This paper attempts to make a brand-new orientation and interpretation of architecture as an art form from the perspective of communication. In inference, it is pointed out that the key factor why architecture becomes a communication text is the decoration of architecture, which realizes the symbolic essence of architectural communication, and the architectural text embodies the characteristics of its time medium in the process of meaning communication. Based on the positioning of architectural texts, the unique communication mode and characteristics of architecture as a media are deduced, as well as the psychological changes and experience premise of people's interpretation of architectural texts.
In the western world, the ideographic word of architecture is "architecture", which refers to huge technology, not "architecture". It can be seen that architecture is regarded as the product of the integration of technology and aesthetics at the beginning of its birth, and the characteristics of architecture must be the practicality of science and technology and the understandability of beauty.
The original function of early architecture was to live. According to Yi Zhuan, people lived in caves and in the wild in ancient times. Later sages easily used palaces to build buildings, and then built buildings in the future to wait for the storm. At that time, its importance was limited to sheltering from the wind and rain and maintaining the continuation of life. However, when people are just able to live, they have higher aesthetic requirements for architecture. At first, different climatic conditions and building materials decided different buildings. Later, with the development of civilization, different customs, religious beliefs, political and economic systems made the buildings in different regions gradually form a self-marking style. Understanding these buildings and their styles is our basic understanding of human living environment. But the angle of understanding this equation is to regard architecture as a kind of media text, and architecture tells people silently in its own unique way of communication in the long river of time. In Hegel's aesthetics, there is a very apt metaphor when it comes to architecture. We can also compare them to pages, which, although confined in a certain space, can evoke deep feelings and reverie like bells.
First, the positioning of architectural texts in communication studies.
Gideon, an early western architectural theorist, put forward that "architecture is an interpretation of a desirable lifestyle of our times", which means that we can instinctively interpret the characteristics of the times and the way of human existence from architecture, which is the so-called "personalized" interpretation of architecture in Lipps's "Space Aesthetics and Geometry, Visual Illusion". Wang Guowei's "On the Yin and Zhou Dynasties System" defines architecture as "the ruler of the city and the symbol of politics and culture." Here, we might as well borrow the definition of architecture in aesthetic understanding. "The building is built according to certain architectural techniques and aesthetic laws. It is material, technical and practical, generally combined with the earth, and it is a materialized form that combines people's cultural attitudes, philosophical considerations, religious feelings, ethical norms, artistic interests and aesthetic ideals. It is the existence of matter and a kind of' text' whose spirit is higher than matter. "
In the field of semiotics, information is constructed by symbols, and the interaction between recipients and symbols produces meaning, with the emphasis on how information is transmitted to the text, that is, how the text is interpreted. The text we want to interpret is where the meaning of information occurs. It can be seen that architecture integrates extremely complex information into a text, and displays the information in a materialized form through a complex coding process to achieve the purpose of communication. It is an extremely exquisite symbol carrier, a communication text and a communication medium. Judging from the classification of media types, Canadian scholar Hennis once had such a classification: "The so-called spatial media refers to the technical means aimed at breaking through the spatial barriers and realizing long-distance communication ... The so-called time media refers to the means aimed at overcoming the time barriers and realizing intergenerational communication." Based on this consideration, architecture, as a medium, should be divided into time media, and the study of it should naturally reflect the communication characteristics of time media and explore its communication characteristics and methods in the dimension of historical and cultural development.
Second, as a communication text of the architectural composition
From the moment of its birth, architecture must have two functions: living and beauty, just like Marcus, the earliest architect. Vitruwe Borio believes that "architecture has the trinity foundation: applicability, firmness and aesthetics". As Kant said, it is difficult for architecture to reach the pure realm that other art forms can achieve. The evaluation of architectural art lies in whether it provides suitable functions for a certain purpose. Pevnas' understanding of architecture is also very representative. "Architectural works are essentially practical houses with aesthetic additional elements. The most obvious way to create such works is to decorate some practical structures: architectural works = house+decoration. It can be seen that architecture, as a kind of communication text, can use "decoration" to load meaningful entities. It is because of decoration that we can distinguish different architectural styles, different architectural categories and different architectural concepts. Nietzsche had foreseen this symbolic load function of architecture. According to Nietzsche's point of view, "the meaning of all styles is to communicate in the form of symbols, including the rhythm of these symbols, that is, an emotion, an inner peace or sadness." "Art works, especially architectural works, basically convey our specific feelings about the things we face through style. Moreover, decoration is the main communication medium in architecture. Owen. Owen jones also pointed out that the equal sign between an architect and an artist is the decoration of a building.
From the perspective of communication structure, architects can be regarded as the initial stage of the communication process, that is, the disseminator. He decorated some meaningful symbols that can be interpreted, which is the so-called coding process in communication science, and then textualized the building itself. While creating architecture, it realizes the meaning coding of communication, the sending of signals and even the construction of media. In fact, architectural critics and audiences have different comments on different texts, based on the explanation of different decorations with the same practical function, and the style is framed accordingly. Many architects have encountered the requirement of attaching easy-to-understand symbols to the structure, such as adding the symbol of Mercury, the medical god, to the medical building and adding the symbol of orpheus lyre to the theater. They want to give architecture a form of self-expression. It is these decorative symbols that become the medium of information exchange between the sender and the receiver, making it possible to convey and accept the meaning.
We can easily recognize Gothic architecture because of its universal and practical plane tickets, pointed arches and Galle domes. We know that the pillars with honeysuckle leaves are Corinthian, and those with snails are Ionian; Those with algae wells on the roof must be the royal buildings in China ... The examples we use to demonstrate the correctness of judgment are all decorative. At the same time, this decorative coding also follows the principle of "innovation". Liang Sicheng once said that in artistic creation, there is often a problem of repetition and change: only repetition without change, the work will be monotonous; It is easy to get into a messy mess if you only change and don't repeat it. This problem is particularly important in works with "continuity". In fact, this principle of innovation in repetition is also the requirement of propagation decoding law. People can also judge the function of the building according to the past experience, so as to distinguish the function. This requires that in Maine or New Mexico, most grocery stores are decorated with bright yellow, while other companies have Chengdu-style fast food restaurants, and even every "corner" store is scarlet; However, further differentiation between individuals in similar buildings requires innovative changes. Only in this way can the decoded code be accurate and rich.
Therefore, the focus of architectural communication should naturally be the decoration of each building, but architecture, as a time medium, has its own unique communication mode.
Thirdly, the unique text communication mode of architecture.
Architecture is a kind of time medium, and it is bound to experience the text information attached to historical time. The author tries to illustrate the information compatibility of architectural texts in the process of communication through charts.
It can be seen that the emergence of any kind of unique architecture is undoubtedly influenced by the political, economic, historical and cultural conditions at the time of its birth, and is restricted by natural and technical conditions. It is these images or abstract information that influence the architect's design all the time, so the investigation of architectural texts can provide testimony for the research of many disciplines. For example, the Titus Arch in Rome Square was built to celebrate and record the looting of Jerusalem by the Roman prince in 70 AD. The Great Wall of China was built for the political purpose of resisting the Huns' attack. The prosperity of economy created the noise of Bianliang City in the Riverside Map of Qingming Festival in the Northern Song Dynasty ... This information effectively influenced the architects' creation. Architecture belongs to the cultural code system of "copy media" and "copy code" in semiotics cognition. Architects use their own national, cultural, aesthetic and traditional norms to make texts through their own education and personal perception. Its essence is that architects communicate and transmit their own values and social culture through architectural texts. At the same time, architects must also use architectural language to convey their historical faults to represent the characteristics of an era.
However, architecture does not belong to instant consumption media, and the characteristics of time media determine that it will continue to tell later stories after representing an era. After many related literary processing and political and historical changes, the building has been constantly improved and restored, and even rebuilt, becoming a second text interpreted by the audience, allowing people to interpret it twice or even n degrees in turn. The meaning behind it may not be the literal connotation of the building itself, but the compound interpretation result of many other media forms of information, such as books, pictures, radio, television and other media.
Taking the Great Wall as an example, the earliest interpretation of it should be traced back to the Warring States Period. The first emperor connected the Great Wall of several countries into a whole, which was a military barrier and a symbol of national strength. There are also sad stories of Meng Jiangnu crying in the Great Wall among the people to enrich people's experiences and associations. Later Han Dynasty, Song Dynasty and even Ming Dynasty never stopped repairing the Great Wall, and every time it was repaired, it was because of a happy or sad background. The Great Wall has become a symbol of China's history and culture, and a symbol of national unity. People can sketch its image from various records of literature and history, experience its magnificence with the belief that "you are not a hero until you reach the Great Wall", and collect all kinds of information about it from radio, television and the Internet to interpret it in your own way. Thousands of years of history have given the Great Wall too many stories and too many meanings.
Charles. Charles Jencks clearly pointed out that the study of architecture should be extended to other dimensions besides the functional dimension of architecture, such as historical dimension, cultural dimension and narrative dimension. It is in such a huge narrative way that architecture engraves information on itself or penetrates into other media. The substantive interpretation of architecture is far from enough. The value of its characters lies in that it combines various ideographic means to spread historical and cultural information through more ideographic means.
Fourthly, the readability of architecture as a communication text.
Wolfgang. In his book Language Occupying Space, Wolfgang Otto regards the Greek temple as a model of architecture: comparing the inner hall of the temple to the subject of a sentence, comparing the porch and colonnade to the object, and comparing the relationship between the inner hall and the pillar to the predicate. Through the analogy between architecture and sentence, Alto draws the conclusion that "in this sentence with reasonable structure and occupying space, the authoritative space rules the whole building … this sentence has always been ruled by the long-term order of a race". Just like Otto's analogy, any building can be interpreted as an article. The key is that readers must know the grammar rules.
For the grammatical rules of architecture, Heine. Heinrich Klotz believes that the principle of architecture is that the appearance of architecture should consciously express the description language of its whole and auxiliary forms, and the purpose of architecture is to liberate architecture from the silent' pure form' and flashy appearance. It is necessary to link the above principles and purposes, so as to make architecture a creative thing, which not only pays attention to facts and practicality, but also expresses poetic thoughts and implements the theme. In a sense, any building has its own personality, because every building is different from other buildings. This is determined by the different practical functions of different buildings.
In architecture, beauty comes from the viewer's experience of the real role played by architecture. ..... It is produced by the close relationship between people and buildings, and it is determined by the emotional reflection caused by ordinary people being in buildings ... Any reflection cannot exist in a spiritual vacuum, and its performance depends on some kind of knowability, which depends on the existence of some kind of symbol, which can stimulate people's familiar associations. Therefore, in a building, everything that lets people know their personality contains some kind of memory. When people are in a new building, if they want to know a certain feature, they must arouse the purpose of use that is already known in other buildings. This involves the empirical premise of architectural interpretation, which determines the coding of architects and the decoding of viewers in the construction process. The requirements of this empirical premise are different for different viewers. It is enough for ordinary people to understand the different external characteristics and experiences of functional buildings. For travelers, they can travel happily with the corresponding historical knowledge, but critics, aesthetic researchers and philosophers must build their own interpretation system in advance to understand architectural texts.
Mcguire, a media scholar, once pointed out, "Media participates in the production, reproduction and distribution of knowledge in the broadest sense of symbols, which are closely related to social experience. This knowledge enables us to understand experience, form our cognition of experience, and contribute to the accumulation of past knowledge and the continuation of our understanding of experience now. That's why carsten. Harris would say, "The shape of a vase, the geometric decoration of a plate, and the rock-like decoration style that rolled through the pulpit in the18th century can all attract our attention. I found myself particularly moved by the latter, which undoubtedly has something to do with my specific background and experience.
Furthermore, Liang Sicheng put forward the translatability of architectural grammar among different nationalities, such as the Arc de Triomphe in Rome and the glazed archway in Beijing, the memorial column in Rome and our huabiao. The fundamental way to solve this "translatability" problem, that is, the "readability" problem of architectural texts, is to give experience, which also needs to involve global cultural exchanges.