anthropologist, a psychologist, an ideologist, etc., and we will return to that shortly. But
first we might consider the peculiarity of the phenomenon from the semiotic point of
view.
Only at the last level, the level of point 3 above, do we find forms that could be
understood as ‘architecture’. So while the elements of architecture constitute themselves
a system, they become a code only when coupled with systems that lie outside
architecture...
What about architecture, then, if we accept the hypotheses above? Let us use X for the
system of architectural forms, Y for the system of functions, and K for the system of
social exigencies, or the anthropological system—an x might be a table of a certain width,
which permits and signifies a certain function y (to eat at a considerable distance from
one another, let us say), which in turn allows the realization of an anthropological value k
(‘formal’ relationship), whose sign vehicle that function has become.
Then the units in X, as spatial forms, admit of several kinds of description—two
dimensional (through a set of drawings or a photograph), verbal (through an oral or
written description), mathematical (through a series of equations), etc.; the units in Y, as
functions, admit of either verbal description or representation in terms of some iconic
(cinematographic, for example), kinesic, or other kind of system for ‘transcribing’
functions; and the units in K, as anthropological values, can be described verbally.
Now it is clear that while a form x is being used it might seem (to the user) quite
closely tied to a function y and an anthropological value k—just as closely as a meaning
seems (to the speaker) tied to a verbal sign vehicle. But from the point of view of
semiotics, it is possible to describe the units of each of these three systems independently,
without, that is, having recourse to the units of either of the other two.
This is something that was never envisaged by those who have considered the notion
of meaning suspect, because up to now studies in semantics have been conducted inside
the circle of verbal ‘interpretants’. So above and beyond what else it offers, semiotics
shows us the possibility of investigating systems of signs where the planes of expression
and content are not inseparable—or at least where they can be more successfully
separated.
THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL SYSTEM
But in introducing this K, this anthropological system, have we jeopardized the semiotic
framework behind everything we said before?
Having said that architecture has to elaborate its sign vehicles and messages with
reference to something that lies outside it, are we forced to admit its signs cannot, after
all, be adequately characterized without bringing something like referents back into the
picture?
We have argued that semiotics must confine itself to the left side of the Ogden-
Richards triangle—because in semiotics one studies codes as phenomena of culture—
and, leaving aside verifiable realities to which the signs may refer, examine only the
communicative rules established within a social body: rules of the equivalence between
sign vehicles and meanings (the definition of the latter being possible only through
interpretants or other sign vehicles by means of which the meanings may be signified),
and rules regarding the syntagmatic combination of the elements of the paradigmatic
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