The Semiotics of Spaceand the Culture of Design

Tina RichardsonTalk for the School of Design

February 4th 2015

Outline

Introduction

Discourse, statements, signs and space

Urban semiology

Yesterday

The sixties master plan of the University of Leeds

Reading architectural plans

Today

Campus maps

Greening the map

Places of consumption

Conclusion

Chamberlin, Powell and Bon

Chamberlin, Powell and Bon

Chamberlin, Powell and Bon

Chamberlin, Powell and Bon

Discourse and Planning

For Foucault an economic plan is one which “has an aim: the explicit pursuit of growth, for example, or the attempt to develop a certain type of consumption or a certain type of investment”; “a plan means the adoption of precise and definite economic ends”.

The Birth of Biopolitics:Lectures at the Collège de France

“Stones can make people docile and knowable”.

Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison

Ideology and Space

Henri Lefebvre discusses how ideology works in conjunction with space:

“What we call ideology only achieves consistency by intervening in social space and in its production” and “Ideology per se might well be said to consist primarily in a discourse upon social space.”

The Production of Space

University Development Plan

New Development and Existing Streets

The Discourse

“No effort has been spared in Leeds on the part of the City Authorities, the Hospital Board and the Council of the University to make the planned expansion possible despite the extreme difficulties inherent in the comprehensive re-planning and redevelopment of the old City sites which have hitherto rested in many ownerships and were laid out between a network of streets obsolete for any present purposes”.

(Chamberlin, Powell and Bon 1963: 269)

The Discourse

“No effort has been spared in Leeds on the part of the City Authorities, the Hospital Board and the Council of the University to make the planned expansion possible despite the extreme difficulties inherent in the comprehensive re-planning and redevelopment of the old City sites which have hitherto rested in many ownerships and were laid out between a network of streets obsolete for any present purposes”.

(Chamberlin, Powell and Bon 1963: 269)

The Discourse

“No effort has been spared in Leeds on the part of the City Authorities, the Hospital Board and the Council of the University to make the planned expansion possible despite the extreme difficulties inherent in the comprehensive re-planning and redevelopment of the old City sites which have hitherto rested in many ownerships and were laid out between a network of streets obsolete for any present purposes”.

(Chamberlin, Powell and Bon 1963: 269)

Planning and Power

David C. Perry:

“[Plans] become examples of particular relations of power that constitute conditions of freedom and dominance in the socially produced urban space” and therefore become “part of the production and reproduction of the social relations of power”.

(1995: 213)

Great Food at Leeds

Greening the Map

“University maps are not surprisingly often quite lovely expanses of green that eliminate all the objectionables of real life and underscore the campus’ placement in nature”.

(Paul Mullins 2012: 3)

Places of Consumption

Signs, Knowledge and Memory

Roland Barthes explains that signs can be decoded and interpreted within a cultural context which presents the sign as already formed:

“The meaning is already complete, it postulates a kind of knowledge, a past, a memory, a comparative order of facts”.

(2000: 117)

Maps, History and CultureDenis Wood describes how the maps form, its raison d’etre, enables us to use it easily as a cultural tool. In a similar way to Barthes, Wood says:

“Because the history of the map is our history we are already up and running (in coming to grips with the making of maps we recapitulate history); because the connections from the map to the rest of culture radiate from everypart of it, we can commence with any part of it [...] Any thread unravels everything”.

(1997: 144)

Conclusion - Maps“Every map intends not simply to serve us but to influence us”.

(Peter Turchi 2004: 88)

“We have forgotten this is a picture someone has arranged for us”.

(Denis Wood 1997: 7)

“A good map tells a multitude of little white lies; it suppresses truth to help the user see what needs to be seen”.

(Mark Monmonier 1996: 25)

“The interest unavoidably embodied in the map is thus disguised . . . as natural; it is passed off as . . . Nature itself”.

(Denis Wood 1997: 76)

Walking Inside Out

Contact and Information

www.schizocartography.org