Ducts Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

The word architecture is itself a metaphor bridging “master” and “builder”: from arkhi- "chief" + tekton "builder, carpenter". Master was a title of citizen ship, authority and high status while builder was all of the skills associated with carpentry where merchant places of business and residences were constructed by carpenters under a master carpenter. As words, grammar, phonetics, literature, dictionaries, and encyclopedias are the vocabulary and tools of writing and speaking so are mechanical, electrical, plumbing and structural engineering, materials, structural elements, building systems, manufacturers catalogs, history of interiors, history of architecture (beams, cables, columns, flooring, roofing, wall materials, lights, wires, ducts, etc.) the vocabulary of designers.
The writer and the designer both devise the choice of words, construct sentences and paragraphs to express, explain some ideas, create some mystery, and romance while the designer contrives his vocabulary of elements to reify the program. The completed building speaks through its every part. Its volume, spaces, shape, form, and height with proportions, shades and shadows, reflections, inner and outer spaces, sequence of spaces, planes and internal and external volumes. The building is the ensemble of the actors of the play reciting their parts, the musicians in the orchestra playing their pieces all led by a conductor who interprets the composer’s composition as the general contractor interprets the contact documents.
Today we have computers which can translate words into graphic three dimensional building models and translate the model to draining and specifications. This application of this analogy was not even conceivable when we began this study in 1967. Forty years from now the possibilities seem endless but leading to expanded metaphors and use of metaphoric thinking. However, between then and now I have been asked by software giants to discuss architectural terms so they could build tools for architects to design. Computer Aided Design, Master Spec, Modeling is the results of such conversations.
Most cognitive linguistic research 7.0 on metaphor (such as architecture as the making of metaphors) may be characterized as theory building, in which concepts and hypotheses are developed about the nature of conceptual metaphor. To be sure, such theories have empirical underpinnings, in that their authors are careful to collect many linguistic and architectural examples that corroborate our theoretical constructs. To put this slightly differently, these are theories meant to be put to the test in empirical research. In that respect, they are not like the hermeneutic theories of philosophers7.0.