Superimposition

In a related way, the structuring of meaning-making in textual space rather than about or of textual space provides an important way for multiplying meanings. In architectural theory terms, this superimposition provides buildings a method for meaning something in different theoretical and practical terms all at the same time.

 

In the next example in the handout, Bernard Tschumi provides a series of planning sketches for his Parc de la Villette project. In the sketches, Tschumi actions and structures are mapped on top of each other, with multiple patterns occuping the same space. In this way, Tschumi argues, the architecture and its eventual use by people is held open simulataneously to many interpretations. These tendencies move from a hierarchy of binaries (Tschumi p. 251) such as "form follows function" into a spaces where form and function are both meaning-making devices, ones not necessarily linked to each other in rigid ways.

This approach, in fact, is one of the arguments for readings architecture as text: a building means not merely based on its utilitarian functions but also on its symbolic (despite Hegel's attempts to define architecture as anything that didn't function in a utilitarian way.

Tschumi, Studies for Parc de la Villette (from Tschumi, "Parc")

Throughout this talk, in fact, I'm arguing for an inversion or acceptance of postmodern architecture's insistence that buildings are texts. Can't we also say that texts are buildings?

[ main | defamiliarization | shock | destructuring | superimposition | crossprogramming | event | bibliography ]