Multimodal Semiotics and Collaborative Design

(Lefebvre 1991 [1974]). Phenomenological concept of space offers a third way, a concept of space
understood via its appearances in conscious human experience (Qvortrup 2002).
Space and Place: The experiential and functionalist approaches
In his widely cited book on space and place, geography professor Yi-Fu Tuan (1977) proposes and
experiential perspective on these two concepts, and explores how people feel and think about space
and place through exploration of a variety of disciplines, including psychology, literature,
anthropology and theology. In Tuan’s phenomenological perspective on place-making, experience
has a central role, as experience is framed by “the various modes through which a person knows
and constructs a reality” (Tuan 1977: 8). We perceive and act in the world by processing
kinesthetic, visual, haptic, auditory and other stimulants. For Tuan, “[T]he organization of human
space is uniquely dependent on sight” and “other senses expand and enrich visual space” (Tuan
1977: 16). Although multimodal social semiotics –particularly in its postmodern expansions – refer
to these modalities as various semiotic resources in a coherent semiotic arrangement, Tuan’s
experiential perspective has important similarities in terms of its multi-dimensional understanding
as space and place as socially produced phenomena.
From the experiential perspective, space connotes a more abstract mathematically define
phenomenon, while place refers to the multitude (and memory) of such multimodal experiences.
Spaces are experienced as relative locations and spatial relations of objects or places within, thus it
can be described by a network of places. On the other hand, Tuan describes place as “an organized
world of meaning” (Tuan 1977: 179), which is essentially a fixed framing of lived experience 7 .
Phenomenology considers place as a type of object, which defines space through organization of its
(functional and representational) elements. On the other hand, space connotes an abstract term
that describes a complex set of ideas and something that is measurable. Certain spatial relations
and structures are closely tied to the construction of interpersonal relationships, which contributes
to the construction of a sense of place. Similarly, phenomenology of architecture (and built spaces)
“explores ontological character of humankind and considers ‘being-in-the-world’ as an
indispensable part of continuation” (Najafi et al. 2011: 187); thus it emphasizes the spatial
practices, interactions and experiences of people within the material and symbolic structures of
architecture. In Tuan’s terms, spaciousness and crowding are closely related to the making of such
experiences. On the other hand, the phenomenological perspective is concerned with individual
experiences and subjective interpretations of people instead of ultimately objective truths (Turner
7 Similar to the example in Douglas Adams’s prologue to this dissertation (Adams and Carwardine 1990), Tuan (1977)
also mentions the consistently rebuilt Shinto temples Japan to exemplify how the experiences of space and place differ
from culture to culture.
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