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> invitation character. Transitions of materiality from hard
and cold to soft and warm can help to guide from exterior
to interior, for example when pavement indicates a public
character and textile flooring invites us to feel at home. The
material endows an intended use with expression, while re-
cording traces of daily use. Such visible traces indicate aging
while, especially when combined with > patina, possessing
their own dignity. They suggest the solidity of architectural
elements, their social significance, while the application of lo-
cally typical materials inserts them into regional traditions,
contributing to their rootedness in a specific > place or > con-
text.
In some instances, the structural properties of materi-
als convey the expressive features of an architectural style.
With its bubbles and flowing structure, the travertine that was
preferred in the Roman Baroque, for example, expresses a
dynamically fluid and massively tumescent > form character,
and was hence referred to by Giorgio Vasari tellingly as con-
gelatione di terra e d’aqua, a frozen mixture of water and
earth. The enormous importance of materiality in architec-
ture was characterized by Adolf Loos: ‘Material must be divi-
nized once again. It consists of almost mysterious substances.
We must marvel deeply and reverentially over the fact that
anything like them could have been created in the first place.’
(Loos 2002c)
Literature: Böhme 1995b; Roth 1995; Soentgen 1997; Wes-
ton 2003Architecture conveys meanings. As a result, it transcends the
physical and technical facticity of built form. By the signifi-
cance of architecture, on the one hand, we may refer to its
prominence, its cultural ranking, or its influence in history.
On the other, architecture, also always conveys meaning in
the form of references to specific messages or contents. We
are not just surrounded by architectural forms and walls, butMeaning