TCE TaTe) Enea A Vocabulary of Modern Architecture ENACT RoanWords and Buildings lary of Modern Architectu Adrian Forty Q Thames « HudsonContents Acknowledgments. 6 Part One Part Two Preface 7 troduction 10 Character. 120 ‘The Language of Molernism 18 Content 132 2. Language and Drawing Design 13 3. On Difference: Masculine and Feminine 42 Feexibility 142 Language Metaphors 62 Form 14 5. Spatial Mechanies'~ Scientific Metaphors. 86 Formal 173, 6. ‘Dead or Alive’ ~ Descriving the Social 102 Funetion 174 History 196 Memory 208 Nature 220 Order 240 Simple 249 Space 286 Structure 2 Bibliography 318 List of llustrations 326 Index 330y parents, R ald Fort mn first ith Acknowledgments 6 Part One easures of languay Preface 7 Introduetion 10 1. The Language of Modernism 18 2, Language and Drawing 28 2. On Difference: Masculine and Feminine 4. Language Metaphors 62 5. ‘Spatial Mechanies'~ Scientific Metaph 6. ‘Dead or Alive’ ~ Describing “the Socal 26 102 Contents Part Two aracter 120 Context 132 Design 136 Fesibilty 142 Fon Function 17 History 196 Memory 208 Newwre 220 Order 240 Simple 249 Space 256 Structure 276 Transparency 286 Truth 229, Type 904 User 312 Bibliography 318 Uist of Hust onn EEE EEE EE Introductionca every art was to offer an experience unique to its own particular propert® ‘uncommunicable through any other medium, For the visual arts, this ai nha Dasha rhc poigogse Lm Mab agh ted ee his book The New Vision (1928), that ‘Language is inadequate to wre ate the exact meaning and the rich variations of the realm of sensory formiences’ (63). In every visual art, language fell under suspicion ~ and ear coture was no exception: one might recall Mies van der Rohe’s ters ae buildings’ (4}. That the relationship has had so little attention is partly due to commentary) architecture is a three-part system constituted out of th ap of creative invention — with Evelyn’ us ingeio — at the expense of discourse (whether presented by the architect, client or critic). What th esroun other constituents. More particularly, architc re has, like all other art logy of architecture with The Fashion System makes clear is that languag to being cold about it. Nowhece was this assumption moce evident than i Berthes's model of the fashion system. Fiesty, its images are of twa kinds, onwhich ~ photography ~ is a univers but the other of which ~ drawing a code restricted to those within th 1. The differences between these two types of image are sufficiently great for it to be more accurate to describe chitecture as a four-part system, within which one of the main tensions, as swe shall sce in chapter 2, is that between language and drawing. The second way in which the architecture system differs from the fashion system is that whereas in fashion, the verbal component is produced almost entirely b fashion commentators and journalist, in architecture, architects themselve ddo much of the talking and wiriting ~ which indeed constitutes a significant and sometimes major component of theie ‘production’; one of the features of th architects and the press for control over the verbal element. Although language realization of projects frequently depends upon verbal presentation and persuasiveness ~ itis striking how litle discussed language has been compa) to architecture's other principal medium, drawing, Part of the reason for this lereas drawing is a code over which architects clisparity must sueely be that hold a large measure of control, their command of language will always be Language and History is mainly concerned is the constant flax hetween words and meanings, of 1m meanings. We can see this both in historical rerms occurring over time, but also as oceutring between one language and another. The history of architecture, as distinct from its presen day practice and eriticism, is faced with the unique and special problem of seeing the worke as it was seen by people in the past, and of attempting to recover their experience of it, This task is ful of difficult to make it seem close to impossible.’ Whose experience do we succeed in recovering? For who else did those persons speak? How are we to grasp the faculty of the mind, bue a historically determined property, must certainly the most reasonable, and most regularly followed solution is by appeal to phic images, and above all to what people at the time, dence is not straightfoward: or others for them, wrote down. But even are is @ historical phenomenon, so are drawings and 5. The ve at the time ~ and so t00 is lang medium thre we stand in greatest hope of reliving the experiences of the past itself escapes us, for nothing is more fugitive, more subject to the proce of historia change than nguge isl In tre of langage the past is no ess foreign than is abroad. We cannot expect that to a nineteenth: ‘entury person the words ‘design’, or “form, meant the same as they would to us. It is almost certain that they did not Our problem, then, isto recover the past meanings of words so that w n interpret what those who uttered them intended to say. But this is no mple matter, for the history of language is not one of the straightforward replacement of one meaning by another, like a car manufacturer's model changes, but rather a process of accumulation as new meanings and inflections re added to existing words without necessarily displacing the old ones. To find the meaning of a word at any one time is to know the available possibilities: tcanings cannot be identified the way one looks up a word up in a dictiona Critical vocabulary is not about things, i is about encounters with thing: nd itis above all as a means of structuring those experiences that languag is of value, The particular resousce of language, itself a system of differences, is its capacity to make distinctions, between one thing and another thing, between one kind of experience and another. The significance of much ritical vocebulacy lies not so much in any specific meaning a term might have, but rather in al the things that it does ot mean, chat it excludes. Archicects and critics do not always choose words for the sake of theit positive Jenotations, but for their force of resistance to other ideas or terms ~ such, n the case with the architectural usage of history’, and of type’. The historical enquiry into critical terms in Part Il, becomes therefore nor simply a record of meanings, but also of changing oppositions and shifting Language and Languages Hecween European languages; there has always been a brisk trade in critical ocabulary. Few of the words discussed in Part Il frst took on life as and inflections developed elsewhere. Any account of space’ in archi that did not take into account its nan, of of ‘structure nto account its origins in Germ of ‘structure overlooked its development in French would be manifestly incomplete a yd de to terms as they developed in languages other than Engl inadequate. It has been necessary therefore to give & 1 of attentios often more rapidly than knowledge the works abour which it was spoker Jin some respects, this isa problem, for one might well ask, what language is his book primarily about? 1 am not keen to encourage the impression that he i age of architecture is ‘international’, that itis some kind of Esperant understood identically wherever it is spoken: the fact is we can only speak in‘one language at a time, and the words necessarily take theit meaning from the particular language in which they are uttered. Ie would be unwise to assume that the word Form in German will mean quite the same thing as ‘form in English — yer asthe English use of the word in relation to architecture owes a great deal to its translation from German, it would at the same time be a mistake to overlook its man sense. Although the trade between languages is in some respects a difficulty in a hook like this, in another sense the problem of translation is simply another manifestation of the transitoriness of meaning. that is central to che whole enquiry: the migration of ideas and words from one language to another is another spect of what goes on within a single language as one metaphor is displaced by another. Because this book is written in English, the terms with which it deals are terms as they exist in the English language. Quotations from other languages have been teanslated into English, ‘which, although this contradicts the very point that words mean particulae things within the language they are spoken, and tends towards the impression of a uni he book at all readable, But we should not regard the act of translation, as it often is sal language of architecture, seemed neces regarded, as ‘a problem’, for through translation words gain as wel as lose.