Frances belatedly to Luis and others... In regard to semiotics and architecture, whereby sign theory might be useful in addressing the issue of theorizing about architecture, there are several books published that deal with this very topic. My problem in reading some of these books is in appreciating whether the specific sign systems they posit are supported mainly by francoeuropean semiology and structuralism or mainly by angloamerican semiotics and pragmatism, and of course which sign system might be best in possibly framing a global theory of architecture. In particular, there are two books from Indiana University Press in their series on "Advances in Semiotics" that attempt to apply sign theory to architecture theory.
The larger yet intriguing book by Fernande Saint-Martin entitled "Semiotics of Visual Language" as published in 1990 deals with pictures and sculptures and architectures as signs in a proposed visual language system, but only if these sighted tures are found as artworks to start with. The thesis of the author is furthermore clearly grounded in structural semiology, which is useful as far as it goes. It is basically the application of linguistic grammar and syntax to optic art and form, in much the same way as the culinary system or the apparel system might be structured along the lines of verbal language with its equivalent letters and words and sentences. In other words, the visible object of ocular sense must be reduced to and translated into verbal language first before it can even be considered as a sign at all. Any visual meaning is merely read into the scanned artefact as if it were a lingual statement or narrative discourse, in much the same way a reviewer might write some text about a movie they viewed. What should be made of this thesis by theorists like semioticians and semiologists and linguists is still unclear to me. The smaller yet probing book by Donald Preziosi entitled "The semiotics of the Built Environment: An Introduction to Architectonic Analysis" as published in 1979 deals only with architectures as signs in a proposed visual signage system. The artistic and aesthetic aspects of such built objects are further considered only as one of several necessary functions in this practice of design. The ideas of the author are also clearly well within the field of structuralist semiology, but they also draw somewhat upon the sign jargon available from the pragmatist semiotic camp to include icons and indexes and symbols. The overall signifying scheme divides the built object roughly into the equivalent grammar of phonemes and morphemes and syntaxemes. Phonemes are tones or marks and characters or numbers and letters that as coloremes and tectemes entail forms and materials and frames and spaces and scaffolds. Morphemes are syllables and words and entail monemes and lexemes like roots and fixes and figures and strings and networks and cells and matrices and patterns. Syntaxemes are phrases and clauses and sentences that as composed archemes entail codes and drafts and plans and models and edifices and compounds and settlements. Grammars will also entail alphabets and vocabularies and dictionaries that may factor into the sign system of architecture. Languages can then entail further statements and narratives and discourses. The broader environment of architecture as an equivalent can then include a neighbourhood, borough, hamlet, village, town, city, township, and county, as well as a reserve, region, territory, province, colony, nation, and so on. In attempting to analyze what may already be built in a land the author merely suggests using the systemic grammar of linguistic language as an available tool of inquiry. There is therefore no offer to build a virtual language of architecture that would stand independent of any verbal language, even if that were possible, which it likely is not at the present.
