Architecture as Signs and Systems for a Management Time

Architecture as Signs and Systems for a Management Time by Venturi Scott Brown is a thought-provoking reading about two major roles of architecture and design.

 

1.          "Architecture as Signs and Systems" revisits the elemental quality of architecture as ‘symbol’ and ‘shelter’ in the context of our information age. There are various patterns that urban design planners need to understand in order to plan. These patterns can be seen as activities of people in cities and buildings indicate patterns and have been developed by economists and regional scientists to explain the shapes of urban settlement.

 

2.         The two major roles of architecture, as defined by Venturi Scott Brown are: architecture as shelter and architecture as signage. Signage doesn’t only mean advertising, but has to do with communication, decoration, information and symbolism. Put them all together and you have a “decorated shed,” a phrase which they coined.

3.          In any city, density is conditioned by geometry. When people want to be at the centre, they face the issue of less area than at the edges. This is shown in various diagrammatic examples in the article. This includes maps that have traced a pattern of towns set concentrically around a regional market centre – ‘a central place’. Venturi Scott Brown believes that this causes hysteria at the centre and anemia at the periphery.

4.         By taking an analytic cross cuts through a city enables people to isolate one variable for study; in the case of this article, a system of signs. Each exists within a pattern of streets. Examining the city as a series of patterns formed by a series of interrelated subsystems enables the clarification of patterns and the detection of new ones.

5.          By superimposing selected cross-cuts, the process of analysis moves on to synthesis. An illustration in the article of the Las Vegas strip shows that by documenting signs on the strip leads to an understanding of the strip as a series of overlaid patterns evolving from the economic, social, natural and physical systems.

6.         From understanding the systems, the next step is using this to plan a design. The plan for the University of Pennsylvania and the Perelman Quadrangle was used to explain this process. By using systems, the planners were able to define nodes and conjunctions of activity on campus, the movements of students between classes, the distribution of classrooms and how accessible they are to the students, locations of all entrances and possible entrances, and the different activity areas and public spaces.

7.         The idea of ‘the street through the building’ is pathways that create circulation through the building. An example of this is the First Campus Centre at Princeton University. The ‘streets’ through this building have been designed to emulate narrow, medieval laneways which are lined with stores, and which lead to a large common area at the back where various activities take place.

8.         A closer look at overlaying patterns can be seen in the example of the University of Michigan Master Plan and Life Sciences Complex. There are many things to be learnt by taking a series of analytic cross cuts through the data, then combining this with other variables. By juxtaposing classrooms, studios and labs with commercial uses illustrates the relationship between them is illustrated.

9.         The planning analysis of patterns are not only concerned with urban economic and transportation systems, but also with environmental factors that influence the planning of buildings. This is evident in the map of the UM North Campus which analyses the environmental framework system that should influence the planning and design.

10.      The article proposes using new communication and engineering technologies to initiate an evolved architectural language – one through which buildings can react to shifting paradigms in a contemporary ‘context’ to better perform their function of wider geographical and intellectual territory.