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METAPHORICAL FUNCTION OF THE ARCHITECTURAL FORM

Kázmér Kovács

University of Architecture and Urbanism “Ion Mincu”, Bucharest

Like all the other arts, architecture carries meaning according to specific artistic conventions – or rather carries meaning over: μεταφορά.

Unlike all the other arts, however, architecture retains an essential usefulness. Although the meaning of inhabiting encompasses numerous levels of significance, architectural function and meaning remain inseparable1.

The most obvious vehicle for architecture to deliver meaning consists of architectural form. Built elements of any kind and at any scale – whether we are dealing with the humblest garden shed or a complex urban fabric – are immediately identified as architecture solely by being associated with inhabiting. As such, they belong to a rather diverse pattern of recognisable artefacts or spatial arrangements, the first perception of which is visual. Architectural representation therefore works chiefly like a visual art, the utility of which goes without saying. The contribution of all the other senses – mediating a haptic, olfactory, auditory and kinaesthetic perception of architecture – comes at a second stage of approach, where the means to achieve the metaphorical function of architecture involve a wide range of tools from setting, building structures and materials to finish, colours, decoration and so forth.

One of the valiant attempts to negotiate architectural meaning was the adventure of applying semiotics to architecture2. Well sustained and thorough as it was, the endeavour of scholars like Umberto Eco, Geoffrey Broadbent or Charles Jencks – to name only the most prominent – failed to deliver the expected results. Their work mostly demonstrated that while ubiquitously existing beyond doubt, architectural semiosis cannot be associated with a specific grammar in the same way that language can.

A more promising – and so far little explored – method to approach architectural meaning appears accessible by applying some findings of the cognitive sciences and by adopting a more general sense of metaphor, as put                                                             

1 For instance, ostentatious representation of the inhabitants’ social status – be they people or institutions – has always accompanied architecture, contributing to the hierarchical organisation of inhabited territories as much in small avillages as in capital cities.

2 E.g. writings of the architect Geoffrey Broadbent (especially “A Plain Man's Guide to a Theory of Signs in Architecture”, 1977; and in Signs, Symbols and Architecture, 1980, where he is also the editor), or of the philosopher and novelist Umberto Eco (A Theory of Semiotics, 1976).

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forward by Lakoff and Johnson3. Although these authors acknowledge the importance, alongside other categories, of architectural (or rather built and structural) metaphors in everyday thinking, they do not explore the specifically architectural implications of their theory. While there are texts published on the metaphorical function of architectural form4, this research is yet to be undertaken. In the particular case of artificial forms too, very much of the “mysterious law” (although hardly a “sacred riddle”) intuited by Goethe5 remains unveiled.

Due to their versatility, architectural form and architectural pattern often overlap in the metaphorical domain. Both are relevant in terms of meaning and both can act as semantic (or symbolic) extensions of architectural function and structure. This is one of the reasons why the mechanisms of architectural meaning are particularly difficult to be dealt with in a theoretical approach. Another kind of difficulties come from the fact that architectural form and pattern are self-referential; if they bear any resemblance to natural forms and patterns, with rare exceptions6, it is not in order to represent or to imitate them, on the contrary: essentially, architecture ostentatiously exhibits its artificiality.

In order to take a metaphorical approach to how form and pattern relate to architectural meaning, it appears useful to comment a few aspects of the work of Jože Plečnik7, the Slovene architect whose roughly six decades of creativity overlap with the first half of the twentieth century. Interestingly enough, and in spite of being modern in every sense, his works do not belong to the Modern Movement; hence, although quite outstanding, his oeuvre is much less known than                                                             

3 George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live by, 2003. The semantic ambiguity of the preposition “by” in the title suits very well the core thesis of their theory. Namely, that we live alongside metaphors and at the same time it is through them that we conceptualise the world we live in.

4 For instance: Kōjin Karatani, Architecture as Metaphor, 1995; Saleh Pascha Khaled, Gefrorene Musik, 2004; or my own article (Kázmér Kovács, “Trei chipuri ale metaforei în relaţie cu arhitectura / Three faces of metaphor in relation with architecture” in Arhitectura, issues 52 and 53, 2007).

5 “Alle Gestalten sind ähnlich, und keine gleichet der andern, Und so deutet das Chor auf ein geheimes Gesetz, Auf ein heiliges Rätsel.” Die Metamorphose der Pflanzen.

6 Notably after the beginning of modern times (considering European modernity originating from the cultural revolution known as the Renaissance), when often architectural meaning evokes in a playful manner natural forms: grottoes, or later landscape gardens deliberately chose to look like natural forms, while merely being a more sophisticated manner of showing their artificiality. More recently, since the emergence of the Modern Movement, architecture would claim its resemblance to machinery – apud Le Corbusier’s (in)famous phrase “machine à habiter” –, thus achieving a new level of self-referentiality.

7 After training with Otto Wagner in Vienna, Plečnik began his practice there before moving to Prague to embrace a teaching carrier. He eventually became the Architect of Prague Castle, commissioned by Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk to reshape the historic ensemble as the centre of the new Czechoslovak democracy founded in the aftermath of the Great War. In the later part of his life he returned to his native Ljubljana to teach at the school of architecture there. Throughout his long life (1872-1957) he planned and built a variety of edifices, creating a quite singularly consistent and coherent oeuvre.

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the contemporary mainstream production of his peers. Plečnik is also quite different from them: he never brushed aside the traditional language of European architecture. He planned and built without much concern for the artistic or architectural ideologies of the avant-garde, yet being by no means ascribable to historicism.

Since his oeuvre being rediscovered in the 1980s8, this unregimented figure earned an undisputed place in the history of European architecture. Even if many mainstream elements are manifest in his works, Plečnik has not considered reinventing architecture. This is a position well away from the stylistic framework of the Modern Movement, as formulated – at the peak of its advent – by Hitchcock and Johnson9. Most of Plečnik’s work is particularly suitable for morphological analysis: it uses a familiar architectural language at a time where the aesthetic endeavour of Modernist architecture means little to anyone outside the professional closet. This is one of the reasons why, although in the later development of European architecture Modernism exceeds in importance all the other tendencies, our case study focuses on the maverick Plečnik instead. Another reason for this choice is precisely the overwhelming importance played by form and pattern in his oeuvre, making it an achievement exceptional in terms of knowingly delivered architectural meaning. Yet, his art of putting to work architectural metaphor was hardly acknowledged by contemporaries10 and is still of interest today.

For the purpose of this paper, a closer look at just a few of the recurrent themes in the oeuvre of Jože Plečnik will be sufficient11.

All through his architectural and urban planning practice and even when carefully designing utilitarian objects, Plečnik makes recourse to classical or even archaic forms. One of these is the pyramid, often elongated to acquire nearly obelisk-like proportions. The Zois memorial pyramid in Ljubljana (Fig. 1), for instance, is a playful architectural mark in the urban landscape, as well as a

                                                            8 While having been much praised in his home country (by his death Slovenia had become a

part of the Yugoslav federation with a communist establishment), Plečnik was almost ignored in the rest of Europe, let alone the rest of the world. The advent of Post-modernism in architecture, however, paved the way for him being rediscovered, his oeuvre being (wrongly) claimed to be some sort of Post-modern avant la lettre. The breakthrough to his new fame could have been marked by an exhibition in Oxford, accompanied by a pertinent and spirited booklet: Andrews, Richard M.; Bentley, Ian; Gržan-Butina, Đurda, Jože Plečnik. 1983.

9 Hitchcock & Johnson, The International Style, 1997. 10 The exceptions are nevertheless notable: among them one must mention President Masaryk

and his daughter, Alice, cf. their correspondence published by Věra Běhalová in Lukeš, Zdeněk et al., Josip Plečnik, 1996, pp. 81-86.

11 For an exhaustive monograph of the work achieved by Jože Plečnik, see chiefly: Prelovšek, Damjan, Jože Plečnik – 1872-1957: Architectura Perennis, 1997. Also of interest are: Krečič, Peter. Plečnik – the Complete Works, 1993, as well as the voluminous catalogue published on the occasion of the 1996 exhibition: Lukeš, Zdeněk; Prelovšek, Damjan et al. Josip Plečnik – an Architect of Prague Castle, 1996.

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significant statement concerning Plečnik’s idea of architectural meaning. The pyramid is also an unusual presence in the context of a twentieth century residential neighbourhood. Thus, all its historical references acquire an ironic undertone, while putting emphasis on the fact that we are dealing with architectural quotation.

Fig. 1. Memorial pyramid of Žiga Zois in Ljubljana, 1927.

The four triangular surfaces of the Zois pyramid are composed each of a pattern of stones set in opus quadratum, constituting a different metaphorical register at a smaller scale (Fig. 2). The rectangular shape of the stones indicates human intervention in the same way, as does the abstract geometrical regularity of the overall form. By making mortar joints protrude, the structural aspect is being emphasised with all the semantic implications: the process of laying stones, technique, weight, concept etc.

At the same time, any pyramid is part of a series of similar forms, thus illustrating an ancient pattern related to the most elementary building gesture: erecting stones in an upright position. Elsewhere in Ljubljana, reiterating this significant architectural form of the most famous descent12, Plečnik built several other pyramids to enhance the effect of the restored remains of the southern walls                                                             

12 Plečnik’s additions (1935) are probably reminiscent of the Roman pyramid of Caius Cestius (erected in 12 BC), later inserted as it was in the Aurelian Wall. In its form, the tomb of this Roman magistrate reproduces the pattern of Egyptian tombs, namely their Nubian version (25th dynasty, 7th century BC), reminiscent in they turn of the great royal tombs of Saqqara, Giza etc. (3d and 4th dynasty, 27th and 26th century BC). Nubia was attacked by Rome in 23 BC.

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of what once upon a time was a Roman colony. Their building went parallel with the walls being integrated in a promenade area and antique lapidarium. Again, the metaphorical intention is clear, as Plečnik’s pyramids boast the illustrious history of Ljubljana as a city descendant from Colonia Julia Æmona.

Fig. 2. Face of the Zois pyramid in Ljubljana.

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The playful introduction of an “antique” eye-catcher monument was judged the more appropriate, as the walls themselves have nothing spectacular (Fig. 3). The thin line of small pebbles marking the upper limit of the historic ruins is about the only significant form in this opus incertum pattern. Its metaphorical dimension is very weak: there is hardly more to it than a bare scholarly indication.

Fig. 3. Antique Roman walls of Ljubljana (formerly Colonia Julia Æmona), partially reconstituted by the Austrian archaeologist Walter Schmid in 1913.

If inscriptions on a wall can be as ancient as the walls themselves, they do not diminish the expressive capabilities of the built structure. Setting the opus mixtum of a new decorative wall, made of all sorts of debris found on the re-building site of Križanke monastery in Ljubljana13, gave Plečnik the opportunity of inserting the fragment of a broken inscription (Fig. 4). The fragment works as a key to the built riddle, projecting architecture on its historical background by a truly metaphorical gesture. The masonry-wall pattern and the wall-inscription pattern overlap here; built forms work like a familiar, yet undeciphered writing, the possible interpretations of which remain virtually endless.

As a Catholic devotee, Plečnik seems always interested in putting his finite edifices in the context of infinity. Eagerly aware of architecture being situated in time, the brick wall – a pattern of innumerable identical elements – is to him an

                                                            13 During the last years of his life, from 1952 to 1956, Plečnik planned the rehabilitation of the

originally mediaeval structures of the former monastery of the Teutonic Knights of the Cross (began in 1228; rebuilt 1567-1579; the Baroque church: 1714-1715).

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implicit metaphor of natural structures, whether crystalline or cellular. The process of building a brick wall is defined by artificiality, intentionality and technique; while being explicitly fabricated, it involves metaphorically the idea of biological growth.

Fig. 4. Decorative wall at the Križanke monastery in Ljubljana, 1952-1956.

Plečnik was by no means indifferent to the expressive quality of brick patterns, of the massive presence of brick walls, or oblivious of the symbolic pattern of antique ruins. As a Mediterranean, he was culturally familiar to Roman building traditions. He may not have seen the Roman opus reticulatum combined with opus latericium at the Villa Hadriana in Tivoli (Fig. 5); yet the system must have been known to him as much as he was often emulating the technical inventiveness of Roman engineering.

The origins of the modern, lasting scholarly interest in ruins coincide with the emergence of Humanism at the beginnings of European Renaissance. By the 18th century, the fascination of ruins had acquired all its momentum14, reaching a peak during Romanticism. As a particular case, crenellated fortifications in any state of preservation were a symbolic pattern so common throughout millennia of sedentary life that their forms stand as a metaphor for any kind of settlement – and will do so as long as “my home is my castle” (Fig. 6).                                                             

14 As shown for instance by the entire oeuvre of Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778).

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Fig. 5. Roman brick masonry at the Villa Hadriana in Tivoli, AD 118-138.

Fig. 6. The Villa Hadriana in Tivoli; ruins of the Praetorian barracks.

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Reinforced by the perspective effect, referring the limit embodied by the Praetorian barracks’ wall to the limitless horizon, their metaphor situates architecture in its spatial context, which is the boundary. Because laying bricks takes time, the wall also situates architecture in its temporal context, represented by the successive (very numerous but finite) strata of anonymous, identical building elements.

Yet this is merely one possible “reading” of a brick wall. Brick masonry has always involved the patient superposition of smallish terracotta parallelepipeds, shaped by – and made to fit in – a human hand. Thus, of all built structures the brick wall brings best to mind the human body and the endless variability of building; it evokes the solidity of an edifice and its duration; last but not least, it expresses fully the reason of any spatial boundary: the in-side and the out-side.

By the church of the Most Sacred Heart of Our Lord built by Plečnik in the Vinohrady district of Prague, the patterned clinker brick surface creates a screen for a second layer of significant elements on the façade (Fig. 7). Complete with this superimposed pattern of granite points, the façade suggests a defensive epithelium enveloping the sacred place. Metaphorically, it can be the abstract rendition of a dragon skin: invulnerable and repellent – an embodiment of unfriendliness. The contrast between the abstract regularity of the repeated, geometrical elements and the overwhelmingly physical appearance of a monstrous hide sustains a potent architectural metaphor of the protective boundary.

Fig. 7. The church of the Most Sacred Heart of Our Lord, planned by Plečnik

for the Vinohrady district of Prague, 1929-1932.

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This metaphorical meaning proves to become the more obvious inside, because instead of the glossy, dark bricks of the exterior surface, the inner face of the same brick wall is made of softer, matte, terracotta coloured material. The hard granite scales of the exterior turn on the inner surface of the wall into a secondary pattern of tiny, equally innumerable golden crosses (Fig. 8).

Fig. 8. The church of the Most Sacred Heart; interior view.

Still inside, there is a third layer of architectural pattern: the statuary representations of Christ and several patron saints; made to look as if sculpted of ivory and gold, they evoke once again Mediterranean Antiquity. Their presence and placement is also congruent with a pattern of similar galleries across the whole of the Western Christian world. It also recalls in a non-traditional way the traditional use of statuary in architecture, as well as the metaphorical part played in architecture by forms representing the human body15, columns, atlantes and caryatids being the most common of these.

At a larger scale, the form and façade elements of the entire building evoke different historical, cultural or semantic patterns. For instance, the most conspicuous part of the church building is its oversized, flat belfry (Fig. 9). It looks almost as if the whole nave were a mere base for this superstructure, which melts                                                             

15 E.g. Summerson, The Classical Language of Architecture, 1966; Hersey, The Lost Meaning of Classical Architecture, 1988; Rykwert, The Dancing Column, 1998.

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together archaic Egyptian themes (pylon, pyramid, obelisk) with classical themes (pediment, garland), as well as elements of Mediterranean vernacular churches (flat, open belfry).

Fig. 9. The church of the Most Sacred Heart; view from the East.

Unexpectedly, two pyramid-obelisks flank the tower proper. Not simply an ornament, the presence of the two symmetrical peaks bearing smaller crosses reduces the width of the tower to convenient proportions, while adding to the monumentality of the whole (Fig. 10). Recurrent in many of Plečnik’s buildings, they situate the ensemble of the church in a symbolic paradigm refuted (at least in principle) by the Modern Movement. At the same time, the pyramid-obelisk places his oeuvre in the continuity of European architecture, certainly in a much wider context than the first half of the twentieth century.

The metaphorical function of architectural forms and patterns is at work everywhere in the oeuvre of Jože Plečnik. It is quite obvious at the church of the Most Sacred Heart, with the different treatment of the two faces of the church wall, where the architect is knowingly using a trivial building element as vehicle for complex metaphorical meaning. With him, bricks and the masonry pattern they produce (when assembled in a wall) translate – and “carry over” – architectural meaning from the scale of the human hand to the indefinitely large scale of built structures. And even further: the metaphorical function of his architectural forms extends beyond the limits of any particular edifice.

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Fig. 10. The church of the Most Sacred Heart; the belfry and clock tower.

At the same Prague church, for instance, in a dramatic counterpoint, the massiveness of the belfry is undone by the transparency of the two enormous clock faces. The heavy mass of the tower seems to be erected solely to support these almost immaterial, overstated images of time. Although (by the first half of the twentieth century) a tower clock belongs to a familiar pattern, the forms of this particular one appear quite unusual in their architectural context; of course they exceed almost any reasonable precedent in size16 but, more importantly, they are exceptional in terms of metaphorical complexity.

                                                            16 Its diameter is comparable to the clock faces of the Big Ben in London.

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We cannot submit to analysis the whole range of symbolic meanings born by the clock tower of the church of the Most Sacred Heart. It will suffice to observe that the gigantic clock-face is divided by an iron frame supporting the glass, thus creating a rectangular pattern governed by structural rules. The round clock face is a window providing a peculiar frame for the urban landscape of Prague (Fig. 11). It also partitions the moving cityscape behind the window, transforming it in a Cartesian, abstracted image. And while one is contemplating the image of the historical city, the passing of time is permanently and inevitably acknowledged: due to its size, the minute hand must move ceaselessly in order to draw the whole circle in due course.

Fig. 11. The church of the Most Sacred Heart, interior of the clock tower.

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Framing scenery is an elementary practice for creating landscapes – that is to put forward a view considered for its aesthetic value (Fig. 12). Plečnik obviously followed this purpose by putting in place the pavilion called Small Belvedere on the edge of the Southern Gardens of Prague Castle. The architectural means utilized here have a secondary, although not insignificant importance; the structure is made of non-canonical classical elements, functioning at the same time as architectural landmark and as visual intermediary between the Garden on the Ramparts and the panorama of Prague.

Fig. 12. Southern Gardens of Prague Castle, 1920-1935; the Small Belvedere.

The “frame” is itself a part of the landscape, important for giving it scale and putting it in relation with the “here and now”. In the Small Belvedere, the remoteness of the horizon is echoed by the innumerable repetition of the pattern created by resemblant – although not identical – forms in the pavement, which can also be read as an upside down reflexion of an imago cœli (Fig. 13). As we look down after having contemplated the distant landscape, the pavement beneath our feet is a reminder of our own human scale – and a mise en abîme of architecture.

Less explicit, yet similar in many respects, the cobble-stone pavement of the terrace below the Bull-staircase (leading from the third castle courtyard into the Southern Gardens) carries the second pattern of a numerous-numerable amount of regularly placed flower pots – a horizontal reinterpretation of the pattern layers masterfully displayed at the church of The Very Sacred Heart. Their slightly

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dazzling perspective effect introduces, once again, the infinity of the horizon behind. And the edge of the terrace is marked by yet another obelisk-pyramid (Fig. 14).

Fig. 13. Southern Gardens of Prague Castle; pavement of the Small Belvedere.

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Fig. 14. Southern Gardens of Prague Castle; the Small Belvedere and the obelisk-pyramid.

This obelisk-pyramid is a focal point in the composition of the Southern Gardens. Being a stone-axis pointing to the sky, indicating a direction in the city and at the same time marking a boundary, it establishes a reference system; it stands for the “origin” of the place. It is a powerful sign, as much an index and an icon as it is a symbol. Playful like a garden eye-catcher, yet almost austere in its

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geometrical perfection, the obelisk-pyramid works as the architectural artwork par excellence, with almost no utilitarian purpose at all, fulfilling instead a complex metaphorical function that can only be assumed by an edifice (Fig. 15).

Fig. 15. Southern Gardens of Prague Castle; cobbled stone terrace and the obelisk pyramid,

as seen from the Bull staircase.

During the summer of 1996, a wooden replica of the garden obelisk-pyramid was installed at the intersection of Jiřská and u Daliborky Streets in Prague Castle. It stayed there for months as a remarkable signal to a grandiose exhibition dedicated to the oeuvre of Plečnik (Fig. 16). In the aftermath of the show, the replica obelisk was discarded and kept for some time in a rubbish dump to be reused, supposedly as raw material (Fig. 17).

The two quite similar obelisk-pyramids – equally belonging to the same historical pattern of architectural forms – have a dramatically different destiny due to features reaching beyond their formal appearance. It is neither a matter of precedence – one being the copy of the other – nor a mere matter of material structure, solidity or finish. Above all it is a matter of metaphorical function achieved through architectural form. Although in both cases this function is semantic in equal shares, the stone pyramid remains while the wooden one disappears.

One may conclude that architectural works with a single definite semantic function tend to become obsolete, in opposition to architectural works with an open metaphorical purpose; yet again, uniqueness of meaning kills the artefact, while a multiplicity of meanings tends to preserve it.

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Fig. 16. Wooden replica of the garden obelisk-pyramid, installed as a signal, during the huge

exhibition dedicated in 1996 to the oeuvre of Jože Plečnik in Prague Castle.

Fig. 17. Wooden replica of the obelisk-pyramid, dumped after the exhibition was over.

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The oeuvre of Jože Plečnik was created over a time span reaching from the last decade of the Habsburg belle époque to the first of the communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe. The attempt to give a metaphorical interpretation to the architectural forms and patterns used by him can, on the one hand, improve our understanding of the failure to deliver satisfactory architectural meaning by the different trends related to the Modern Movement, above all of Functionalism: their spectacular emergence (in terms of architectural history) is contemporary with Plečnik’s achievements. On the other hand, exercising architectural critique by means of metaphorical analysis can provide tools necessary to once again reconsider architectural form as belonging to a semantically more adequate historical pattern.

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relation with architecture. Bucharest. Arhitectura, 2007. Issues 52 – 53; 90-95, 88-94. Krečič, Peter. Plečnik – the Complete Works. New York. Whitney Library of Design, 1993. Lakoff, George and Johnson, Mark. Metaphors We Live by. Chicago. University Of Chicago Press,

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University Press, 1997. Rykwert, Joseph. The Dancing Column. Cambridge, MA. MIT Press, 1998. Summerson, John. The Classical Language of Architecture. Cambridge, MA. MIT Press, 1966.