Against arbitrariness: architectural signification in the age of globalization

✍ Scribed by Rumiko Handa

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1999
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 763 KB
• Volume: 20
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0142-694X
• DOI: 10.1016/s0142-694x(98)00041-6

✦ Synopsis

R

ecently constructed churches at the growing boundary of Lincoln, Nebraska, embody the problem we face today regarding the significance of architecture (Figure 1). Here, the building has little to contribute toward its own value. Instead, any appreciation depends on the religious activities within, for which the building itself is a container. This is not just a problem of badly designed contemporary facilities. Many homebuyers are convinced that, as long as a house satisfies their functional demands, location is everything. A house becomes merely a piece of real estate with a certain resale value. Behind these lie the problems of significance and of signification in our discipline. It is a problem of significance, for the value of architecture derives not so much from architecture itself as from something that is not architecture. It is also a problem of signification, for it is rooted in the way the notion of architectural meaning itself is understood.