Aesthetics in the high-rise apartment complex: a social semiotic perspective

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe built-environment and language are different social semiotic systems; nonetheless, they share similarities. Both are about meaning-making. Both spatial and verbal texts unfold over time as we move through their semiotic space. Therefore, some aspects of linguistics and semiotics may be useful to draw on to understand better how our built-environment means. This article explores the concept of appreciation in residential high-rises, arguing that our appreciation of an object, and concomitantly our negotiation with the designer’s aesthetic, or attitude, has the potential to influence our appreciation of surrounding objects, a process referred to as spatial prosodic attitude. While research within social semiotics has accounted for our overall experience of a building through intersemiosis, a process whereby different semiotic systems integrate to produce a complex whole, it is argued that some inconspicuous objects do none of the semiotic labour, yet get the credit, while some salient value-ambiguous elements don’t get the credit they deserve. I call this parasemiosis, a process that enables an object to assume or be ascribed the value of its surrounding objects. This investigation provides additional semiotic resources for spatial discourse analysts to undertake analyses that are more robust, and for designers to consider during the design process.