Words of Desire: The Origins of Architecture

Vitruvius, the ancient Roman architectural theorist, encourages

contemplation of architecture as inexorably bound to words, and thus texts.

In the introduction to the second of his ten books he describes the origin

of the dwelling house. According to him, architecture arises as a

consequence of the acquisition and control of fire, which made community

possible as a gathering around domesticated flame. Vitruvius argued that it

was such an assembly of individuals that led first to language and then to

architecture. Brought together by the warmth of a common flame, the

congregants pointed at things of interest, which led to elaboration of

shared names for these things, first as a matter of convenience then of

habit. Naming of things makes them comprehensible only when such names are

agreed upon as appropriate, regardless of how apparently arbitrary the

relation of signifier to signified might appear. With a common language in

place--at least locally--building began but not before desire could be

spoken (and reality described). Spoken desire is shared. Speaking

communicates the character of desire. Longing verbalized already suggests

how it might be housed and assuaged. Consequently, desire is the great

mother of communication; without communication it must remain as unspoken as

unfulfilled. And only a language provisionally held in common (expressed

verbally, textually, or architecturally) can fulfill the promise of

communication as satisfaction. Radical subjectivity notwithstanding,

comprehensibility of the constructed environment remains a real possibility

so long as its invention and making occurs within a horizon of shared

experience graspable by a language capable of giving form to

desire--textually as much as architecturally.

Vitruvius did not propose a semiotics of architecture any more than

this paper does; nonetheless, the relation between texts and buildings is

explored here, especially the degree to which comprehensibility depends upon

awareness of the meaning that silts up in words as much as it does to

architectural elements. Architecture is the human stage of unfolding

reality. Reality in turn is most graspable when language makes thought

knownable. Thus, a thoughtful architecture lends itself to description, not

so much in technical terms as emotional ones. Unpacking of these ideas

occurs through consideration of the link between the writing of linguist

Benjamin Lee Whorf and the writing and buildings of Dutch architect Aldo van

Eyck. Whorf's conviction was that individual and group structures of

language reveal how both experience reality, which is very close to van

Eyck's conviction that architecture can become felt meaning if it accounts

for the structure of human existence as an in-between condition; the

terrifying character of which becomes a comfort when opposites are embraced

as parts of a complex whole--rendered as much by language and ritual as

given a place in rooms, buildings, and cities. Felt meaning is

comprehensible at the moment of perception, having much more to do with

experience than with visual appeal, even though it is through forms first

seen that such meaning comes to mind, touches emotion, and is felt. But when

this process cannot be given a textual form--as an image of experienced

reality able to contain desire and give it a setting for fulfillment--an

architect can but grope at its manifestation as the built realm.