Wesleyan University How Do Buildings Mean? Some Issues of Interpretation in the History of Architecture Author(s): William Whyte Reviewed work(s): Source: History and Theory, Vol. 45, No. 2 (May, 2006), pp. 153-177 Published by: Blackwell Publishing for Wesleyan University Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3874104 . Accessed: 01/05/2012 19:39 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Blackwell Publishing and Wesleyan University are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to History and Theory. http://www.jstor.org History and Theory45 (May 2006), 153-177 ? Wesleyan University 2006 ISSN: 0018-2656 HOW DO BUILDINGS MEAN? SOME ISSUES OF INTERPRETATION IN THE HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE1 WILLIAMWHYTE Architecturalhistory as we know it has been writtentacitly adheringto the crudest version of the paradigmof communication:all the attentionhas been focussed on the design of the new forms, none on their interpretation.It is time to realize, that even within the limits of the paradigmof communication, there should be a history of meaning, not only a history of forms.2 -Juan Pablo Bonta You think philosophy is difficult enough, but I can tell you it is nothing to the difficulty of being a good architect.3 -Ludwig Wittgenstein ABSTRACT Despite growing interest from historiansin the built environment,the use of architecture as evidence remainsremarkably under-theorized. Where this issue has been discussed, the interpretationof buildingshas often been likened to the process of reading,in which archi- tecturecan be understoodby analogy to language:either as a code capable of use in com- municatingthe architect'sintentions or more literally as a spoken or written language in its own right. After a historiographicalsurvey, this essay, by contrast, proposes that the appropriatemetaphor is one of translation.More particularly,it draws on the work of Mikhail Bakhtin to suggest that architecture-and the interpretationof architecture- comprises a series of transpositions.As a building is planned, built, inhabited, and inter- preted, so its meaning changes. The underlyinglogic of each medium shapes the way in which its message is created and understood.This suggests that the properrole of the his- torian is to trace these transpositions.Buildings, then, can be used as a historical source, but only if the historian takes account of the particularproblems that they present. In short, architectureshould not be studied for its meaning, but for its meanings. As histori- ans we are always translatingarchitecture: not readingits message, but exploring its mul- tiple transpositions. 1. I mustthank Elizabeth Emerson, Jane Garnett, Matt Kelly, Zoe Waxman,and Bill Whyte,who verykindly read earlier versions of this essay.I am particularlygrateful to PhilipBullock for his invaluableadvice on Bakhtin. 2. JuanPablo Bonta,Architecture and Its Interpretation:A Studyof ExpressiveSystems in Architecture(London: Lund Humphries, 1979), 232. 3. Quotedin AndrewBallantyne, "The Pillar and the Fire," in Whatis Architecture?,ed. Andrew Ballantyne(London and New York:Routledge, 2002), 7. 154 WILLIAMWHYTE I Architectureis widely perceived to possess meaning:to be more than mere struc- ture. As Umberto Eco has noted, "we commonly do experience architectureas communication,even while recognizing its functionality."4Yet how that mean- ing is inscribed, how that communicationworks, and how it can be interpreted by historiansremains unclear. For some writers, architecture-like all the arts- is an emanationof the Zeitgeist. For others, it should be understoodas an expres- sion of the underlying social order, or as an aspect of deep culture. Still others would interpretit as a self-containedsign system, with its own grammar,syntax, and ways of meaning.What unites these authors,however, is the idea that archi- tecture can be understoodby analogy to language: either as a "'code' capable of use to communicatethe architect's'intentions' to the users of theirbuildings," or more literally as an equivalentto spoken or writtenlanguage in its own right.5As a consequence, they imply, architectureis a text thatcan be read. By contrast,this essay will seek to show that these suppositions are unhelpful to the historian. Architectureis not, in reality, simply a language, and buildings cannot, in actu- ality, simply be read. Rather,the process of designing, building, and interpreting architectureshould be likened, not to reading, but to a series of translations.This analogy arguablyoffers a more helpful approachto architecturalhistory, which is more like translationthan it is like reading. More precisely, I shall suggest that architecturalinterpretation-and indeed architectureitself-is analogous to a series of transpositions.This argument, which draws on the work of Mikhail Bakhtin, rests upon three assumptions.The first is that architecture,like all meaningful human action, is capable of being understood;that it is, as Paul Ricoeur would have it, in some respects a text.6 Indeed, as Bakhtin has observed, "if the word 'text' is understoodin the broad sense-as any coherent complex of signs-then even the study of art ... deals with texts."7The problem is that buildings are a particularsort of text: one that bears very little similarityto verbal, linguistic, or even artistictexts. As such, the idea that they can be read-read in the same way that one reads a novel, a por- trait, or even an archaeological site-simply does not stand up to scrutiny. Architectureis instrumentalas well as ornamentaland symbolic; it serves a func- tion; it is subject to the laws of physics; and it is also an art form. Second, archi- tecture and architecturalinterpretation involve a wide of variety of media and genres. Simply to representthis as text tout court misunderstandsthe multiplici- ty of texts encounteredby an architecturalhistorian. Third, and finally, it can be 4. UmbertoEco, "Functionand Sign: The Semiotics of Architecture,"in RethinkingArchitecture, ed. Neil Leach(London: Routledge, 1997), 182. 5. RobertG. Hershberger,"A Study of Meaningand Architecture," in EnvironmentalAesthetics: Theory, Research, and Application, ed. Jack L. Nasar (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 190. 6. Paul Ricoeur,"The Model of the Text:Meaningful Action Consideredas Text,"Social Research 38:3(1971), 529-562. 7. M. M. Bakhtin,"The Problem of theText in Linguistics,Philology, and the HumanSciences: An Experiment in Philosophical Analysis," in Speech Genres and Other Essays, transl. Vern W. McGee;ed. CarylEmerson and MichaeJ Holquist (Austin: University of TexasPress, 1986), 103. HOW DO BUILDINGS MEAN? 155 argued that as a structureevolves from conception to constructionand then to interpretation,both the intention of the creator and the meaning comprehended by the interpretermay change. Following Bakhtin, these three assumptionspro- voke two conclusions. First, that the historian should attemptto understandthe evolution of a building as a series of transpositions:with meaning in each trans- position shaped by the logic of the genre or medium in which it is located. Second, it can also be arguedthat these multiple transpositions-these manifold texts-together make up the work of architectureitself. The historian's role, I will conclude, is to trace these transpositions,and in that way uncover the many meanings of architecture. II The assumption that buildings are a means of conveying meaning is not, of course, a new one. In 1745 GermainBoffrand contended that "An edifice, by its composition, expresses as on a stage that the scene is pastoralor tragic, that it is a temple or a palace, a public building destined for a specific use, or a private house. These differentedifices, throughtheir disposition, their structure,and the mannerin which they are decorated,should announcetheir purpose to the spec- tator."8Indeed, he went on to suggest that "the profiles of mouldings and other parts which compose a building are to architecturewhat words are to speech."9 Nor was he alone. From Vitruviusto Venturi,architects and writers on architec- ture have maintained that buildings are more than utilitarian;they are instru- ments by which emotions, ideas, and beliefs are articulated.10Thus we can under- stand the buildings of the Acropolis as evidence of the social life and religious practice of PericleanAthens; the castles of medieval Englandas the embodiment of Arthurianidealism; and even the buildings of Disneyland as partof "the archi- tecture of reassurance."'1Nor is this perceptionconfined solely to writers-it is sharedby architects,too. Just as Augustus Pugin's neo-Gothic nineteenth-centu- ry churches were intended to articulate Christian values and inspire Catholic revival, so Norman Foster's rebuilt Reichstag was intended to express a com- mitment to democracythrough its architecturalform.12 8. GermainBoffrand, Livre d'Architecture, quoted in George L. Hersey, High VictorianGothic: A Study in Associationism (Baltimoreand London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972), 2. 9. Boffrand, quoted in George Baird, "'La Dimension Amoureuse' in Architecture,"in