157sion that which is presented in mediated form via imagery,
for example the dynamic of the ship metaphor in Modernism
(> symbol).
In the context of French revolutionary architecture,
buildings were expected to express their functions and char-
acters through pictorial elements and forms. Ever since post-
modernism, such ‘speaking architecture’ (French: architecture
parlante) has been present as the pictorial type of ‘duck,’ i.e.
a building that expresses its content through pictorial forms.
Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown coined the term with
reference to a duck-shaped building built by a duck farmer
on Long Island in the 1930s who used to sell ducks and duck
eggs. To be sure, picturing or depiction are not the princi-
pal tasks of architecture, but they do awaken associations
with the familiar, i.e. familiar images of past epochs or so-
cial milieux. To view a building as an image, however, need
not mean that it is seen as a picture. The image character of
the building, meaning its emblematic and memorable quality,
contributes to the intensity of architectural experience, as in
the classical image of the house with slanting, pitched roofs as
the quintessence of > dwelling.
In the framed prospect, by contrast, i.e. as seen through a
camera viewfinder or on a monitor, architecture becomes im-
age in the sense of its isolation via framing and the fixing of
a view from a static standpoint. It is not experienced through
action and movement as a concrete situation; instead, the pic-
torial composition, contained in a frame, establishes distance,
transforming architecture into an object of contemplation. In
many cases, tourists experience real places only from the per-
spective of the beholder of images. The > picturesque image
of architecture, seen principally from its photogenic side as
a facade, is based on planar proportions and relationships
of scale, attractive coloration and surface effects, interesting
superimpositions of form, the play of surface and depth, and
often on bold and striking symbolism. It is perceived almost
exclusively in visual terms, and is well-adapted to contempla-