Multimodal Semiotics and Collaborative Design

from the meaning-making practices, in that the objects and bodies in spaces are transformed into
places in people’s minds as they learn about them through experience. Places are experiential and
semiotic constructs. They are experiential, as they refer to particular locations where meaningful
human interaction takes place. In fact, place is essential to human thought, as every action has to
happen somewhere (Relph 2007). In this sense, built spaces (i.e. architectural spaces) are
transformed into places through socio-cultural histories that are embedded in their designs, and
the ways in which they are interpreted and/or experienced as sign systems.
Within a design-based perspective, “place is mixed with human values and principles, which
transforms it as “a particular space which is covered with meanings and values by the users” (Najafi
et al. 2011: 187). As a central agent of semiotic change, design shapes the environment of
communication. Configurations of artifacts that constitute the place would, thus, transform the
projections of the complex, inter-related social arrays in which places are constructed and
experienced through everyday practices. My analysis emphasizes the spatial characteristics of
virtual environments, and practices of place-making through co-production of meaningful signs.
Therefore, I will exemplify and discuss various similarities between (so-called) virtual and real
places. On the other hand, the virtual places that are subjected to analysis here have unique
characteristics, through which they are experienced and designed differently than physical places.
According to social science scholar Edward Relph’s (2007) analysis of spirit of place and sense of
place in VEs, a phenomenological perspective on the study of place-making is helpful for analysis.
He argues that there are at least three interwoven elements of place: its physical setting, the spatial
activities within it, and the meanings that arise from experiences from interacting with it.
Ontological and epistemological relationships between space, time and bodily experience are also
among the central discussions in the phenomenological approach (Merleau-Ponty 2004 [1948],
Stewart and Mickunas 1974).
We can no longer draw an absolute distinction between space and the things which occupy it,
nor indeed between the pure idea of space and the concrete spectacle it presents to our senses
(Merleau-Ponty 2004 [1948]: 51).
In his book on ‘concepts of Space’, physics scholar Max Jammer (1970) distinguishes two particular
tendencies to conceptualize space in modern European philosophical and natural sciences. The
positivist concept of space is something that exists in itself, independently from human
consciousness (i.e. we can talk about space without actually being in space). The opposing
viewpoint, metaphysical (or dualist) concept of space has its roots in the theology of Leibniz, where
‘place’ denotes ‘God’. Similarly, the Cartesian notion of space opposed the Aristotelian subjectivism
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