193are also confronted from all sides with that which these forms
- whether individually or in their interaction – signify or ex-
press, or to which they refer, whether openly or subliminally,
whether intentionally or inadvertently. Playing a role here are
individual and collective models of interpretation, which are
in turn conditioned by cultural frames of interpretation and
social norms.
The relationships between architectural form and mean-
ing are highly diverse in nature. For one thing, meaning
and architecture can be conveyed in the form of > signs, the
teacher whose comprehension is supplied by cultural conven-
tions or specialized knowledge. In such instances, one must
have learned to read signs and to interpret their significance.
A city or a building is expected to have > readability, which
allows us, for example, to recognize the building’s organiza-
tion or intended use, or to understand pictorial messages and
iconographic contents. By providing such signals, indicative
forms allude to relationships that lie behind the surface and
are not necessarily experienced in a given situation. The po-
sitioning of staircases, for example, can be read off from the
openings in the facade, and a building’s date of construction
is legible in its ornamentation.
Such signals, however, may go far beyond the respective
situation in space and time, and ultimately can signify, repre-
sent or narrate something that lies outside the architecture,
and to which it alludes only indirectly. At times, anecdotal al-
lusions, for example, narrative illustrations of a story, a busi-
ness concept, or a reference to the personality of a former
occupant, have only a subordinate relation to the present situ-
ation itself.
For another thing, we grasp the expressive character of a
built form directly and in perceptual terms without the need
to read meaning by deciphering architectural forms, espe-
cially those that have an impact on us in a given situation: the
immediate > expression of features we assign to built forms,
spaces, or situations themselves, for example those that