The Market
Semiotics in the Liberation of Function from Form
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!).
