WS24/25

Type, Model, Style: Semiotic Analysis of Architecture

Beyond their functional, design, and material aspects, types constitute the basic elements of a language of architecture. Like the tropes and figures of speech in rhetoric, types are semiotic devices of the language of architecture. At the very least, types have a narrative function as they tell us something about the time, purposes, customs, expediency and culture in general. How does architecture speak through typology? How is meaning created through types? And in the first place, what does it mean if we talk of the language of architecture? How can architecture be meaningful at all? It will be based on the triadic sign model of Charles S. Peirce. By focusing on aspects of semiotics, rhetoric and language the seminar seeks to free typology from the hardened image of cataloged, formulaic knowledge and functionalist compartmentalization, thus aiming to take a critical look at the clichés and hardened stereotypes that dominate the debates surrounding the language of architecture, linguistic turn and the digital turn.