Rethinking Architecture| A reader in cultural theory

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14 On these, and on the codes that follow, see Klaus Koenig, 1964, op. cit., pp. 38–52,
‘L’articolazione del linguaggio architettonico’; and Gillo Dorfles, Simbolo, comunicazione,
consumo, Turin: Einaudi, 1962.
15 On the concept of ‘type’, see, besides Dorfles and Koenig, the text entitled ‘Sul concetto di
tipologia architettonica’ in Argan’s work (1965, op. cit.), where the proper parallel is drawn
between architectural typology and iconography; type is defined as progetto di forma, which
comes close to the definition of figures of speech (as relazioni generali di inaspettatezza, or
general schemes providing for formulaic presentation of the unexpected) given in Eco 1968,
op. cit., par. A.4.2.2; see also Sergio Bettini ‘Semantic criticism and the historical continuity
of European architecture’, Zodiac 2, 1958 and Vittorio Gregotti Il territorio dell’
architettura, Milan: Fetrinelli, 1966.
16 For Joseph Stalin’s well-known views on linguistics see Josef Stalin, Marxism and
Linguistics, New York: International, 1951.
17 That language determines the way in which one sees reality, see Benjamin Lee Whorf,
Language, Thought and Reality, John Carrol, ed., Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1956, 1964.
18 See Argan et al., 1965, op. cit. and Filiberto Menna, ‘Design, communicazione estetica e
mass media’, Edilizia Moderna, 85, 1965; see for that matter the whole of issue 85 of
Edilizia Moderna, and note the slant of the graphics.
19 For perhaps the most comprehensive study to date, see Fusco, 1967, op. cit.
20 To quote Walter Benjamin:


Distraction and concentration form polar opposites which may be
stated as follows: A man who concentrates before a work of art is
absorbed by it. He enters into this work of art the way legend tells of
the Chinese painter when he viewed his finished painting. In contrast,
the distracted mass absorbs the work of art. This is most obvious with
regard to buildings. Architecture has always represented the prototype
of a work of art the reception of which is consummated by a
collectivity in a state of distraction. (‘The Work of Art in the Age of
Mechanical Reproduction’, in Hannah Arendt, ed., Illuminations,
Harry Zohn (trans.), New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968, p.
241.)
21 See the issue of Edilizia Moderna dedicated to ‘design’, cited above, and in particular the
introduction, ‘Problemi del design’.
22 Reviewing the first version of this text, Maria Corti, Review, Strumenti Critici, 1967, 1 (4):
pp. 447–50, commented that the introduction of the anthropological system into the
discussion was ‘a trap’, one that reopened the problem of the autonomy of semiotics as a
science. While I acknowledge there might have been some malicious intent to it, I would like
to point out that I was really trying to resolve the problem, which would have come up in
any case, and that her comments, together with a series of doubts advanced by Vittorio
Gregotti in conversation, have driven me to making this point a little clearer, even to me.
23 See Lynch, 1960, op. cit.; Luciana de Rosa ‘La poetica urbanistica di Lynch’, op. cit. 2 and
also Donald Appleyard, Kevin Lynch and John Myer, The View from the Road, Cambridge,
Mass.: MIT Press, 1964.
24 For an example of research on procedures of codification at the level of ‘ultimate’ structures,
see Christopher Alexander, Notes on the Synthesis of Form, Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1964. For a parallel drawn between Alexander’s work and that of structuralists, see
Maria Bottero ‘Lo strutturalismo funzionale di Christopher Alexander’, Communità, 1958,
pp. 148–9.


Umberto Eco 193
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