Signs and symbols of the domestic façade in the city: Changes, confusion or decline?

Signs and symbols of the domestic façade in the city: Changes, confusion or decline?

Jurgenhake, B.

Architecture and The Built Environment

Architecture

2013-06-19

In a time in which 50% of the world inhabitants live in an urban context, a percentage that will definitely even grow, it is important to ask whether the residential building within daily public and anonymous city life still has the quality of privacy and identity of a ‘home’. The on-going PhD research “The façade as an intermediary element between outside and inside” will study the 20th century dwelling in the Netherlands. It focusses on the façade of the collective residential building in the urban context of the Dutch city. The high complexity of functions of the façade makes it a very sensitive element of the house: a functional skin, a boundary and filter between inside and outside and the representational element (a face or even a mask) of the house. The aim of the research is to show the development of the representational and filtering functions of the façade in Dutch residential buildings within the historical context of the last century. Tendencies in design and ideas about the meaning of the façade will be traced. The intention is to obtain more insight into the changes of signs of the residential façade, while focusing on aspects of the (social) filter and aesthetics. The aim of this paper is to explain how signs within architecture, and more specifically within the residential façade, work as a language, as a part of our communication. Signs are dynamic and they have an interrelationship with public frames of references and current opinions. A method for analysing the façade with its signs will be discussed. A first conclusion will show how the façade communicates in terms of representation and in terms of protection to the city. Some examples will discuss changes of signs or even the confusion or decline of their meanings.

signs
communication
representation
identity
privacy

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:6341d2f4-e722-4878-b4b8-8b190a76a029

ENHR

ENHR 2013 Conference “Overcoming the Crisis, Integrating the Urban Environment", Tarragona, Spain, 19-22 June 2013 - Workshop 26: Residential Buildings and Architectural Design – Urban Housing in the Time of Crisis

Institutional Repository

conference paper

(c) 2013 Jurgenhake, B.