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The rhetoric of architecture: Asemiotic approachDarryl Hattenhauer aa Department of English , Bemidji State University , Bemidji,Minnesota, 56601Published online: 21 May 2009.

To cite this article: Darryl Hattenhauer (1984) The rhetoric of architecture: A semioticapproach, Communication Quarterly, 32:1, 71-77, DOI: 10.1080/01463378409369534

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THE RHETORIC OF ARCHITECTURE:A SEMIOTIC APPROACH

DARRYL HATTENHAUER

Communication and rhetoric are inherent aspects of architecture. Architecture uses signs to communicateits function and meaning. This communication is rhetorical when it induces its perceiver to use or tounderstand the architecture—from a hot dog stand to a monument. Movements in architecture, such as theGothic or the International Style, promote certain values and beliefs, and can be studied as rhetoricalmovements. Like linguistic communication, architecture consists of codes, meanings, semantic shifts, andsyntactic units.

Darryl Hattenhauer is in the Department of English, Bemidji State University, Bemidji, Minnesota 56601.

Architecture not only communicates, but alsocommunicates rhetorically. Churches and shoppingmalls, doors and stairs—these architectural itemsnot only tell us their meaning and function, but alsoinfluence our behavior. Architecture is rhetoricalbecause it induces us to do what others would haveus do. Architecture, then, is a persuasive phenome-non, and therefore deserves to be studied by rhetor-ical critics.

Semiotics is one approach that rhetorical criticscould take to architecture as rhetoric. RolandBarthes' (1972) seminal work applies semiotics toarchitecture, as well as to wine, myth, literature,wrestling, painting, and food. More recently, semio-tics has promised to be a useful approach in rhetori-cal criticism. For example, John R. Lyne (1980,1981a, 1981b) is among the first to apply semioticsto rhetorical criticism. Lyne follows one of the twomain sources of sign theory, the work of Americanphilosopher Charles Sanders Peirce. By contrast, Iwish to emphasize here the other main source, theSwiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1960).Strictly speaking, the term "semiotics" denotes thesign theory that relies more on Peirce, while "semi-ology" denotes those ideas that have developedfrom the contributions of Saussure. However, schol-ars in this field generally use the term "semiotics"when speaking of the field of sign theory as a whole,and they generally use the term "semiology" whenspeaking just of Saussurian sign theory. Thus theterm semiotics can be used to include or excludeSaussurian sign theory. In this essay, "semiotics" isused in its inclusive sense, except when otherwisenoted. Semiotics has been fairly criticized for theexcess of jargon attending it. This essay attemptsto minimize the use of jargon, using only those termsthat are absolutely necessary, and defining them forreaders unfamiliar with semiotics.

First, this essay discusses the linguistic basis ofsemiology. Then it explains how architecture can bestudied as a communicative artifact. After that, itshows how architecture acts rhetorically and howwe might study architecture in terms of some of the

established methods of rhetorical criticism, such asfantasy analysis and movement studies.

Architecture as LanguageLike its cousin, structuralism, semiotics can be

thought of as "relationalism." That is, both holdthat, contrary to empiricism, the meaning of a thingconsists not in the thing itself but in its relation toother things. For example, the dots and dashes ofMorse code are understandable only because of theway they are arranged, the way they are related.Likewise, a musical communication would not beunderstandable if you scrambled all the notes andarranged those notes randomly. To cite anotherexample, speech sounds (phones) have no meaningby themselves. They have meaning only by theirarrangement. Thus the three sounds in the word"dog" have meaning if arranged as "god" but not as"dgo" or "ogd" or "gdo" or "odg." Applying thisrelationalism to architecture, architectural historianJuan Bonta shows that a building might seem toemphasize horizontal line, but such an emphasisappears only if the building is compared to anotherbuilding. Compared to Frank Lloyd Wright's Wain-wright Building, Louis Sullivan's Carson, Pirie, Scott& Co. Building seems to emphasize horizontal line,since the CPS Building's wide, short windows makehorizontal lines stand out. But Eric Mendelsohn'sSchocken Department Store Building in Stuttgartaccentuates each floor of its several stories, cre-ating an extreme horizontality against which Sulli-van's building would appear not to emphasize hori-zontality (Bonta, 1979, pp. 91-117). Semioticsholds that all communication and cognition, from thephonemic to theoretical, are built upon such opposi-tions as horizontal and vertical, dark and light, hotand cold.

Moreover, semiotics holds that communication isnot just one of many cultural systems; communica-tion does not co-exist juxtaposed to economics,religion, kinship, education, government, literature,art, and technology. Rather, communication is inher-

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ent in all such cultural systems. Communicationallows not only each system to interact with theothers, but also allows each system's parts tointeract. Thus in the semiotic view, communicationis the common denominator between and withincultural systems and artifacts. For example, Levi-Strauss (1966) found that kinship systems, withtheir widely varying practices and yet near universalproscription against incest, all have communicationin common. When families exchange members withother families in marriage, they also exchange signsthat indicate their affirmation of attitudes andbeliefs. Trade with others works much the sameway. The trader's intent may be to exchange goods,but one of the effects is to exchange informationthrough a dramatized, symbolic agreement uponrules of the community's ethos and world view.Semioticians contend that semiotics is a method forstudying all cultural phenomena. In this view, signtheory helps to explain all things cultural becauseall cultural phenomena are systems of signs. Fur-ther, because signs are building blocks of communi-cation, semiotics regards culture as communication.Thus communication studies, including speech andrhetorical criticism, may find in semiotics a newmethod for going beyond a text into its historical andsocial-psychological surroundings. But before wesuggest how such ambitiousness might beattempted, we need to look at the linguistic orsemiological side of semiotics.

The primary concept in semiology is Saussure'snotion of the sign. In Saussure's view, the signconsists of a signifier and a signified. The two occurtogether and are separable only abstractly. Thesignifier is that which conveys meaning. The mean-ing is the signified. The signifier is the form; thesignified is the message. Thus as a sign, the Chris-tian cross consists of its signifier, the horizontal andvertical axes, as well as its signified, all of themeanings associated with the crucifixion and re-demption. To return to our linguistic example, thesound of the utterance "dog" is a signifier, while thefour-legged animal that the sound refers to is thesignified.

Now in order to know a meaning, what a signifiersignifies, the receiver must know the code. Onedoes not understand a communication in Morsecode if one does not know which arrangement ofdots and dashes signifies which letters and words.Sometimes an emitter's signifier has a code dif-ferent from the receiver's code. For example, oftennon-architects don't understand modern architec-ture because non-architects don't know modernarchitecture's code; the non-architects don't under-stand what modern architecture means to say. Mod-ern architects often try to encode rationality, effi-ciency, and functionalism in their skeletal, glass-sheeted skyscrapers. But those who don't knowthat code can read such structures only as analo-gies to other structures that they know. They findthat modern architecture looks like a lavatory, or aclinic, or a body and fender shop, or a factory, or a

space ship. Such readings are metaphorical; intrying to figure out a form that we don't understand,we first try to decide what it resembles.

If architecture uses metaphor, it also uses twoother linguistic principles. The two aspects of anarchitectural signified (the meaning of a building orbuilding part) consist of a denotation and a connota-tion. The denotation refers to the building or buildingpart's use. Thus a ramp, stairway, escalator, orelevator denote the possibility of going up. Connota-tions include associated meanings. For somepeople, an escalator might connote fun, but toothers, danger. But someone who didn't know theescalator's code wouldn't know the escalator's use.To use an architectural form, you must first decodeit. Although primitives who had never seen a ramp orstairs could figure out their use quickly, they wouldbe slower to decode an escalator. With an elevator,primitives would spend some time in figuring out thecause and effect relationship between various but-tons and various functions. The simple function ofrising to higher stories would be mystifying andfrightening (Eco, 1980b, p. 21).

Maybe the clearest examples of what architec-tural signifiers connote is exemplified in ceremonialand monumental architecture. A church or com-memorative statue suggests many meanings. So dothe White House, the Washington Monument, theLincoln Memorial. Less immediately identifiable inconnotation would be, perhaps, Jefferson's Monti-cello and University of Virginia, although these toopromote their own ethos and world view as surely asdoes a primitive tribe's location of its shaman'squarters, governmental activities, eating spots, andinitiation areas.

Past connotations influence present ones. For-merly, the tallest buildings were sacred. This signi-fied was intentional, but it isn't in modern architec-ture. Yet the signified remains. Our tallest buildingsare our most noted and celebrated. Such buildingsoften have the most ritualized surroundings andentrances. Formerly, it was churches and statehouses that had the grand plazas, entry halls, andornate doors. Now, commercial buildings attract themost effort, expense, and attention. In New York, forexample, the World Trade Center and the SeagramBuilding are invested with the kind of attentionformerly reserved primarily for St. Patrick's Cathe-dral, which is now dwarfed by commercial buildings.Similarly, late nineteenth-century libraries are for-malized structures, but these days libraries arebeginning to look more like warehouses—appropri-ately so in an age when education is confused withinformation, and information is "stored" in retrievalsystems.

A further comparison with language obtains in thenotion of a semantic shift. Over time, words changemeanings, and so do buildings and building parts.The meaning of the Gothic has had several modifi-cations in meaning. The Gothic has been under-stood as a holdover of druidical religiosity, as ananalogy to the forest, as a refractor of light to

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suggest the influence of the divinity above, and asan exercise in verticality rising to the heavens. TheParthenon is a more specific example of a semanticshift. Originally, the Parthenon signified a place ofworship. Now it is primarily a symbol of the Greeksensibility (Eco, 1980b, p. 28). Because of semanticshift, it is impossible for us to reconstruct com-pletely what an architectural form signified for itsoriginators. To do so, we must reconstruct much oftheir ethos and world view, a process that rhetoricalcritics know is crucial but seldom perfect.

Architecture as RhetoricThe metaphor of architecture as language brings

us to consider further aspects of architecture ascommunication before we explore architecture asrhetoric. This next consideration will lead us torevise Louis Sullivan's dictum that in modern archi-tecture "form follows function" (Noble, 1970, pp.116-123). First of all, function follows communica-tion: one must understand the meaning of an archi-tectural signifier before one can use it. One mustknow what the elevator is for before one can oper-ate it. And for designers to make changes in func-tion, they must first conceive of the change—theymust operate in the realm of meaning and signifiedbefore they can create or modify or even use thesignifier. For example, designers can paint convinc-ing building parts on a blank wall. They can paint astairway or a complete facade that at first does notappear to be a sham. As one approaches thestairway and then realizes it is a fake, one demon-strates that connotation and meaning are prior touse. The case of false stairways shows that commu-nication precedes function (Eco, 1980a, p. 213). Inother words, function follows meaning.

Accordingly, the symbolic meaning is sometimesmore important than the actual use. Courtrooms arestill often designed with retainer fence railings, aform originated to segregate and restrain witnessesand the accused. Today these railings are function-ally anachronistic—they've undergone a semanticshift—but they signify "courtroom." The railing,however, is still functional, but in a new way. Itsfunction is merely to underscore that the room is acourtroom and one should behave accordingly. Sothe symbolic quality of a building part can be thatbuilding part's main function (and without the sym-bol's signified, it has no function). For example, athrone is used more to communicate status than asa comfortable place to sit (Eco, 1980b, p. 15). So wesee not only that function follows meaning, but alsothat form follows meaning. We retain vestigialaccoutrements even when their original function isgone. For example, we put false beams in ceilingsand install fireplaces that give off little heatbecause we want to retain the meaning, and in sodoing we retain the form.

To see how architecture communicates rhetori-cally, we need to review some of the points made sofar. Primary among these points is that for architec-

ture to function, it must communicate what its func-tion is. Some obvious examples are a barber pole,indicating that you can get your hair shortened; ared cross, indicating that you can get medical atten-tion; a bridge, indicating a crossing; a steeple,indicating a church; a dome, indicating a kind ofchurch or perhaps a sports arena; and a skyscraperskyline, indicating the downtown financial district.Architect Charles Jencks uses the example of Anto-nio Gaudi's Casa Batllo in Barcelona to show how abuilding communicates meaning. Casa Batllo is sev-eral stories high and about seventy feet wide, Iwould judge. Its balconies have not rails but sheetswith two eye-like holes. These sheets resemblemasks, thus connoting death masks as well aseighteenth-century party masks that covered theface from mid-forehead to mid-nose. The blue andgreen colors and rough texture of the exterior wallsremind many local people of the sea and kelp.These associations to blue and green are predict-able, given Barcelona's seaport qualities. One ofthe building's most striking features is that it hasbiomorphic pillars that resemble bony legs or askeleton. When finished in 1906, the building was atfirst called "the house of bones." A second strikingfeature of the house is that its tile roof looks like thescaly skin of some mythical beast, such as a drag-on. In Jencks' (1980a) reading, this building "repre-sents the dragon of Spain being slain by Barcel-ona's saint, while the bones and masks refer to thedead martyrs who have previously been victimizedin the struggle" (p. 95). Obviously such a building isdesigned to give several readings, multiple mean-ings. Like other great art works, this building canprovide different readings to different succeedinggenerations because its form signifies not simple,one-to-one signifieds, but many possible signifieds.

But architecture's communications are not totallysubjective and open-ended. Rather, architects canpredict what behavior their designs will induce.Commercial architecture contains the clearestexamples of such rhetorical manipulation. Windows,printed words, and building style announce the kindof goods to be had. Easy access is made, both fordrivers and pedestrians. The view of the establish-ment should be unobstructed so one can easily findit. And the view from the establishment can alsocontribute to its financial success. External colorsmust attract and stimulate; internal colors mustsatisfy; spaces and planes and textures must beinviting and rewarding. Thus architects and interiordesigners, like advertisers, elicit behavior: driving,walking, eating, looking, waiting, cooperating, stop-ping, listening, talking, drinking, spending.

Restaurants, especially the fast-food variety,have found that one of the best ways to convincepeople to stop and come in is to appeal to theirfantasies. Fantasy analysis could explore the impli-cations of the following kinds of shared fantasiesencouraged at various restaurants. A pizza parlorcan offer an Italian setting and call itself "theLeaning Tower of Pizza." Some chicken outlets

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want you to entertain the notion that there is a hoarysouthern Santa Claus in the kitchen who is savinghis secret recipe just for you. Other restaurants canbe a giant fish tank, a ship, or a railroad car. Stillothers encourage you to imagine that you are afireman, a policeman, a baseball player, a pirate.One of the perennial themes in America is the Indian.For example, the Thunderbird Hotel in Minneapolisis replete with bogus Indian icons: styrofoam totempoles, bricks and planks that are really fiberglass,candles shaped like teepees, even cocktail wait-resses in ersatz deerskin miniskirts with a plasticfeather in their naugahyde headbands. The reality ofIndian life is as completely masked here as Italianlife is at Shakey's Pizza Parlors. In a society whereHollywood Indians are mirrored in restaurants, per-haps the cute, bumbling Nazis of "Hogan's Heroes"will someday be replicated in a Nazi steak house.

Even church architecture has been influenced bythe necessity of reaching a wider audience. XavierRubert de Ventos (1980), a Spanish architect,argues that the salesmanship of the Counter-Refor-mation influenced Baroque styles. In the Baroque,he claims, the Church

promotes eternal salvation and sells spirituality.The first known case of a systematic marketing ofsomething is that of the baroque commercializa-tion of Faith. It was not by chance, in fact, that itwas then when the expression propaganda fidewas made up and used. The will or necessity ofpropagating a message transforms it immediatelyinto propaganda. From these it is a short step tothe verbosity of baroque facades and the theatri-cality of their images that must carry the messageof Redemption rapidly and to the most remoteplaces, (p. 189)Similarly, the built environment of educational

institutions influences behavior. Informal spaceswith portable seating are good for discussions andsome kinds of laboratories. For lectures, however,such a room is not conducive to attentiveness.

The design of prisons also has a rhetorical dimen-sion. High electric barbed-wire fences with armedguards persuade inmates to stay put. In addition,prison officials, as introductory communicationstexts point out, often try to paint interiors withrelaxing colors to reduce the frequency of violence.

The ways in which architecture acts rhetoricallyare not only obvious and coercive but subtle andpassive. Architecture represents the receivers'ethos and world view and thereby encourages thereceivers either to change or reaffirm their behaviorand beliefs. On the collective level, these myths canappear in urban planning, monuments, governmentbuildings, ceremonial buildings, religious buildings,and homes. As cultural geographer Yi-Fu Tuan(1977) puts it, "the built environment clarifies socialroles and relations." "A planned city, a monument,or even a simple dwelling can be a symbol of thecosmos" (p. 102).

Architecture that represents values and beliefs is

rhetorical because it induces ritual behavior. Byritual I mean our rhythmic, repetitive behaviors thatdramatize meanings. Thus commercial and biologi-cal acts can be rituals, reminding us of our identityand place in the cosmos, community, family, andworkplace. But perhaps the clearest example takesplace in religious architecture, as for example in theGothic cathedral. The figural scenes in the stainedglass windows are visual texts symbolizing theBible's word. All about are signs of Christian beliefand practice: icons such as statues of saints, thecross, holy water, flickering light. Of course, read inthe Puritan code, these artifacts signify idolatry andcorruption.

Drama, like the secular rituals of modern society,is the rhythmic repetition that reminds us of what ourbehavior should be. By giving consent to architec-ture, we dramatize our attitudes and convictions.The various theatres of human acts, such as sta-diums, bedrooms, churches, classrooms, bars, andbanks, allow us to question or re-affirm our personaland collective values and to inculcate them in oth-ers. Insofar as ritual is dramatized and linguistic, it isrhetorical, for architecture is partly a store of rhetor-ical conventions. Further, like sermons or directiveson the job, architecture is a system of rhetoricalconventions communicating the messages theaudience—the building's users—has come toexpect (Eco, 1980b, pp. 40-41). In this capacity ofreminding and reaffirming, then, architecture isanother form of mass communication. We respondto architecture in ways analogous to our responseto pictures of movie stars, news about sportsheroes, albums by pop singers, and televisionshows with celebrities. Advertisers, realizing howconvincing such people can be, use them in com-mercials because such people are convincing nomatter how imperfect their delivery might be.

It is difficult to define where non-oratorical com-munication becomes rhetorical. Apart from an art-work's message (what I would call its rhetoric) arthas its form (what I would call its poetic). When anart form influences ethos or behavior (and by neces-sity it must) it is rhetorical. Thomas W. Benson(1975) puts it this way: "formal commitmentsbecome rhetorical when and insofar as they take onmoral force" (p. 32). In other words, the structuresarranged by humans into communicative formsbecome rhetorical when their signifieds influencebehavior.

And, as we have implied earlier, architecture isrhetorical not only in its effect, but in the way it is puttogether. Like an oratorical discourse, architectureis structured for maximum rhetorical effectiveness:to communicate the denotation clearly and the con-notation agreeably. Speaking of this analogybetween oratorical and architectural composition,Eco (1980b) states that "architectural discourse. . . starts with accepted premises, builds upon themwell-known or readily acceptable 'arguments,' andthereby elicits a certain type of consent" (p. 41).

But the rhetoric of architecture can also fail to

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gain our consent. Some commercial buildings, nomatter how the variables are changed—new goodsoffered, new management, new prices—always failuntil they are remodeled. Likewise, a lot of publichousing is ineffective at creating a sense of homeand belonging. High rise projects in the austeremodern style do not appeal to people even thoughthey might have been raised around such architec-ture and are used to it. Such styles are even morerepugnant to ethnic groups whose traditional archi-tecture is quite different. As a result, whole projects,within a short time of their construction, have had tobe torn down. Even whole cities have failed. Themost notable example of such failure is Brasilia.Aimed at convincing individuals and groups to fre-quent certain areas and live in certain ways deemeddesirable by the designers, Brasilia has assured thekinds of things it was designed to avoid: statusareas and ghettos. Attempting to inculcate egalitar-ianism, this city exacerbated classism.

It isn't just minorities and the poor who arerepulsed by the thought of living in modern architec-ture. In Houston, most of which sprang up afterWorld War Two, the modern style is ubiquitous incommercial, governmental, and service buildings,as for example in the NASA Space Center. Yet whena developer built homes in the same style, middle-class youths broke out all the windows because,they explained, the housing seemed un-American(Jencks, 1980a, p. 99).

Modern architecture even fails to convince thosewho promote it. Many architects prefer to live in old,traditional buildings (Jencks, 1980a, pp. 111-112).Even though these architects know the code ofmodern architecture, they don't convince them-selves. We will have more to say about the failuresof modern architecture shortly, but before we do weneed to suggest more explicitly how rhetorical crit-ics might approach architecture's rhetoric.

Architecture as Movement and FantasyRhetorical critics could approach a study of the

rhetoric of architecture by using the methods ofboth movement studies and fantasy analysis. Draw-ing from historical studies, rhetorical critics couldapproach each period and establish, for example,what communicative needs were satisfied in theGothic, how the Gothic form articulated new mean-ings that arose in the late medieval age, how theGothic was persuasive and dissuasive, why itsrhetorical power was succeeded by the Baroque,and so on. To answer these questions, rhetoricalcriticism could examine not only the speeches andwritings of Gothic architects and their co-workers,but also examine the actual form of the buildings as1

they would the form of written or oral discourses.And, as I have suggested, semiotics in general andsemiology in particular offer the method forapproaching architecture as language.

The nature of architecture as a movement isperhaps clearest in our own century. The Twentieth

Century has been dominated by the Modern Move-ment in general and the International Style in particu-lar. The Modern Movement started simultaneously inEurope and America during the last Nineteenth Cen-tury, The Modern Movement was at first strongest inAmerica, where Louis Sullivan and Frank LloydWright developed the Chicago school. By the 1920sand 1930s, the Europeans, perhaps eclipsing theAmericans, rapidly developed the Modern Move-ment into its quintessential form, the InternationalStyle. After World War Two, the Modern Movementand the International Style continued their promi-nence, although with fewer breakthroughs in designand more nay sayers. In the 1950s, the opponentswere led by the Italians, but by the 1960s oppositionwas strongly international. Currently, the shortcom-ings of the Modern Movement are widely discussed.One book in this vein, Tom Wolfe's From Bauhaus toOur House (1981) is a best-seller. It shows how theInternational Style has dominated architecture evento the design of homes.

What is the International Style, which forms thecore of the Modern Movement? First of all, theInternational Style attempts to be ahistorical, toexclude styles drawn from previous movements.Believing that the Twentieth Century would bringinevitable progress, proponents of the InternationalStyle believed that historical styles would be super-fluous in a modern society that had rid itself ofpremodern irrationality. As architect GeoffreyBroadbent (1980a) points out, the buildings thatproponents of the International Style designed wereto be "free of any reference to foreign, exotic ornative historical styles" lest these "prevent itsefficient functioning" (p. 235). Even modernists ofthe present still believe that architecture canachieve a built environment that will be perfect andtherefore timeless, resistant to change—witnessBrasilia.

Along with the grudge against history went theidolatry of form. Modernists believed that theywould find universal forms that were beyond culturalrelativity. They believed that their structures wouldmirror natural laws, not block them with culturalconventions.

Along with the anti-historicism and formalismwent functionalism. By functional, the InternationalStyle's major theorists, Le Corbusier, Gropius, andMies Van der Rohe, thought their forms were reflec-tions of rationality, productivity, order, economy,impersonality, abstraction, precision, and mecha-nism. Such architects, Jencks (1980a) shows,believed their forms would "naturally grow out of thelaws of function, structure and perception,... wouldbe transcultural and not dependent on learning,history or symbolism, . . . that architecture wasevolving towards 'unchanging forms based on struc-tural universals' " (p. 104).

In the beginning, the architects of the Interna-tional Style tried to derive its forms from industrialarchitecture, such as factories and warehouses,because they believed industrialism was a natural

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development. Later they used these industrial formsin offices, shops, homes, schools, courthouses,even churches. However, the people who usedthese buildings read them according to culturalconventions; not sharing the architects' code, theysaw not natural forms but cold, alienating ones. Butsuch forms persist, and so do such readings. JamesStirling's New Training Center for Olivetti at Hasle-mere, England, borrows forms, particularly windows,from train cars (Jencks, 1980b, p. 235). This attemptto recreate a functional form has been greeted bysome with the most suitable metaphor: the buildinglooks like a cold, clanking train. And most peopledon't want to work in a place that makes them feellike sheep in a train car.

The International Style's notion that form followsfunction was itself a cultural convention, the expres-sion in form of a preconceived concept. The forms ofthe International Style did not represent given, natu-ral, objective function. Rather, the InternationalStyle represented what its proponents imaginedfunctionalism to be. For one thing, the InternationalStyle is often not functional. Broadbent (1980a)shows that the International Style's glass-skinnedskeletal buildings overheat in direct sun, lose heatrapidly in the cold, create glare, and add to noisepollution (p. 122).

A leading architectural critic, Nikolas Pevsner,typifies those who ostensibly applaud a building forits functionality, but who are really applauding theconnotation or appearance of functionality. Forexample, Pevsner endorses the Arts Tower at Shef-field University as a prime example of functionalism.But those who work in the building find that thedesign causes the building to be overheated insome areas, cold in others, noisy throughout, unableto transport people with sufficient stairs and eleva-tors, and generally unpleasant. Broadbent (1980a)explains how Pevsner came to his judgment: "It wasrectilinear in form and glass curtain-walled, it lookedmachine made; so, for Pevsner, it must be 'function-al. So Pevsner's 'reality' was actually an illusionof what he wanted . . . architecture to be like" (pp.120-121).

If the imagination has played such a large andironic role in most of the built environment around us,then rhetorical critics could approach modern archi-tecture not only with the method of movement stud-ies, but also with the method of fantasy analysis.Pevsner's notion of functionality is a fantasy heshares with others in the Modern Movement. In itsstruggle for an ahistorical, functional formalism, theInternational Style tried to exclude all semanticcontent, all connotation. For example, two die-hardmodernists, Alison and Peter Smithson (1974), havepublished their architectural prescriptions, whichspin-off from modernism into the school with therevealing moniker of "Brutalism," in a book entitledWithout Rhetoric: An Architectural Aesthetic, 1955-72. And Peter Eisenman, as we saw, tries to followChomsky by making his design an exercise in syn-tax. That is, this architectural rhetor's poesis

attempts to eliminate rhetoric. But no signifier, aswe have seen, is without its signified. The attempt tobuild dumb buildings is readily identifiable as moder-nism. As Broadbent (1980b) puts it, "the architec-ture of columns, white walls and large windowsinevitably 'reads' as post-Le Corbusian Interna-tional Style" (p. 209). This shared fantasy of escap-ing signification is one of the most important mean-ings of our time.

Since the hope for a timeless, eternal architec-ture has proven illusory, some architects now callfor denotations and connotations so that buildingscan be readily adaptable to changes in use andmeaning. To that end, some have called for apost-modern architecture that will revive historicalforms as well as regional and ethnic vernacular,such as adobe and earth-sheltered buildings. Suchpost-modern form is to be readable and comfortablefor those who use it, not just the priesthood ofarchitects. Rhetorical critics could also study thisnew style as a movement.

In a larger sense, the Modern Movement in archi-tecture is part of modernism in general. To study theModern Movement, then, is to open the door to avast field of rhetorical forms. The rhetoric of time-lessness, functionality, and rationality that informsmodern architecture permeates the rhetoric of otherfields. In historical writing, as David Noble (1965)shows, each generation of historians in America hasattempted to read corporate, technocratic, indus-trial urbanization as natural, scientific progress, andhas tried to disclaim the traditional, rural, and ver-nacular. In literary studies, the New Criticism tried tominimize the importance of history and emphasizethe primacy of form. And in the social sciences, newformalistic methods were developed that were sup-posed to lift the social sciences out of tradition andconvention and into timeless, universal, scientificform. Thus if rhetorical criticism can be used tocriticize not only the form but also the ideology ofcommunications, then rhetorical criticism can beused to criticize not only architecture, but the rest ofthe arts. Thus where we are accustomed to seeingrhetorical critics assess, say, Daniel Webster in thehistorical context of sectionalism, or as he figured inthe abolition movement, or as he represents fanta-sies of manifest destiny, we may come to seerhetorical critics do much the same not only witharchitecture and architects, but with other arts andartists as well.

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Broadbent, G. Introduction to section two. In G. Broadbent, R. Bunt, andC. Jencks (Eds.), Signs, symbols, and architecture. Chichester andNew York: Wiley, 1980b.

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