10 Semiotics and Symmetry

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Crown Hall. Chicago, United States, 1956

By the 1960s there were many complaints about the state of modern architecture. These came from inside and from outside the discipline. While some lamented the sterile, minimal living conditions it produced, others focused on the dullness of its forms. Its inability to produce positive meanings and associations was also decried. It was not just ugly or uncomfortable: it was indecipherable.

One response to architecture’s inability to communicate was an interest among architects in semantics and semiotics. Semantics looks at how meanings are produced. Semiotics explains how linguistic signs operate and communicate meaning. Instead of looking at the internal structure (or syntax) of form, these communication-oriented architects were interested in how form produced cultural meaning.1 Toward this end, they looked at contemporary cultural contexts that were successfully speaking with the public—namely, the mass media.2 It also spurred a renewed interest in how past architectural styles continued to produce meaning.3 In this postmodern context the answer to the question “where does architectural form come from” was: traditional architectural tropes. Among these motifs was symmetry, in particular, reflective symmetry. Meaning

The production of meaning can be understood as a type of symmetry making and breaking. As the polymath Gregory Bateson noted, the goal of any communicative act is “the creation of redundancy, meaning, pattern, predictability, information, and/or the reduction of the random by ‘restraint.’”4 In other words, the goal is an invariance of information despite its transformation from the sender to the receiver. Among the things that can disrupt this symmetrical condition are poorly formulated messages, the use of the wrong medium, the presence of noise in the communication channel, or the unequal background and skills of those wishing to communicate with one another.

Bateson recognized that any system that relied on the exchange and feedback of information existed within a larger, more complex, but similarly structured context. This was particularly true of the messages sent by the less rule-bound practice of art: “It is, I believe, of prime importance to have a conceptual system which will force us to see the message (i.e., the art object) as both itself internally patterned and itself a part of a larger patterned universe—the culture or some part of it.”5

The internal pattern is the form (i.e. words, colors, textures, shapes) of the message proper, while the larger external pattern is “derived from, or determined by, other characteristics of cultural and psychological systems.”6 Of course, not all messages get through, and not all meanings are the intended ones. Bateson understood that most of the time the goal was to avoid this asymmetric condition. However, he also recognized that moments of miscommunication could play a valuable cultural role: “All that is not information, not redundancy, not form and not restraints—is noise, the only possible source of new patterns.”7

Noise, randomness, and misinterpretations were not always inefficient or unproductive: sometimes they were the source of cultural evolution. However, these new patterns would only survive if the existing context could support them. The mutation that was modern architecture was patterned in such a way as to be indecipherable by the context it was born into.

Instead of attempting to bend the “larger patterned universe” to match the messages, modern architecture was sending, postmodern architecture used traditional tropes in the hopes of reestablishing a rapport with a larger audience. In addition to including classical features like pediments and pilasters at the level of organization, bilateral symmetry was a frequent feature of “Postmodern Buildings.”

Grassi: From Transformation to Tradition

Giorgio Grassi belonged to the group of architects who looked to historical architectural tropes as a means to reconnect architecture with its various publics. His neorationalist work interestingly spans the gap between architecture as an autonomous practice and as a social art, combining traditional building types and materials with a minimal modern sensibility. It also frequently makes frequent use of symmetry.

Grassi was a member of the Tendenza group that formed in Italy in the 1960s. As with the original rationalists of the 1920s and 1930s, they sought to strip architecture to its core.8 They were not seeking out architecture’s deep structure, but rather looking for its most basic and most legible units. Their designs emphasized the serial repetition of windows, walls, doors and columns. They used traditional building elements, such as pediments, domes and colonnades. And, they consistently deployed conventional building typologies, including courtyards, stoas, and slabs, in symmetrical arrangements. The emphasis on these well-known architectural components was not a move towards autonomy, but a prerequisite for engaging the social sphere.

Through his writing in 1980, Grassi proposed that architecture must first come to terms with itself, that is, with its specific characteristics, and at the same time with its particular social responsibility. For this reason, he argued that the language of architecture is—or should be—accessible.8 In Grassi’s case accessibility meant rejecting any avant-garde experiment. The ad hoc expression of materials, function, and structure was replaced by the compositionally consistent characteristic of reflective symmetry. Grassi’s Housing Project in Ticino (1972), the Palace of Administration in Trieste (1974), the Student Housing project in Chieti (1976), the Roman Theater at Sagunto (1994) and the University Library in Valencia (1998), among other projects, combine symmetrical plans with simple, spare, and serially repeated punched windows and doors in masonry walls.9

On the one hand, these spartan buildings are modern. They are large, functional, minimal, out-of-scale, and even threatening. On the other, they are formal and familiar. They appear as uncanny combinations of Ledoux’s neo-classicism and HIlberseimer’s modernism. Formal types and details appear as updated versions of ancient and modernist models. They have been transformed yet remain invariant.10 What is difficult to decipher is their function. Echoing the projects shown in the 19th century textbooks of French theorist J.N.L. Durand, the same plan type, the same window treatment, the same site strategy can be used for a housing complex, office building, prison, library, or hospital.

Not only can the same forms accommodate multiple functions, but they can also accommodate multiple, often contradictory, meanings. As Philip Tabor noted, this flexibility is an important feature of buildings with axial symmetry. Symmetry has been associated with both democracy and fascism. It has been interpreted as beautiful and boring. It has been judged as being efficient and wasteful, timeless and obsolete.11 Yet, the key term here is “and.” Grassi’s work shows that both of the terms bound up in these binaries can coexist in one project. There is enough “noise” coming from the use of conventional architectural tropes (including symmetry) to upend the modernist myth of aesthetic progress. But, there is enough newness to undermine the interpretation of tradition as an uninterrupted and timeless quality. In short, their physical qualities - symmetry, serial repetition, spare surfaces, and materials—embody the message that architecture’s specific characteristics can remain invariant and adapt themselves to meet the transformations caused by historical disruptions.

Graves: From Type to Expression

Another postmodern architect who incorporated traditional details with symmetrical plans was Michael Graves. However, the contexts and messages of his buildings were dramatically different from those of Giorgio Grassi. His forms were as loud as Grassi’s were quiet. Where the Italian neo-rationalists were minimalists, American postmodernists like Graves, Robert Venturi and Charles Moore were maximalists. Not surprisingly, their work is exuberant where Grassi’s is somber.

If Grassi tended to abstract and simplify traditional forms and details, Graves exaggerated them. Projects like the Portland Building (1982), the Humana Tower (1985), and the Swan and Dolphin Resort at Disney World (1990) are all out-of-scale. Their forms are inflated and their colorful surfaces flattened. Traditional ornamental details are

distorted. Every elephantine element (and its symmetrical twin) announces, if not shouts, its presence. I am a keystone! I am a capital! I am a pilaster! On the one hand, the shapes of these details send a message that they are associated with the past. On the other, they are as big, bold, and colorful as billboards. The accessible language that Graves deployed was taken as much from marketing as from mannerism.12

Ambiguous and Exaggerated Conventions

Despite their differences, Graves and Grassi shared a reliance on reflective symmetry to organize the plans, facades, and shapes of their buildings. What message does the common presence of this staid form of symmetry send? Is it just a neutral technique, indifferent to stylistic and ideological differences? Does it signify a point of connection between the two seemingly polar positions? Or, does it highlight their differences?

The axial symmetry and classical iconography used by both architects indicates a desire to connect their projects with old architectural traditions. Both architects attempted to update and bring the past into the present, and symmetry was a marker of that tradition par excellence. The eerie silence of Grassi’s forms also reveals his stated belief that architecture needs to communicate to—and to be able to communicate in— the future.13 As such, they cannot be identified as belonging to a specific time period. The unchanging nature of symmetry is not necessarily timeless, but it also does not belong to any one era either. In contrast, Graves’ use of symmetry appears, like his exaggerated ornaments, as a historically specific scare-quote from the past, a quote that signifies that symmetry is being used to mark a historically specific moment rather than connect the present with the future. Symmetry can be a very slippery signifier. Grassi and Graves’ were also popular, if only for a short time and with a limited (architectural) audience. Today, even though the “larger patterned universe” has dramatically changed, their easily recognizable, internal (symmetric) patterns allow them to still convey meaning—even if those meanings have changed. No longer radical, Graves’ buildings are now closely associated with the specific time and place in which they were made. Grassi’s imposing structures are harder to pin down. They do not seem out of date, nor do they appear contemporary. They may not be indecipherable, but they are ambiguous. The blunt presence of symmetry in plan and elevation helps produce this out-of-this-time effect.

1 Charles Jencks and George Baird, Meaning in Architecture (London: Barrie & Rockliff, 1969). Geoffrey Broadbent, “A Plain Man’s Guide to the Theory of Signs in Architecture,” Architectural Design vol 47 no. 7, (1977), 474-482. 2 Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1977). Charles Jencks, The Language of Post-Modern Architecture (London: Academy, 1977). 3 Robert Venturi, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1966). Aldo Rossi, The Architecture of the City (Cambridge: 1982) [1966]. 4. Gregory Bateson, “Style, Grace, and Information in Primitive Art,” Steps Toward an Ecology of Mind (New York: Ballantine, 1972), 130. 5 Ibid. 6 Gregory Bateson. “Cybernetic Information,” Steps Toward an Ecology of Mind (New York: Ballantine, 1972), 416. Gregory Bateson, Mind and Nature (New York: Dutton, 1979), 42-45. 7 Marco De Michelis, “Aldo Rossi and Autonomous Architecture,” in The Changing of the Avant-garde: Visionary Architectural Drawings from the Howard Gilman Collection, edited by Terence Riley (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2002), 89-98. Giorgio Grassi, “Interview with Giorgio Grassi,” Architectural Design vol. 77 no. 5 (September-October 2007), 26-29. 8 Giorgio Grassi, “Avant-Garde and Continuity,” Oppositions 21. (Summer 1980), 32. 9 “Casa dello Studente, Chieti, Italy, 1976-1980,” Architectural Design vol. 52 no. 5 (1982), 118-124. Giorgio Grassi, “Scena fissa: progetto per il teatro romano di Sagunto = Fixed stage: project for the Roman Theatre of Sagunto,” Lotus International 46 (1985), 7-21. Kenneth Frampton, “Modern Drama: Roman Theater of Sagunto, Sagunto, Spain, Giorgio Grassi, Architect,” Architecture vol. 83 no. 11 (November, 1994), 98-105. “Biblioteca del Nou Campus, Valencia = New Campus Library, Valencia,” AV Monografías = AV Monographs no. 75-76, (January-April, 1999), 60-65. 10 Giorgio Grassi, “On the Question of Decoration,” Architectural Design vol. 54 no. 5-6, (1984), 10-13, 32-33. 11 Philip Tabor, “Fearful Symmetry,” Architectural Review vol. 173 no. 1023, (May, 1982), 18-25. 12 Martin Filler, “Michael Graves: Before and After,” Art in America vol. 68 no. 7, (September 1980), 99-105. David L. Gilbert, “The Portland Building,” in The Critical Edge: Controversy in Recent American Architecture, edited by Tod A. Marder (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985), 163-173. Sylvia Lavin, “Michael Graves: Humana Building,” Domus no. 667, (December, 1985), 1-5. Mark Aiden Branch, “Story Time,” Progressive Architecture vol. 71 no. 3 (March, 1990), 76-83. 13 Grassi, “Avant-Garde and Continuity.”