passive and female. Thus the combination of the two metals
could be viewed as a marriage.
Metals and other minerals were often compared with heavenly bodies
and their properties triangulated to produce a third. Not to let this arbitrary
characterizations blemish the structure of this system it is valid to
triangulate and in fact 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. Map a rectangle and circle
to a third and you get a part square part circular odd shape. Map cold and hot
and you get warm; map hotel, office, residential and shops and you get mixed
use.
Renaissance
European cities beguile their metaphor with such combinations known by their
scale, cladding, décor, and entrees. Particularly charming are the German
“guest houses ("gast hofs"), English family pubs, etc. New Towns and
contemporary town centers are mixed use, multi zoned urban cores. It isn’t the
referent where one is the other but where there is a similarity between like
features of two things, on which a comparison may be based: the analogy between
the heart and a pump. The commonality is apparent. They both share a similar
characteristic. The hotel, residence , office and shop are joined by
their convenience to that provide service to clients and their use of
rooms, and a core of service, mountainous and housekeeping and supply. A small
staff can support these businesses and their customers are compatible.
They all have a front of the house
and back-of-the -house function (garbage, deliveries, maintenance, etc) in many
citers lacks zoning regulations have alo9owed such mixed uses zones to still
exist today. Seeing these metaphors is a part of the fabric and character of
neighborhoods.
1.13.2 Metaphor
is reasoning using abstract characters whereas reason by analogy is a straight
forward extension of its use in commonplace reasoning. All this to say and as if there was a choice
that architects have a choice where to make a new building by analogy or
by metaphor. Analogies may be the ticky-tacks, office building, church,
school building, fire station analogies to a first model verses an abstraction
of a program into a new prototype. Is the analogy any less a work of
architecture? Or do we only mean that
works of architecture are works of art when they make abstractions?
1.13.3 “In
processing analogy, people implicitly focus on certain kinds of commonalities
and ignore others”. In my New Haven drafting service, builders would give
me a floor plan for me to redraft to build a new house: they simply wanted an
analogy to the first with no changes. The Florida School Board uses and reuses
both firms and plans to design new high schools based on plans used before to build
other schools with only slight modifications to make them site-specific. This
is design by analogy. Many design professionals use standard details and
standard specifications relying upon analogy to design a new building. The
overall may be either metaphor or analogous. Whole professional practices are
formulated and bases on one or the other practices. Noting these things an
industry was created called the “housing industry’ churning out analogies
rather than individual metaphors, leaving the metaphor to the context or theme
of the development. It is famous architects who are mostly famous because they
made metaphors and from them analogies were drawn. The analogous phenomenon has
resulted in the nineteenth century Sears offering pre-designed and package
barns ready to ship form Wisconsin to any where by mail order. Pre-engineered
metal being and manufactured homes are all part of the analogous scheme of
reasoning the built environment. Users have access to either and are able to
shift perceptions. In commonplace users wanting to be fed by metaphorical
architecture go to Disney, European, or urban entertainment and recreation
centers. Las Vegas thrives on what I call "metaphoric analogies”
abstractions of analogous building types. It is that synapse which attracts and
beguiles the visitor hungry for authenticity and reality. Living in analogous
urban replicas city dweller migrated to the suburbs in search of the metaphor
of “a man’s home is his castle”. Today this metaphor has become an analogy as
the metaphor proliferates and analogies from one to another state and country. We may be told a “cell is like a
factory” which gives us a framework for analogy and similarity.
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.
As users, design
professionals begin their design process by finding analogies from extent
projects as user faced with the building resort to their own vocabulary. Both
do not favor one or the other and vacillate between the two for what they can
learn.
For example HOK Sport Venue Event Company prides itself on
designing stadiums recapturing the community context, history of the teams
while designing a new abstraction worthy of the future of the game and the
entertainment of the fans. “Populous”
(HOK sports facility business) is a global design practice specializing in
creating environments that draw people and communities together for
unforgettable experiences. So much so that the new name of the firm is:
“POPULACE”. “As Populous, we enthusiastically embrace the expertise we uniquely
claim—drawing people together around teams, athletes, events, places, commerce,
industry and ideas they wholeheartedly embrace and adore.”
1.13.5 On the creative and 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”. Confronting a Bedouin village of tents a westerner faced
with apparent differences looks for similarities.
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.” Cushions for seats,
carpets for flooring, stretched fabric for walls and roof. Cable for beams and
columns, etc.
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.” However, there may be metaphors at work as
well as the user reads the tent’s tension cable structure, banners and the
entire assemblage in a “romantic” eclectic image of Arabness, metaphors beyond
the imperial but of the realm of the abstract and inaccurate.
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 than to map isolated
predicates. The systematicity principle reflects a tacit preference for
coherence and inferential power in interpreting analogy”. Arab tentness and
“home-sweet-home” map basics from the “home-sweet-home” to the Arabness to make
all the bits and pieces be understood. Thus
architects choose building elements from catalogs and in the most metaphoric
circumstances designs elements from scratch. Metaphor buildings may or may not
be composed of metaphoric elements.
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.
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”. Analogous
matching looks for duplicates, replicas and like elements; the more the better.
Most contemporary commercial design relies on many commonalities hence CAD,
design format programs, etc assume commonalities in and analogies. After
choosing title system the rest follows as repetition as before. Many commercial
house plans, office plans, department store, etc acre designed as analogous
design schemes.
As the architect of
record for Dhahran Academy in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, and after having designed
and redesigned their primary buildings the school superintendent asked how to
go about adding additional space. Rather than adding to his expense and time
for another design process I recommended and they engage a pre-engineered steel
building manufacturer to produce this building for them. In this case I knew
the analogous rather than the metaphorical process would be appropriate. King
Faisal University asked my advice to design their new and temporary school to
house their school of architecture while the permanent overall campus plans
were being completed. Again I suggested the analogous approach of a
pre-engineered building system. Of course within this approach, the specific
sizes, electrical, plumbing and HVAC requirements were all specifically
selected from already available “off-the-shelf” modules.
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.
1.14.2 To Boyd, metaphors simply impart their commonplace not
necessity to their similarity or analogous. This kind of metaphor simply
adds information to the hearer which was not otherwise available which explains
the built metaphor that is neither analogous not abstractly common but works,
is unique and serves a purpose.
I found methane gas silos on the Ruhergebeit in Germany’s three
city district conically shaped (with the wider circumference at the base) like
a Byzantine apse with channeled walks and fluted sides. I had seen nothing like
this and it took hours and an article I wrote which was published in Progressive
Architecture to explain this metaphor. I called it Pollution Architecture.
The Pricklley Mountain project in Warren Vermont was another such example of
received “commonplaces” of its use(s).
1.15.0 Metaphor in science by Thomas S. Kuhn speaking about scientific language he distinguishes between
1.15.1“dubbing” (invest with any name, character, dignity,
or title; style; name; call) and “epistemic access”
(relating to, or involving knowledge; cognitive.).”When dubbing is abandoned
the link between language and the world disappears”.
Architectural
metaphors are all about names, titles, and the access to that the work provides
for the reader to learn and develop. At its best the vocabulary of the parts
and whole of the work is an encyclopedia and cultural building block. The work
incorporates 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. As a good writer “shows” and not “tells” so a
good designer manifests configurations without words. However objective, thorough and scientific;
the designer, the design tools and the work gets dubbed with ideas (not
techne) we may call style, personality, and identity above and beyond the
program and its basic design (techne). It is additional controls,
characterizations and guidelines engrafted into the form not necessarily
overtly and expressly required. Dubbing 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.
1.16.0 Metaphorical imprecision and the “top down” research
strategy by Zeon W. Pylyshyn
About Cognition (pertaining to the mental processes of perception,
memory, judgment, and reasoning, as contrasted with emotional and volitional
processes) justifies Socrates “learning as recollecting” to explain that we
absorb new knowledge on the shoulders of old experiences.
1.16.1 Pylyshyn explains: “…………….consider new concepts as being
characterized in terms of old ones (plus logical conjunctives)” 2.0 As
William J. Gordon points out we make the strange familiar by talking about
one thing in terms of another. Pylyshyn: "On the other hand, if it
were possible to observe and to acquire new “knowledge” without the benefit of
these concepts (conceptual schemata (an underlying organizational pattern or
structure; conceptual framework) which are the medium of thought), then such
1.16.2 “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. Where knowing is the Greek for suffer, or
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.
The art [I] implicitly has gathered the information and
organized it in way that given the right apriori vocabulary, codes
definitions and signal and sign cognitions one can read the message in one way
or another depending on the individual and the variety of individual
perceptions. Buildings, artifacts, products with embedded (encrypted) workings
can be read, learned, assimilated, connected and either by epiphany or
Pavolivain stimulus –response known. Climbing the stairs of a pyramid in Mexico
City or a fire stair in a high rise is essentially the same except for the
impact of its context and what the stair connects (create and base) and the
object on which the stair ascends and descends. The conditions, ideals and
goals are very different while most of the operation is the same. In this way
you can say that non-architecture can be identifies as teaching nothing. I don’t believe that there is such a thing,
even the “tin-box” (pre-engineered manufactured factory warehouse is a
metaphor. It may be a one page comic book character but is has content and is
readable.
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 .
Just as practice makes perfect for the concert pianist, opera
singer, ballerina, etc so is it for the architect. However, having said this
reader is at imitate disadvantage except for the natives of a particular
location. Little old ladies in the tiniest Italian village can tell in the
minutest detail all about every building, street and area. She has learned and
passed on the “knowledge” from her ancestors and is as trained as its creators
but in a totally different way. Hers is the act of perception and reader who
must recreate and challenge her memory and recollections. She does not have to
work at design but at reliving and imagining the design process to find the
details and the whole of the building and its social, political and
chronological context. Her explanations will include great joy, violent
emotions, dis-tastes and rejections of the owners and authors. Her experience
of the metaphor will be different from that of the creators both about the same
work.
1.16.4 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 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. The point is there are
better and worse places for introducing rigor into an evolving discipline.
“This explanation is pretty much that path of the development of my theory that
"architecture is the making of metaphors" has followed over the past
45 years.
From general recognitions, observations and analogies within the
framework of professional design practice , painting, sculpture and philosophy
to discussions with renowned scholars most notably Dr. Paul Weiss , followed by
a lecture series involving prominent design professionals and arts and then
years of research and documentation into monographs.,
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.
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. Gated communities, Newtown’s, malls, resorts
and commercial buildings give high marks to the overall and superficial .Yet
most working metaphors are the result of design and perception from the gestalt
(overall concept) to the emptiness (non-gestalt) . Maria
Theresa’s Shoenbrun is an excellent example along with major university
campuses such as Cambridge, Yale, Oxford, etc where theme and design philosophy
prevails and dominates from the facades to the planning techniques of large
public spaces to increasing private and smaller spaces and detailing, where
with the overall one cannot imagine any thing.
The gestalt is the entity in which all occurs and with the concept
there is no context. So it is with metaphor with it the rest of the
conversation has no framework and no conception can begin either in its
creation or use.
1.16.7 Pylyshyn
asks:” What distinguishes a metaphor from its complete explication (explain)
….”? In the case of architecture the entire set of contract documents, program,
etc.” Pylyshyn answers: “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”.
In this ways of all the arts [I], architecture is the most profound in that it combines and
confirms the secular (of this time), “how things really are” with the gestalt
of personal, social, community and private importance.
If art is the making of metaphors and it has no real use then how
significant is architecture with both “reality” and fantasy/ imagination
combined and confirmed by its very existence. I mean to say that the very real existence of
work of art which bespeaks of life and times exists and is accessible and in
our contexts is itself a metaphor of great significance and satisfaction.
Were the building us it would be me, where I a building I be it. The metaphor
expresses a value common to both; both are both real and ideas at the same
time. The metaphor is the bridge and confirmation of art in the world, life in
the flesh and flesh become ideas. Architecture is an extreme reification from
notion in both creator and reader of materials and idea.
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”. Socially speaking worldly people that work in
offices dress then behave the way they do if for example they reported to work
in manufacturing warehouses? Their scenario of the behavior and the metaphor
would not correspond.
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 conclude
that:
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)” It was these concerns behind Frank Lloyd
Wright’s separation from the architecture of Louis Sullivan and what spurned
the collective work of the Bauhaus in Germany , that is 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.
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.
 |
| Collage from "Legend" by Christina Fez-Barringten |
Concludes that
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. 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.
About metaphor:
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.
When visiting new
cities in another country one is immediately confronted with metaphors which
create similarities as interactive and comparative as we seek to find
similarities and differences with what we already known in our home context.
Visiting, sketching and writing about over seventy European cities
I noted the character and ambiance of each and the differences between one and
another. I drew so many vignettes of buildings and cityscapes noting the
metaphor of each. I had a Baedeker’s guide to educate me about the time and
place of each street and building. I had already studied the history of
architecture so I could relate the metaphors to their own time and
circumstance, yet I enjoyed each metaphor in my time as places and settings for
contemporary urban life with a backdrop of their historical past, 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.
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.
1.19.0 Educational uses of metaphor by Thomas G. Sticht discusses how the natures of
metaphor as a
speech act and serves as a linguistic tool for overcoming cognitive
limitations.
1.19.1 Sticht claims that metaphors have a way of extending
our capacities for communications. 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.
1.19.2 Sticht adds: “that 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 Relevantly he points out that 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 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 and how valuable are the arts as makers of who we are
as a people, society and time.
1.19.6“The mnemonic (intended to assist the memory) function
of metaphor as expressed by Ortony’s vividness thesis also points to the value
of metaphor as a tool for producing durable learning from unenduiring speech”.
Architects both compose the program and reify its contents from
words to diagrams and diagrams to two dimensional graphics and three
dimensional models to reify and bring- out (educate) the user’s mind and
fulfillment of unspoken and hidden needs. Needs which may or may not have been
programmed and intended; the metaphor is the final resolution until it is built
and used. Then it is subject to further tests of time, audience, markets,
trends, fashions, social politics, demographic shifts, economics, and cultural
changes.
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
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
Additional References:
A. 2.0 Wikopedia on the www.
B 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
C. 4.0 WWW
D. * 1.4.11 From Wikopedia on the www.
E. 5.0 “Difference and
Identity”: 4.0 Gilles Deleuze (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”.
F 6.0 Webster’s
standard dictionary
G. 7.0 Identifying
Metaphor in Language: a cognitive approach Style, fall, 2002
by Gerard J. Steen
H. 8.0 The
Contemporary Theory of Metaphor: a perspective
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.
J.
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 potential 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 contractors. As well as owners, users, neighbors,
governments agencies, planning boards and town councils.
K. 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 multidiscipline
architecture
- “Metaphor’s interdisciplinary Axioms
- Metaphoric Axioms for
Micro disciplinary Architecture
- Complex Structure: art and architecture
stasis
- Metaphor axioms of art, architecture and
aesthetics
- Aesthetic principles of metaphor, art and
architecture
- The Six Principles of Art’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
Biographical
note: (88 words)
Columbia University coursework
in behavioral psychology under Ralph Hefferline and voice in 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 with pen and ink drawings on perceptions
of 72 European cities.
Affiliations:
Global University, Gulf Coast Writers Association,
American Institute of Architects, National Council of Architectural
Registration Boards, Florida licensed architect, Lee County Hispanic Affairs
Advisory Board and trustee of Yale Alumni Association of South west
Florida
Additional
Key words: (119 words)
metaphor,
thought, cognition, psychology, education, linguistics, learning, philosophy,
axiom, art, architecture, macro ,micro, inductive, deductive, reasoning, grammar, phonetics, literature, dictionaries, encyclopedias,
behavioral psychology, linguistic expressions, speech-language
pathology, informatics, computer science, philosophy, biology, human anatomy, neuroscience, sociology, anthropology, acoustics, transfer, bridge, carry-over,
authenticates, identity, surrogate, face-value, parte, ideal, conceptual
metaphor, strange, familiar, conceptual
metaphor, generative metaphor, peculiarization, personalization,
authentication, abstract reasoning, empathize, manifestation , concept
metaphor, “concrete” reification, commonality, differences, commonplace, maps,
mapping, suggestive, trusting, pedantic; circulation, use recognition,
abstracting shapes, ergonometric, domains, tropes, turn, twist, conceptual
guises, figurations, appreciation, surrogates, emphatics, nonliteral, abstract characters,
dubbing, top-down strategy, structured programming, conduit metaphor, dead
metaphor, plausible accounts, metaphor is fundamentally conceptual, scale,
image mappings; invariance principle, causation is
transfer, synapse, analogies, domains, apriori knowledge, categorization in cognitive science,
interaction view, associated implications, onomatopeics metaphor.
Barie Fez-Barringten
Is the originator (founder) of “Architecture: the making of
metaphors(architecture as the making of metaphors)"
First lecture at Yale University in 1967
First published in 1971 in the peer reviewed learned
journal:"Main Currents in Modern Thought";
In 1970, founded New York City not-for-profit called Laboratories
for Metaphoric Environments (LME) and has been widely published in
many international learned journals including Springer
publications, MIT, and Syracuse University.
The book “Architecture: the making of
metaphors" has been published in February 2012 by Cambridge
Scholars Publishing in New Castle on Tyne,UK..
All glory and honor goes to Jesus Christ who is
my Lord and Savior
Researched
Publications: Refereed and Peer-reviewed Journals: "monographs":
Barie
Fez-Barringten; Associate professor Global University
1.
"Architecture the making of metaphors" ©
Main
Currents in Modern Thought/Center for Integrative Education; Sep.-Oct. 1971,
Vol. 28 No.1, New Rochelle, New York.
2."Schools
and metaphors"
Main
Currents in Modern Thought/Center for Integrative Education Sep.-Oct. 1971,
Vol. 28 No.1, New Rochelle, New York.
3."User's
metametaphoric phenomena of architecture and Music":
“METU” (Middle East Technical University: Ankara, Turkey): May
1995"
Journal
of the Faculty of Architecture
4."Metametaphors
and Mondrian:
Neo-plasticism and its' influences in architecture"
1993 Available on Academia.edu since
2008
5.
"The Metametaphor©
of architectural education",
North Cypress, Turkish University. December, 1997
6."Mosques and metaphors" Unpublished,1993
7."The basis of the metaphor of Arabia" Unpublished, 1994
8."The conditions of Arabia in metaphor" Unpublished, 1994
9.
"The metametaphor theorem"
Architectural
Scientific Journal, Vol. No. 8; 1994 Beirut Arab University.
10. "Arabia’s metaphoric images" Unpublished, 1995
11."The context of Arabia in metaphor" Unpublished, 1995
12.
"A partial metaphoric vocabulary of Arabia"
“Architecture: University of Technology in Datutop; February 1995
Finland
13."The
Aesthetics of the Arab architectural metaphor"
“International Journal for Housing Science and its applications” Coral
Gables, Florida.1993
14."Multi-dimensional
metaphoric thinking"
Open House, September 1997: Vol. 22; No. 3, United Kingdom: Newcastle
uponTyne
15."Teaching
the techniques of making architectural metaphors in the twenty-first century.” Journal of King Abdul Aziz University Engg...Sciences; Jeddah: Code: BAR/223/0615:OCT.2.1421 H. 12TH EDITION; VOL. I and “Transactions”
of
Cardiff University, UK.
April 2010
16. “Word
Gram #9” Permafrost: Vol.31
Summer 2009 University of Alaska Fairbanks; ISSN: 0740-7890; page 197
17. "Metaphors and Architecture."© ArchNet.org. October,
2009.at MIT
18. “Metaphor as an inference from sign”;© University of Syracuse
Journal of Enterprise Architecture;
November 2009: and nominated architect of the year in special issue of Journal
of Enterprise Architecture explaining the unique relationship between
enterprise and classic building architecture.
19.
“Framing the art vs. architecture
argument”; Brunel University (West London); BST: Vol. 9 no. 1: Body, Space & Technology Journal:
Perspectives Section
20.
“Urban Passion”: October 2010;
Reconstruction & “Creation”; June
2010; by C. Fez-Barringten; http://reconstruction.eserver.org/;
21.
“An architectural history of metaphors”:
©AI & Society:
(Journal of human-centered and machine intelligence) Journal of Knowledge,
Culture and Communication: Pub: Springer; London; AI & Society located in
University of Brighton, UK;
AI &
Society. ISSN (Print) 1435-5655 - ISSN
(Online) 0951-5666 : Published by
Springer-Verlag;; 6 May 2010 http://www.springerlink.com/content/j2632623064r5ljk/
Paper copy: AIS Vol. 26.1. Feb. 2011; Online ISSN 1435-5655; Print ISSN
0951-5666;
DOI 10.1007/s00146-010-0280-8; : Volume 26, Issue 1 (2011), Page
103.
22.
“Does Architecture Create Metaphors?; G.Malek;
Cambridge; August 8,2009
Pgs
3-12 (4/24/2010)
23.
“Imagery or Imagination”:the role of
metaphor in architecture:Ami Ran (based on Architecture:the making of
metaphors); :and Illustration:”A Metaphor of Passion”:Architecture oif Israel
82.AI;August2010pgs.83-87.
24.
“The sovereign built metaphor”
© monograph converted to
Power Point for presentation to Southwest Florida Chapter of the American
Institute of Architects. 2011
25.“Architecture:the making of metaphors”©The Book;
Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Published: Feb 2012
Edited by
Edward Richard Hart,
Glasgow
 |
| All above collages are created by for Legend and exhibition by Christina Fez-Barringten |
Lecture:
Also,
“Gibe” which documents his founding
of international Earth Day along
with John McConnel.
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