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. With types, architecture leaves the realm of the elite codification of its sign system (style, history etc.). 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? What is meant if we refer to architecture as language? The seminar is a basic introduction into architectural semiotics. 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 with the aim of casting a critical eye on the clichés and stereotypes that have been hardened in the debates surrounding postmodernism and the digital.
- Trainer/in: Jörg Gleiter
- Trainer/in: Tran Ngoc Anh Hoffmann