Difference between revisions of "The Market"
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=Semiotics in the Liberation of Function from Form= | =Semiotics in the Liberation of Function from Form= | ||
| + | [[Image:Monument.jpg|right|thumb|Robert Venturi's "Recommendation for a monument" from [[Learning From Las Vegas]], 1972]] | ||
... ours is not the environment for heroic communication through pure architecture. Each medium has | ... ours is not the environment for heroic communication through pure architecture. Each medium has | ||
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precisely the mechanism by which we can create a market without the | precisely the mechanism by which we can create a market without the | ||
actual space of a market (a shopping cart icon does the trick!). | actual space of a market (a shopping cart icon does the trick!). | ||
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Revision as of 10:47, 10 April 2008
Semiotics in the Liberation of Function from Form
... ours is not the environment for heroic communication through pure architecture. Each medium has its day, and the rhetorical environmental statements of our time – civic, commercial, or residential – will come from media more purely symbolic, perhaps less static and more adaptable to the scale of our environment. The iconography and mixed media of roadside commercial architecture will point the way if we will look. Housing for the elderly on the Oak Street Connector, if it had to be a monument, would have been more economical, socially responsible and amenable as a conventional apartment building, lost by the side of the expressway, with a big sign on top blinking, I AM A MONUMENT. Decoration is cheaper. - Robert Venturi,"Learning From Las Vegas," 1972
The purpose of any space is determined by both the symbols used to
designate where one is (ie an open for business sign), and the
practices that take place there. In "Learning From Las Vegas," Robert
Venturi takes a close look at how the Vegas Strip (in the late 60's)
consisted of buildings that were differentiated primarily by flashy
signs decorating unoriginal buildings (what he called the "decorated
shed." He traced the phenomenon to the impact of speed on
architecture - mainly that in a landscape where one drives past
buildings, signs enable one to differentiate one space from another at
a faster speed than differentiated architectures could (which is why
signs matter so much for businesses on highways).
What makes this so interesting is that when semiotics are reintroduced into architecture, communicating the specific use of a generic space, buildings enter a mediated realm - And I think that's key here - that when people believe they're in a market when they see a "market" sign, it enables the use of a spatial semiotic to successfully mediate the entire space provided that the same activity occurs - which is really just to say that the Las Vegas strip is this intermediate phenomenon whereby we all can find what we want in foreign places, and that's precisely the mechanism by which we can create a market without the actual space of a market (a shopping cart icon does the trick!).
