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READING THE CITY: by Suzanne Belaieff

FROM HERITAGE TO ARCHITECTURE PUBLI-COMMUNIQUÉ

“A Founding Text for Urban Semiology”
Roland Barthes defined the conditions in “Sémiologie de la Ville” Architecture d’Aujourd’hui in 1971.

“What are the prerequisites for urban semiotics?”
“The starting point: human space in general has always had meaning. In any city, from the moment it is truly inhabited by man, there is a
fundamental rhythm of significance.
Fortunately, several writers have spoken of the city in terms of significance. KEVIN LYNCH, for example, was keen to think of the city in the
same terms as the consciousness that perceives it, namely “reference points”.
Thus, we witness an awareness of “the functions of symbols in urban space”. But the conflict between significance and function, that is to say
the opposition between a sign and the absence of a sign, remains the conflict of urban planners; in fact, in the case of two neighbourhoods
that are next to each other, if they are given different meanings, these meanings are experienced in complete opposition.

The city speaks to its inhabitants,
Inhabiting it, walking through it, looking at it, we have to move on from describing the meaning to finding the semiology through the symbols.
“We are talking about the language of the city, which evolves into signifieds and signifiers.”

The fundamentally semantic city is THE PLACE TO MEET THE OTHER.
The role of the signified is merely the testimony of a signifying distribution.
Intuitively Victor Hugo thought of the city a form of writing, and those who use it as a readers in a way; by moving around a city we are “a little
like the avant-garde reader”, without even realising it.
“The most important thing would be to multiply the readings of the city”, but this approach makes it necessary to understand the play of signs
and not to fill in its structure; the city makes it difficult to “understand the play of signs”.
The important thing is to make people understand the SIGNIFICANT.
Because the City is a poem, as Hugo expressed it, but it is not a classical poem.

EXTRACT from Today’s Architecture 1970-1971

LEXICON
- Semantic: relating to meaning, significance
- Signifier: charged with meaning, a sound or visual phenomenon forming the material face of a sign, as opposed to the signified, which forms its conceptual face.
- Signified: the semantic value of a sign
- Semiotics: the science of signs, which studies all systems of meaning and the different artistic forms.

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