The appearance of appearance

architecture, communication and value systems

pp. 445-453

in: Michael Herzfeld, Margot D. Lenhart, Semiotics 1980, Berlin, Springer, 1982

Abstract

In recent years the topic of buildings as artifacts conveying meaning has begun to reassert itself in the face of the assumptions implicit in much of the theory and work of the modern movement summarized most forcefully in the statement by Gropius (1935) that the "outward forms of the new architecture"…"are not the personal whims of a handful of architects avid for innovation at all cost, but simply the inevitable, logical product of the social and technical conditions of our age."