Cultural Expression in

Architecture | ELC012
Lecture No. 8
Fall 2023 | Semester VII

Dr. Amna Jahangir

Ph.D. (Cardiff), M.Arch. (Sheffield), B.Arch.Hons. (Lahore)
Assistant Professor, School of Architecture, The University of Lahore.
Lecture Content

• Non-Marxism Cultural Theory

• Key Concepts in Non-Marxism

• Main Theories and Ideas of Non-Marxism

Non-Marxism Cultural Theory
• Non-Marxist Cultural Theory encompasses various intellectual approaches to
understanding culture and its impact on society.

• Non-Marxist Cultural Theory has had a profound impact on architectural thought

and practice.

• It challenged traditional notions of form, function, and meaning in architecture.

Key Concepts in Non-Marxism
• Three (03) key concepts:

1. Diversity: Different theories emphasize various aspects of culture.

2. Multidisciplinary: Draws from sociology, anthropology, philosophy, and more.

3. Contextual: Examines culture's influence on architecture in specific contexts.

Main Theories and Ideas of Non-Marxism
• Semiotics
• Postmodernism
• Structuralism
• Post-Structuralism
• Phenomenology
• Critical Theory
• Feminist Theory
• Globalization Theory
Part-I

• Semiotics

• Charles Sanders Pierce

• Ferdinand de Saussure

• Influences of Semiotics

• Semiotics in Architecture
Semiotics
• Semiotics, also called Semiology.
The study of signs and sign-using behaviour.
• It was defined by one of its founders, the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure
(1857-1913), as the study of “the life of signs within society.”
• Although the word was used in this sense in the 17th century by the English
philosopher John Locke, the idea of semiotics as an interdisciplinary field of study
emerged only in the late 19th and early 20th centuries with the independent work
of Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) and of the American
philosopher Charles Sanders Pierce (1839-1914).
Semiotics
• Semiotics is the study of meaning-making or Interpretation of signs, the study
of sign processes and meaningful communication.
• Includes the study of signs and sign processes, indication, designation,
likeness, analogy, metaphor, symbolism, signification, and communication.

“It is possible to conceive of a science which studies the role of signs as part of
social life. It would form part of social psychology, and hence of general
psychology. We shall call it semiology. It would investigate the nature of signs
and the laws governing them.”
(Ferdinand de Saussure)
Charles Sanders Pierce
• Peirce defined a sign as
“something which stands to somebody for
something”.

• Peirce also demonstrated that a sign can never

have a definite meaning.
Types of Signs
• His major contribution to semiotics include the categorization of
signs into three main types:

1. an icon, which resembles its referent (such as a road sign for

falling rocks)
2. an index, which is associated with its referent (as smoke is a sign
of fire)
3. a symbol, which is related to its referent only by convention (as
with words or traffic signals).
Ferdinand de Saussure
• Saussure treated language as a sign-system.
• His work in linguistics supplied the concepts and
methods that semioticians applied to sign-systems
other than language.

• Signs and symbols can be studied, not only in

language, but also in rituals, culture, images, and art.
• Signs include words, gestures, images, sounds, and
objects.
Signs
• One such basic semiotic concept is his distinction between the two
inseparable components of a sign:

1. the signifier, which in language is a set of

speech sounds or marks on a page, and
2. the signified, which is the concept or idea behind
the sign.
Ferdinand de Saussure
• He contended that language must be considered as a social phenomenon, a
structured system that can be viewed synchronically (as it exists at any particular
time) and diachronically (as it changes in the course of time).

• This interest in the structure behind the use of particular signs linked semiotics
with the methods of Structuralism. Saussure’s theories were, thus, also
considered fundamental to Structuralism (especially structural linguistics) and to
Poststructuralism.
Influences of Semiotics
• Twentieth-century semioticians applied Peirce and Saussure’s principles to a
variety of fields, including anthropology, psychoanalysis, communications,
semantics, art, architecture.

• Among the most influential of these thinkers were the French scholars:
- Claude Levi-Strauss (French Anthropologist, 1908-2009)
- Jacques Marie Emile Lacan (French Psychologist, 1901-1981)
- Michel Foucault (French philosopher and historian, 1926-1984)
- Jacques Derrida (French philosopher, 1930-2004)
- Roland Gerard Barthes (French critic, 1915-1980)
- Julia Kristeva (French author, 1941-).
Semiotics in Architecture

• Architecture as language and communication.

• Significance of signs and symbols in architecture.

• Most architectural objects are for

function but they also communicate
through their form. For instance,
windows and doors.
Semiotics in Architecture
• Denotation: The surface meaning – what we actually see.
• Connotation: The deeper or hidden meanings and associations or
interpretations – what you associate with the image.

• The Form of the building, its aesthetic properties like volume, mass,
texture, materials suggest the concept behind it.

• Several ancient to postmodernist architectural buildings have been

purposefully designed to evoke certain feelings into people’s minds.
Parthenon – feeling of strength, nobleness, exaltation, balance.