Form

Historically, Architecture has been described, and by extension defined, by its meaningful form. A temple was recognizable as a "temple" both by its superficial form and the physical experience of its spaces. The design of a building's edifice, color, form, site, urban context, materiality, plan and spaces etc. were all deliberate attempts by the architect to communicate meaning to its users and the larger community in which it interacted.

Modernism has freed Architecture from the Ideology of Style. In doing so it has allowed contemporary culture to represent itself more specifically through uniquely expressive and diverse forms. But without a common typological or ornamental stylistic vocabulary, contemporary architects are reduced to using materiality, iconography and more fundamental formal-spatial gestures to invest meaning within buildings. However, this reliance of an underlying form takes more planning, skill and effort to use successfully than the historic formulaic decoration that quasi projected socio-functional type of "house", "bank", "office", "apartment building", etc, or the cultural function "threshold", "base", "ceiling", "roof", "etc". Contemporary Architects must now develop these on a per project, situational basis.

When combined with the current methods of Architectural production (design through construction) the resulting buildings have become progressively less meaningful. Consequently, I would argue that contemporary Architecture is at once both more rich and less "architectural" than buildings of earlier eras.

The Unnecessary

Architecture is messy. It is the turbulent balance of the useful and useless.

Building-meaning

The question of what architecture elements (and their components) mean and how they function within a larger structure of building is a unique question that is quite different than the ephemeral questions of language and structure. Contrary to what architects would like to believe, Architecture is not a "language". The idea that it could be, that by adding up its parts and sign-like references, one could produce meaningful architecture, rationally, consistently like a good writer uses grammar is an conceptual abstraction. 

The fallacy of Architecture-as-sign (as opposed to Architecture-as-symbol) lies partially in the nature of meaning itself and partially in human experience. 

Somewhere within the study of a thing there must also be an equal effort to experience it.

Space-Time and Perceptible Space

The idea that space, like mass can change its "formlessness" poses a problem. That space is manipulated by gravity and is not separable from the idea of time cannot help but alter our understanding, our conceptualization of immediate, perceptible space around us.  However, because gravitational spatial distortion or multiple Riemannian spatial dimensions are not experienced first hand or at least perceptible without scientific aids, the idea of a space-thing which can be folded or compressed remains an abstract rational construction.  How this will change man's perception of the sun, the seasons or distance is unclear.

Cosmologies

Image from: http://www.physics.miami.edu/huerta/class/mls603

For centuries after Copurnicus developed the sun centered cosmology (as opposed to the Aristotlian earth centered one) scientists could not prove that it existed as such but instead had to 'believe' it. First, the idea was for all practical purposes immeasurable in 1543. The tools simply didn't exist to prove it one correct. Second, it more than clashed with the existing idea of the universe- it negated it. Everything that was known about the world up to that time reinforced the earth-centered universe. Finally, Copurnicus had most of the science wrong. Slowly, first Galileo then Kepler, the science was massaged and corrected.

Scientists and philosophers following Copurnicus, first had to believe it was correct, before they could even prove it; today our cosmologies are not that different. Much of what we believe about the universe we can not prove and the corresponding conceptions (then there are multiple cosmologies) of world over-reaches our science. Because no one single theory summarizes the universe into one singular idea, the elastic "Big Theory - relativism - Big Theory" revolution is in mid cycle.  Many relativistic, small theories, solve localized problems. The question on which one to believe is not less of a problem now then it was in 1543.

Before-After

Wittgenstein tell us that a word's meaning is NOT derived from its letters, nor connected to some object that it might signify. Some words obviously do not have "things" which they are directly connected to, such as very, there or this, while some words stand for different things at different times, such as the word "bad", or "fat" or numbers. Instead, words are connected to meaning by the structure they exist in and not by some property intrinsic to the word itself. Furthermore, words do not exist as a creation, or an idea within the speaker. I think "dog" when I say dog, so "dog" means dog. This too is incorrect, because a word's meaning is only valid within a system, and just because I want "dog" to mean dog and not cat, I have either to operate within a language system, or change the system enough that it adapts to the new meaning placed upon within it. Furthermore, a particular definition may work with one set of users but not for the entire set; there may be multiple language systems at play. Therefore, a definition of a word is never fixed and cannot be limited or solidified. Instead a true definition is only the field of possible definitions within a system. Some being more useful within the larger system than others.

Accordingly a "theory" of language, much like a rigid definition, is useless in explaining language's terms and concepts because it is a prescription, a predetermination of the future. However, Wittgenstein reminds us that in language, like in chess, the act itself is not important but what happens before and after that is.

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