Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
Abstract
The aim of the present article is the study of the connotative meaning of
space, but special theoretical attention is given to the wider theoretical con-
text of such an enterprise. I argue that the whole domain of spatial studies
is split between two major and conflicting epistemological paradigms: ‘ob-
jectivism,’ which studies ‘space’ as an external object, and ‘subjectivism,’
which approaches space as ‘place,’ that is, as a meaningful, semiotic entity.
The existence of these two parallel orientations, both legitimate, points to
the need for a holistic approach, allowing the articulation of semiotic phe-
nomena with social structures. The holistic approach helps to clarify three
di¤erent semiotic approaches: the immanent, the Greimasian sociosemiotic,
and the holistic social semiotic approach.
The relationship between space and meaning is a metaphorical one, and
metaphor belongs to the semantics of connotation. The whole connotative
field of a society constitutes its world view or ideology, which is structured
by a classification system. The study of the metaphorical meanings of space
is set in this article against three di¤erent social backgrounds. The first are
precapitalist societies. As a case study, I use the example of the Sudanese
Dogon of southern Mali and show that cosmogony and cosmology, inextri-
cably linked to an anthropomorphic code, constitute the nucleus of their
world view and preside over the organization and morphology of space.
The second is western modernism. I conclude that the major ideological ur-
ban models of modernism are ruled by an organicist code. The last context
studied is western postmodernism. I argue that the postmodern approach
to space (which is not a radically new phenomenon) adopts a pseudo-
historical stance and uses the overarching metaphor of genius loci. In the
context of postmodernism, the ‘metaphorization’ of built space goes hand
in hand with its ‘Las Vegasization’ and ‘Disneylandization,’ and meaning,
spatial experience, and the search for identity are integrated into the circuit
of capitalist profit.
cates the deep structural similarities between the life cycles of all products
in society (see also Lagopoulos 1993: 274).
Within the context of such a holistic approach to space, it is possible to
clarify certain crucial issues concerning the semiotics of space. First, any
formalist approach to space based exclusively on semiotic theory is epis-
temologically non-sensical. Already in 1964, Roland Barthes pointed to
the di¤erence between the level of meaning and that of use objects,
though he also linked the two levels with his concept of ‘sign-function,’
the manner in which any object can become a sign of its own usage
(Barthes 1964: 106). The use aspect of space is tied to the dynamics of
political economy and shows that space is not produced primarily as a
communication system. Space is produced jointly by material processes,
which are fundamental, and semiotic processes, and as such cannot be
analyzed solely by semiotic theory.
Second, a holistic approach helps us to clarify the distinction, within se-
miotics, between semiotics in the strict sense and sociosemiotics. In their
discussion of what might be included in a potential field of sociosemiotics,
Algirdas Julien Greimas and Joseph Courtés define as sociosemiotic the
approach to linguistic communication that goes beyond the text, the object
of semiotic analysis in the strict sense, to study the relation between linguis-
tic communication and its complex semiotic setting. They also include in
sociosemiotics the typology of literary discourses and genres, the typology
of cultures, the study of the domain of connotation, and that of the relation
between groups in society and linguistic practices. Greimas’s narrative se-
miotics describes, among other things, action in narration, and the authors
propose to extrapolate from narrative texts to actual actions in social life.
Thus, a ‘semiotics of action’ is constituted, which is also manifestly a part
of sociosemiotics (Greimas and Courtés 1979: ‘Action,’ ‘Sociosémiotique’).
In spite of this great expansion of the object of semiotic analysis, socio-
semiotics remains a purely subjectivist perspective, enclosed within the
universe of meaning, and thus constitutes an independent, free-floating
approach within the social sciences. It forms an isolated theory of culture,
without any grounding in a theory of society as a whole. The need to in-
tegrate a theory of culture with a theory of society compels us to focus on
the articulation of the cultural with the social, of the semiotic with the
exosemiotic, and of semiotics with political economy. This articulation,
revealing in the last analysis the dynamics of the production of the semi-
otic, leads beyond sociosemiotics to what I would like to call social semi-
otics, which studies semiosis not only as a cultural phenomenon, but also
as a social one.
I believe the concepts introduced above allow us, on the one hand, to
surpass both the apparent contradiction between spatial objectivism and
174 A. Ph. Lagopoulos
a certain familiarity with the Dogon mythology may help the reader
to better understand the issue under consideration. It is true that the
work of the two central anthropologists who studied the Dogon, Marcel
Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen, has been criticized; in particular, Walter
E. A. van Beek (1991: 139–158) recently published a strong critique of the
ethnographic data and synthesis e¤ected by Griaule and Dieterlen. There
are several reasons why van Beek’s experience of the Dogon might not
coincide with that of Griaule and Dieterlen. On the one hand, today’s
Dogon, living within the general conditions of the capitalist world econ-
omy, cannot be considered as identical to traditional Dogon culture and,
on the other, the level of cultural competence of Beek’s informants re-
mains unaccounted for. We might consider that Griaule and Dieterlen
gave an overly coherent and systematic account of the Dogon mythical
worldview and Dogon culture, but, with this reservation, their work
seems to be generally reliable, something also attested through both close
and more remote ethnographic parallels (the following analysis of the
Dogon world view and culture is based mainly on data found in Griaule
and Dieterlen 1965). I have no doubt that the example of the Dogon is
typical of the subject under discussion for all precapitalist societies, a
concept that I take to include the ‘high’ civilizations of antiquity and
medieval societies of the East and of the West as well as contemporary
‘primitive’ societies (see Lagopoulos 1995, 1998: 377–381), in spite of the
important di¤erences between them, which would necessitate a more de-
tailed social semiotic analysis.
In the Dogon cosmogony, before the creation of the world, only the
creator Amma was in existence, in the form of a quadripartite egg.
Amma had traced in himself the universe before its creation. The repre-
sentation of this egg is an oval with two oriented perpendicular axes, bi-
sected by another pair of perpendicular axes. Their common point of sec-
tion is a navel. The four parts of the egg are called ‘collarbones,’ and are
considered to be oval in form and thus also like eggs. They prefigured
the four elements — earth, fire, water, air — that are situated clockwise
starting from the lower right. Each part contained 8 signs, ‘traces’
(bummo), and each of them produced 8 more. Thus, the egg contained
4 8 8 ¼ 256 signs, to which were added 8 (2 for each axis) and 2 for
the center, so that the ‘signs of Amma’ thus became 266; whence the egg
is the ‘belly of all the signs of the world.’
Even such a brief description is structured by a multitude of codes. The
overarching code of course is the mythical. Then, the central actor is
Amma, referring to a religious code, closely related to the mythical code.
The remaining codes are: temporal (before the creation), cosmic (cosmic
egg, four elements), zoomorphic (egg), geometrical (four parts, oval
The social semiotics of space 179
Figure 1. The ruptures of the placenta of Ogo, prefiguring the form of the earth: a grid of
5 12 squares (from Griaule and Dieterlen 1965). Reprinted by permission of Ms. Geneviève
Calame-Griaule.
directions, thus purifying the world. After this act of purification, he as-
sembled the parts and resuscitated Nommo, in order to throw him once
more from the celestial opening into the world, which was to become an-
other body of Nommo. From the sacrifice was created the stellar system,
divided into an ‘internal’ and an ‘external’ one; the latter corresponds to
the blood shed outside the placenta. The stars revolve around an axis,
uniting the polar star, the ‘eye of the world,’ the one eye of Amma, to
the Southern Cross, his second eye.
Amma extracted from himself the ark of Nommo, of a square or rect-
angular plan, a second earth, containing everything that would appear on
earth, and lowered it down from the celestial opening; the ark was made
from Nommo’s placenta. Ogo’s ark was impure and symbolizes the un-
cultivated brush, while Nommo’s ark was pure and symbolizes the culti-
vated land (cultural code). Nommo’s ark included 60 compartments, the
earthly form of which is square, as many as the holes dug by Ogo, but in
4 rows of 15 each. The division into 4 is a reference to the distribution
among the four ancestors of the primordial family field to be created by
them. In fact, Amma had created the four male ancestors of the humans
and their female twins. They came to earth in Nommo’s ark together with
the resuscitated Nommo. Coming down, the ark rocked and spiraled in
the sky for eight periods of time. Nommo defined the cardinal directions,
and time was also divided in four periods determining the seasons of the
year (temporal code). The descent of the ark is the metaphorical significa-
tion of the shape of two of the four variants of the mask sirige.
After Amma had extracted the whole world from himself, he held his
collarbones open pointing to the cardinal directions. Amma placed the
22 principal signs inside his open collarbones. This act is represented by
figure 4. The circle in the center of the figure represents the seat of
Amma. Finally, he closed the collarbones and the whole took again the
shape of the egg. Since then Amma lives in the middle of the sky.
The current calendar among the Dogon is lunar, but they also use the
solar calendar. The duration of the visit of Ogo to earth during which he
dug the 60 holes prefigured the division of the year into lunar months.
The whole of his placenta corresponds to the year and the piece of it he
tore o¤ and stole to one-twelfth of the year, a lunar month. The ‘dark’
new moon is a metaphor for Ogo’s circumcision, the beginning of its in-
crease for the formation of the earth and the full moon for the descent of
the ark of Nommo. The moon increases when Nommo breathes as he
opens his mouth to speak. When Ogo first returned to the sky, his pla-
centa was transformed into fire on the order of Amma, who made the
sun out of it. He used the celestial opening from which he let down the
ark of Nommo as an exit for the sun. Nommo makes the sun move from
The social semiotics of space 183
Figure 2. The yala of the house (from Griaule and Dieterlen 1965). Reprinted by permission
of Ms. Geneviève Calame-Griaule.
signs used, a development leading to the realization of things. The first se-
ries of signs is that of the abstract graphic signs: bummo means ‘trace.’
The ‘trace’ of a house, for example, is followed, as for all things, by its
yala, a dotted image, which equals the beginning of the thing. The yala
is also the ‘reflection’ of the thing in its final form. The foundations of
the house are marked with stones placed in its corners and these stones
are the yala of the future house (figure 2). The third series of representa-
tions are the toṅu, the figures of the thing. The toṅu of the house are the
pebbles between the corner stones, placed where the future walls will be
(figure 3). The final series are the toy, the precise drawings, with which
the thing is identified.
The yala and tonu contain the vital force. The toy of the house, just as
the house itself, contains the four elements. The open position of Amma
after the extraction of the world (figure 4) is drawn on the ground of the
future house in real scale and its center, the seat of Amma, defines the
place of the central post of the house, thus identifying this post with
the cosmic axis (Griaule and Dieterlen 1965: 75–76 and 495, note 1). We
Figure 3. The toṅu of the house (from Griaule and Dieterlen 1965). Reprinted by permission
of Ms. Geneviève Calame-Griaule.
The social semiotics of space 185
Figure 4. The open collarbones of Amma after the extraction of the world (from Griaule and
Dieterlen 1965). Reprinted by permission of Ms. Geneviève Calame-Griaule.
Figure 5. Plan of the ‘great house’ of the Arou (from Griaule 1949). Reprinted by permis-
sion of Ms. Geneviève Calame-Griaule.
The plan of the house can be inscribed into an ellipse; this latter is a met-
aphor for the cosmic egg and placenta (figure 5). Each room of the house
is a metaphor for a being born from the semen of the reclining father; the
di¤erence in height between rooms expresses the di¤erence between these
beings (Griaule 1949: 86–87).
The plan of the two-storey great house of the Dyon is again a metaphor
for Nommo, resuscitated, this time lying on his belly. During its construc-
The social semiotics of space 187
tion, seven yala are drawn in its angles, expressing the articulations of the
word inside po. An eighth yala is done where the door between the court
and the street will be placed; it is the metaphor for the life, the creative
word, given by Amma to this primordial seed. There is a theoretical zig-
zagging line uniting these representations, signifying the vibration animat-
ing the articulations of the word, also animating the Nommo of the house.
The ground floor of the house includes five rooms, related to the division of
the placenta in which the four Nommo were conceived. The two-story
great house of the Dogon and its parts are also metaphors for the world
and its parts: the floor of the upper story is the space between earth and
sky, its roof is the sky, four small rectangular terraces are the cardinal
points (Griaule and Dieterlen 1965: 345–347; Griaule 1966b: 90).
If we leave aside momentarily the metaphorical significations of archi-
tectural space to examine those of urban space, we find the same meta-
phorical relations governing the Dogon fields. These fields are divided
into squares or rectangles and compose a regular grid. The field of an ex-
tended family is a metaphor for the earth at the time of the descent of the
second ark of Ogo. The whole of the fields surrounding a settlement is a
metaphor for the world. Before the planting of the fields, the chief of the
family goes early in the morning to the ‘field of the ancestors’ and, after
clearing the land in the center of the field, draws a circle with the help of
an inverted tazu basket. Facing east, he draws in the interior of this circle
a smaller one, the sky, and marks the center of the two circles. During the
day, he draws between the two circles a first zigzagging form and finally
fills this space with 22 such forms, which represent the 266 signs of Amma
and the stars. The space of this ritual is not planted. Around it dung is
placed in four points on the cardinal directions (Griaule 1966b: 71–72,
108, 177; Griaule and Dieterlen 1965: 204, note 4). We see that the pro-
jection of the world system onto geographical space is independent of
scale, since the same system may be the metaphorical signification of a
whole set of fields or only of the center of an individual field.
The Dogon settlement, like the earth and the fields must, according to
tradition, have a grid-form street network and be square and oriented to
the cardinal points — though this ideal is not realized in practice. An-
other variant of the Dogon settlement model is shown in figure 6. It is a
metaphor for a human body lying on its back and extending from north
to south. Just as the ginna of the Arou, it has an elliptical contour with
the same connotations. In the north is located the principal square, which
is a metaphor for the primordial field and the sky. The council house in
the square is the head of the settlement. In the center of the settlement
the stones for crushing fruit are a metaphor for the female genitals and
normally should be beside the foundation altar of the settlement, the
188
A. Ph. Lagopoulos
Figure 6. Model of the Dogon settlement (from Griaule Figure 7. The bipartite settlement of Ogol (from Griaule and Dieterlen
1966b). Reprinted by permission of Ms. Geneviève Calame- 1965). Reprinted by permission of Ms. Geneviève Calame-Griaule.
Griaule.
The social semiotics of space 189
Figure 8. Façade of a ‘great house’ (from Griaule 1966b). Reprinted by permission of Ms.
Geneviève Calame-Griaule.
The social semiotics of space 191
— and constellations. The central altar and those of the northern line out-
side the elliptical contour are reminiscent of the equinoxial and solsticial
positions of the sun and of the middle positions between them. The whole
set of altars is related, in addition to the solar calendar, to the two other
liturgical calendars, based on Sirius and Venus (Griaule and Dieterlen
1965: 226–229, 320–342, 479–480).
As a general rule, for the Dogon every construction is a metaphor for
the world, and the same is true for all spatial scales, from the individual
construction through the neighborhood and the settlement to the region
(Griaule 1957: 30, 33 and 1949: 87). The intermingling of spatial entities
and cosmology pulls the former from profane space and time, and proj-
ects them into sacred space and in illo tempore — to use Mircea Eliade’s
expression (Eliade 1959: 20–21) — that is, the sacred time of the begin-
nings. The mythical metaphors not only animate built and organized
space, but also attach to elements of the natural landscape. They are
also projected on parts of buildings. Thus, the main codes articulating
the world view of the Dogon o¤er to them a vast domain from which
the metaphorical meanings of every kind of built space and all geograph-
ical entities are drawn. These metaphors are multiple and culturally cen-
tral for each spatial element and consequently they give it a rich symbolic
and emotional depth.
The spatial metaphors in precapitalist societies, as we can see from the
Dogon case, are not simple references, but participate actively in the
shaping of space and in a deeply involved reading of already built space.
Precapitalist metaphors are extremely rich and activate a whole set of
codes. Also, they are not open to free interpretation, as is the case in
modern Western culture, but culturally patterned. Of course the classifica-
tion system may evolve historically and open the metaphorical chain, but
this occurs slowly, and at any one time the metaphor is in principle
closed. As is clear from the Dogon case, the metaphor is deeply emo-
tional, and the emotions o¤er a profoundly metaphysical experience.
concerning society, economy, and the built environment, its nucleus con-
sisting, first, of a code of economic activities, and then of the codes of the
natural environment and of lifestyle; in this model, the presence of the ex-
periential code is slight. The second model is subjectivist and is grounded
in a personal attachment to space, though it also includes occasional
references to society and economy; its nucleus is dominated by personal
experience, though codes of ecology, leisure, aesthetics, economic activ-
ities, and lifestyle are also present.
The above data converge in the conclusion that, both today and in the
previous century, both in the discourse of specialists and the semiotic pro-
duction of space, and in respect to users and the semiotic consumption of
it, both in written texts and in spontaneous oral discourses, two major
and opposed models mark modern Western urban thought. These two
models result in two di¤erent kinds of urban space, and are governed by
two major and distinct metaphors.
On the production side, the progressivist model is turned towards the
future and a new space. It fragments urban space in accordance with its
di¤erent functions (zoning) with the goal of e‰ciency, thus segregating
functions and transferring to space the Fordist model of factory organiza-
tion (figure 9). It is open, giving the city no precise limits; thus, the city
spreads into the countryside and vice versa, and this intrusion of nature
into built space is also sought for in the individual building. The result is
that the progressivist model emphasizes open and green spaces, an em-
phasis due to the primary importance of the health factor. It shows simple
and rational arrangements of volumes with aesthetic aims (figure 10),
founded on the idea that the beautiful follows directly from the func-
tional, an idea that was expressed in the slogan ‘form follows function.’
However, the model also incorporates a distinctive aesthetics, which re-
jects the curve, adopts a more or less strict orthogonality and strives for
equilibrium between the horizontal and the perpendicular. Finally, it
privileges standardized individual housing, which is in accordance with
the democratic and socialist, but scarcely anthropological, idea of the
universal man.
The culturalist model, on the other hand, is not oriented towards the
future, but draws its inspiration from the cities of the past, the cities of
the ancient and particularly the medieval world (figure 11). This anti-
industrialist model does not emphasize e‰ciency, but cultural and per-
sonal life. It gives the city precise limits and clearly di¤erentiates it from
the surrounding nature, attempting to create an atmosphere of urbanity
through dense construction. It employs no simple geometrical forms and
privileges community and cultural buildings at the expense of private
housing, for which no standards are used, each house having its own
194
A. Ph. Lagopoulos
Figure 9. Plan of the Ville Radieuse by Le Corbusier and Jeanneret, 1931. The zoning pattern is in parallel bands: at the top o‰ces,
in the middle housing, and then industry (6 F.L.C./Adagp-OSDEETE, 2008)
The social semiotics of space
Figure 10. View up the o‰cial N-S urban axis of Brasilia, 1956–1963, towards the ‘tail’ of the city; Oscar Niemeyer, architect (from Frampton 1985)
195
196
A. Ph. Lagopoulos
Figure 11. Section of the accurate perspective drawing of Venice by Jakopo de Barbary, around 1500 (from Egli 1962)
The social semiotics of space
197
Figure 12. Wright’s Broadacre City, 1934–1958 (from Frampton 1985). Reprinted by permission of the Frank Lloyd
Wright Foundation.
198 A. Ph. Lagopoulos
Figure 13. Kurokawa’s Takara Beautilion in Osaka, 1970 (from Jencks 1973)
objectifies space to the status of a functional (and aesthetic) tool. The dis-
course animating the progressivist model revolves around the synthesis
of parts in a whole, rationality, functionalism and e‰ciency, beauty and
domesticated naturalness, all rendering aspects of the metaphor of the
tool, as well as around openness and individualism. The tool-machine is
explicit in the discourse of progressivist architects, as we are reminded by
Le Corbusier’s statement that the house is a machine for living, and quite
frequently in their plans, as we can see from the Tokyo Bay Plan by
Kenzo Tange and the Metabolist Team or the Takara Beautilion by
Kisho Kurokawa (figure 13). The ideology supporting this metaphor is
that of modernity.
For the culturalist model, on the other hand, the central metaphor is
the self itself and its fulfillment and identity within a community, concepts
200 A. Ph. Lagopoulos
it corresponds to the inner courtyard or atrium. The courtyard house is the oldest
type of town house . . . Market places, parade grounds, ceremonial squares,
squares in front of churches and townhalls, etc., all relics of the Middle Ages,
have been robbed of their original functions and their symbolic content . . . The
loss of symbolism in architecture was described and lamented by Giedion . . . No
contemporary public squares have been laid out which could be compared with
urban squares like the Grande Place in Brussels, the Place Stanislas in Nancy,
the Piazza del Campo in Siena, the Place Vendome and the Place des Vosges in
Paris, the Plaza Mayor in Madrid, the Plaza Real in Barcelona etc. This spatial
type awaits rediscovery. (Krier 1991: 19)
The eminent Austrian culturalist architect Camillo Sitte himself could not
have put the case more clearly.
We see that the major metaphor employed by Krier is ‘historicalness,’
which renders the nature of the genius loci of the place to be. This is, for
204 A. Ph. Lagopoulos
example, the metaphorical meaning of his project for the Royal Mint
Square in the London Docklands (figure 14), which has ‘a traditional ur-
ban character’ (Krier 1993: 17). We also find in Krier the metaphor of
identity through community. He wants the courts of his housing project
close to the Reichsbrucke in Vienna to convey a ‘feeling of closure’
(1993: 95), his projected cultural centre for the village of Breitenfurt near
Vienna to be a ‘communal gathering space . . . as should be the case in all
human settlements’ (1993: 97) and the Master Plan for Bruay in France
to ‘serve as a model for countless similar industrial towns, demonstrating
how a ‘‘housing scheme’’ can become a true ‘‘community’’ ’ (1993: 135).
In their search for inspiration — and provocation — postmodern archi-
tects have also mobilized long dead precapitalist codes. Thus, the zoo-
morphic code marks a twin complex of hotels in the swamps of Florida
designed by Michael Graves (figure 15). The two hotel buildings are the
Swan Hotel and the Dolphin Hotel, and these two creatures accompany
the two buildings respectively: they figure in gigantic scale on top of the
buildings, and the motif of the swan proliferates in the interior of the
Swan Hotel. Apparently, these aquatic creatures stand for the genius loci
of the swamps, but they manifestly have been subject to a process of ide-
alization, replacing the actual local fauna of alligators and little predatory
birds.
An anthropomorphic code is explicit in the cases of Kazumasa Yama-
shita’s Face-House, as well as in Minoru Takeyama’s phallic Hotel Bev-
erly Tom, a symbolic form inspired by shintoism and appearing through-
out the hotel, ashtrays included (figure 16). The same code is implicitly
used by Charles Jencks for a studio building (for the use of anthropo-
morphic metaphors by postmodern architects, see Jencks 1991: 92–95).
Jencks also, together with Buzz Yudell, built The Elemental House, com-
posed of small pavilions referring to a cosmic code, the pavilions (‘tem-
ples’) being named after the traditional elements Terra, Aqua, and Aer.
There is another similarity with precapitalist societies in the conception
of this work. In precapitalist societies, as we saw, the same cosmic model
rules all kinds of space. The architects of the Elemental House compare
this small-scale architectural work to a village, thus using a settlement
code.
The genius loci of this complex is cosmic but also regional. It was built
in Los Angeles and this environment is symbolized by the shape of the
swimming pool, which is an abstracted form of California, its lights
marking the major cities. A geographical code together with the historical
code underlies the genius loci of Charles Moore’s Piazza d’Italia (figures
17 and 18). This circular square within a city block is cut across by a rep-
resentation of the Italian peninsula, functioning on the denotative level,
The social semiotics of space
205
Figure 14. Krier’s project for the Royal Mint Square (Docklands, London), 1974 (Krier 1993)
206
A. Ph. Lagopoulos
Figure 15. Graves’s Swan Hotel in Florida, 1987 (from Jencks 1991)
The social semiotics of space 207
Figure 16. Takeyama’s phallic Hotel Beverly Tom in Hokkaido, 1973–1974 (from Jencks
1991)
Figure 17. Aerial view of the scale model of Moore’s Piazza d’Italia in New Orleans, 1976–
1979 (from Jencks 1991)
Figure 18. The complex of the architectural orders (from Jencks 1991) of Moore’s Piazza
d’Italia in New Orleans, 1976–1979 (from Jencks 1991)
The social semiotics of space 209
shaped like an Egyptian pyramid with a sphinx in front of it; the Excali-
bur, a medieval castle related to a King Arthur fantasy.
Gottdiener also observes that certain restaurant chains have started
creating totally themed environments: the Hard Rock Cafe chain uses
nostalgic elements from the 1950s, and the Olive Garden restaurants use
elements recalling Italy. This tendency to globalize the metaphor is strong
in the shopping malls: the Olde Towne Mall in Orange County, Califor-
nia, exemplifies the ‘ye old kitsch’ metaphor and its individual stores imi-
tate forms of the past; the huge Mall of America in Bloomington, Minne-
sota, was given a facade painted in red, white, and blue and decorated
with stars and stripes, and combines this overarching metaphor with
others operating in the major shopping sections, such as the use of a sky-
lighted ceiling nostalgically reminiscent of Parisian arcades.
We realize from Gottdiener’s account that not even airports escape the
tendency to total theming; their architecture is converging with that of
shopping malls. He also reminds us that theming is a fundamental factor
in entertainment installations, whether of an established nature, such as
Disneyland, or of a new conception, such as the entertainment spaces
within or beside stadiums. From airports to entertainment spaces, shops
and restaurants are represented in an expanded scale and presented in
new attractive manners through the use of metaphors.
With postmodern design, reacting to the hypo-significant built space of
modernism, the societies of late capitalism set out on the search for a
meaningful built environment, something that was a given in precapitalist
societies. But now consumerism and profit regulate this search, and play-
ful identification with space replaces deep experiential identity with it. In
the past, public places meant deeply and were deeply felt; today they cre-
ate a ludic attitude and frivolous experiences (cf. Gottdiener 1997: 18,
20–21, 26, 31–32, 75, 126, 152).
The ‘metaphorization’ of built space goes hand-in-hand with its ‘Las
Vegasization’ and ‘Disneylandization.’ Meaning, spatial experience, and
identity are today integrated into the circuit of capitalist profit and thus
depend on it. This is how place refers us back to space and its commodity
aspect. David Harvey (1989) analyzes this relation between postmodern
culture and capitalist development in accordance with Fredric Jameson’s
thesis that postmodernism represents the cultural logic of late capitalism.
Jameson agrees with Mandel that postmodern society corresponds to a
new stage of capitalism and is not a completely new type of social forma-
tion, an alleged ‘post-industrial’ society. Postmodernism, for Jameson, is
not a clear-cut phenomenon but a ‘cultural dominant,’ which has a dif-
ferent function in the economic system of late capitalism from the one
modern culture had in the previous phase. Contrary to the postmodernist
210 A. Ph. Lagopoulos
Note
* The present paper is a synthesis, oriented to the argument developed here, of three pre-
viously published papers: ‘Metaphor and code: Space as a complex cultural practice,’
presented in a plenary session of the 7th International Congress of the International
Association for Semiotic Studies in 1999, ‘The social meaning of space: metaphor and
politics,’ which appeared in El futur de l’arquitecte: ment, territori, societat, and ‘Raum
und Metapher,’ which appeared in Zeitschrift für Semiotik.
References
Duncan, J. and Duncan N. (1988). (Re)reading the landscape. Environment and Planning D:
Society and Space 6 (2), 117–126.
Eco, U. (1976). A Theory of Semiotics. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Eco, U. (1984). Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language. Bloomington: Indiana University
Press.
Egli, E. (1962). Geschichte des Städtebaues, vol. 2. Das Mittelalter. Erlenbach/Stuttgart:
Eugen Rentsch.
Eliade, M. (1959). Cosmos and History: The Myth of the Eternal Return, Willard R. Trask
(trans.). New York/Evanston, IL: Harper and Row.
Foucault, M. (1966). Les mots et les choses: Une archéologie des sciences humaines. Paris:
Gallimard.
Frampton, K. (1985). Modern Architecture: A Critical History, 2nd ed. London: Thames
and Hudson.
Giddens, A. (1981). A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism, vol. 1. Power, Prop-
erty and the State. London: Macmillan.
Godelier, M. (1978). La part idéelle du réel: Essai sur l’idéologique. L’Homme 18 (3/4),
155–188.
Gottdiener, M. (1997). The Theming of America: Dreams, Visions, and Commercial Spaces.
Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Greimas, A. J. and Courtés, J. (1979). Sémiotique: Dictionnaire raisonné de la théorie du
langage. Paris: Hachette.
Griaule, M. (1949). L’image du monde au Soudan. Journal de la Société des Africanistes 19,
81–87.
Griaule, M. (1957). Symbolisme d’un temple totémique soudanais. In Le symbolisme cosmi-
que des monuments réligieux (¼ Serie Orientale Roma 14), 30–46. Rome: Instituto Ital-
iano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente.
Griaule, M. (1966a). African art. In Larousse Encyclopedia of Prehistoric and Ancient Art.
London: Paul Hamlyn.
Griaule, M. (1966b). Dieu d’eau: Entretiens avec Ogotemmêli. Paris: Fayard.
Griaule, M., and Dieterlen, G. (1965). Le renard pâle, vol. 1. Le mythe cosmogonique, part 1.
La création du monde (¼ Travaux et Mémoires de l’Institut d’Ethnologie 72). Paris: Insti-
tut d’Ethnologie.
Harvey, D. (1989). The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural
Change. Oxford: Blackwell.
Jakobson, R. (1963). Essais de linguistique générale. Paris: Minuit.
Jameson, F. (1984). Postmodernism, or the cultural logic of late capitalism. New Left Review
146, 53–92.
Jencks, C. (1973). Modern Movements in Architecture. Garden City, NY: Anchor Press/
Doubleday.
Jencks, C. (1991). The Language of Post-Modern Architecture, 6th ed. New York: Rizzoli.
Jencks, C. (1992). The post-modern agenda. In The Post-Modern Reader, C. Jencks (ed.),
10–39. London: Academy.
Kerbrat-Orecchioni, C. (1977). La connotation. Lyon: Presses Universitaires de Lyon.
Krier, R. (1991). Urban Space. London: Academy Editions.
Krier, R. (1993). Rob Krier: Architecture and Urban Design (¼ Architectural Monographs
30). London: Academy.
Lagopoulos, A. Ph. (1993). Postmodernism, geography, and the social semiotics of space.
Environment and Planning D 11, 255–278.
Lagopoulos, A. Ph. (1995). Urbanisme et sémiotique dans les sociétés pré-industrielles. Paris:
Anthropos.
The social semiotics of space 213
Lagopoulos, A. Ph. (1998). Spatial discourses: Origins and types. Semiotica 119 (3/4), 359–
402.
Lagopoulos, A. Ph. and Boklund-Lagopoulou, K. (1992). Meaning and Geography: The
Social Conception of the Region in Northern Greece. Berlin/New York: Mouton de
Gruyter.
Ledrut, R. (1973). Les images de la ville. Paris: Anthropos.
Tuan, Yi-Fu (1977). Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience. Minneapolis: Univer-
sity of Minnesota.