Multimodal Semiotics and Collaborative Design

From this perspective, to build (and to live in) architectural spaces is a conscious effort to combine
several types of experience and awareness. Tuan states that a builder first needs to know where to
build and with what materials; then afflict physical effort to work. “A worker modifies his own body
as well as external nature when he creates a world” (Tuan 1977: 102), including the social practices
of people who use (or live in) it. Therefore, architecture both teaches and influences social roles
and relations. Whether the design reflects a religious place in which subject and objects of practice
are clearly defined or an interior decoration which emphasizes the distinction of inside and outside,
architectural space defines, represents and constructs ways of experiencing the social and physical
worlds. Architectural design articulates social order by impacting senses and feeling, through
experiential and symbolic qualities. An architect learns and practices the rhythms of culture, and
develops a tacit understanding of the ways to give it symbolic form 8 .
Social semiotics, spatial practices and place-making
The semiotic organization of space and place cannot be understood separately from the
organization and signification of social actions, through which relations of power and social control
are also organized. Space frames experience not only in terms of movement in and/or between
locations, but also in terms of co-production of socially meaningful actions and discourses in and
about spaces. In this framework, Henri Lefebvre’s (1991) neo-Marxist framing of the production of
‘social space’ has an influential role –as knowledge and action possibilities– in understanding the
modes of production, allowing them to take place while transforming the social system in which coproducers
interact. For Lefebvre, space is a theoretical entity, while spatial practices are
empirically observable; and “the concepts of production and the act of producing do have a certain
abstract universality 9 ” (Lefebvre 1991 [1974]: 15). In this view, the terms of everyday discourse (i.e.
room, house, shopping center, public space) describe and distinguish social spaces in which social
actions take place.
The spatial dimension adds further considerations and choices for sign-makers: objects in space
have many surfaces, other objects can now be above or below them, and they can be composed to
form open or closed spaces to certain degrees (van Leeuwen 2005a). Another important
consideration in multimodal organization of space is the position of the viewer in relation to the
composition, while this is a dynamic relationship which can change through movement in time.
Although in Reading Images, Kress and van Leeuwen (1996) limit their discussions of the notion of
framing within the field of visual communication, van Leeuwen (2005a) expands the reach of the
notion and theorizes framing as a multimodal principle by including built spaces in his theory. He
8
Tuan describes architectural space as “frozen music”, which refers to “spatialized time” (Tuan 1977: 118).
9
Emphasis in italics by original author.
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