metaphors for inspiration

METAPHORS for Inspiration

“… for if a City, according to the opinion of philosophers be no more than a great House and on the other Hand the House be a little City…”

Leone Battista Alberti[1] 

DEFINITION OF METAPHORS

Ask any average person to define metaphor and they will tell you what we were all taught in grade school. “The difference between a metaphor and a simile is that a simile uses “like” or “as”. In fact, the word “metaphor” has a much deeper and pronounced meaning to it. Originally, the word “metaphor” was a Greek word meaning “transfer”. The Greek etymology is from Meta, implying “a change” and herein meaning “to bear, or carry”. In modern Greek, the word, “metaphor” also means transport or transfer. [2]

A metaphor carries an idea from one are of thought to another. In the simplest case, this takes the form “The [first subject] is a [second subject].” More generally, a metaphor describes a first subject as being or equal to a second subject in some way. The device has been used in literature, especially in poetry, where with few words, emotions and associations from one context are associated with objects and entities in a different context. [3]

Metaphors have an essential creative role in literature and the arts, in planning, architecture and design. They provide a system of thought that can supplement or bypass logic. A creative fusion of two entities takes place in a metaphor and it constructs meaning of an essential part of creativity.

In cognitive linguistics, metaphor is defined as understanding one conceptual domain in terms of another conceptual domain. For example, using one person’s life experience to understand a different person’s experience. A conceptual domain can be any consistent and orderly organization of experience. This idea and a detailed examination of the underlying processes was first extensively explored by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson in Metaphors We Live By. [4]

George Lakoff is a professor of linguistics. Although his research involves questions surrounding certain linguistic construction, he is most famous for his ideas about metaphor to human thinking, political behavior and society. Lakoff is famous for his concept of the “embodied mind” which he has written about in relation to mathematics. Recently, he has applied his work to the field of interest in politics and found a progressive think tank, the Rockridge Institute.

Lakoff’s original thesis on conceptual metaphor was expressed in his book with Mark Johnson entitled Metaphors We Live By in 1980. [5]

In most cases, metaphor has been seen within the Western scientific tradition as purely a linguistic construction. Lakoff’s work has been the argument that metaphors are primarily a conceptual construction and indeed are central to the development of thought. He says, “Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature.” For Lakoff the greater the level of abstraction the more layers of metaphor are required to express it. Conceptual metaphors typically employ a more abstract concept as target and a more concrete or physical concept as their source.

At some point of time, Lakoff, Chomsky and Jacobs all devoted a significant amount of time to events which are happening at this moment and political theories. All pointing towards linguists or theorists of conceptual metaphor that may lead to channel their theories into political activism. On the other hand, if conceptual metaphors are as basic as all of them seem to think, they may literally have no choice in doing so.

Lakoff also suggests that the cognitive-metaphor position has no objections to the scientific method instead considers the scientific method a finely developed reasoning system used to discover phenomena which are subsequently understood in terms of new conceptual metaphors. [6]

Metaphors can be identified under three broad categories, namely, intangible, tangible and combined. Intangible metaphors are those which are created with particular individuality such as a concept, an idea, a human condition or a particular quality. Tangible metaphors are those which can be visualized such as a castle or the roof of a temple as the sky. Lastly, combined metaphors are a mixture of both intangible and tangible metaphors. [7]

A metaphor, according to I.A. Richards in The Philosophy of Rhetoric in 1936, consists of two parts, namely, the tenor and vehicle. The tenor is the subject to which attributes are ascribed. The vehicle is the subject from which the attributes are borrowed. However, there are various different types of metaphors which have been identified under the above mentioned categories. Following are types of metaphors that can be found.

TYPES OF METAPHOR [8]

1. an extended metaphor or conceit is one which sets up a principal subject with several subsidiary subjects or comparisons

2. a mixed metaphor is one that leaps, in the course of a figure, to a second identification inconsistent with the first one where two commonly used metaphors are confused to create a nonsensical image

3. a dead metaphor is one in which the sense of a transferred image is not present >>> dead metaphors, by definition, normally go unnoticed. Some people make a distinction between a “dead metaphor” whose origin most speakers are entirely unaware of (such as “to understand” meaning to stand underneath a concept) and a dormant metaphor, whose metaphorical character people are aware of but rarely think about (such as “to break the ice”). Others, however, use dead metaphor for both of these concepts and use it more generally as a way of describing metaphorical cliche

4. an epic or homeric simile is an extended metaphor containing details about the vehicle that are not, in fact, necessary for the metaphoric purpose. This can be extended to humorous lengths

5. a synechdochic metaphor is one which a small part of something is chosen to represent the whole so as to highlight certain elements of the whole.

6. an active metaphor is one which by contrast to a dead metaphor, is not part of daily language and is noticeable as a metaphor

7. a complex metaphor is one which mounts one identification on another

8. a compound or loose metaphor is one that catches the mind with several points of similarity

9. an absolute or paralogical metaphor(sometimes called an antimetaphor) is one in which there is no discernible point of resemblance between the tenor and the vehicle

10. an implicit metaphor is one in which the tenor is not specified but implied

11. a submerged metaphor is one in which the vehicle is implied or indicated by one aspect

12. a simple or tight metaphoris one in which there is but one point of resemblance between the tenor and the vehicle

13. a root metaphoris the underlying association that shapes an individual’s understanding of a situation >>> a root metaphor is different from the previous types of metaphor in that it is not necessarily an explicit device in language but a fundamental, often unconscious, assumption. Religion provides one common source of root metaphors, since birth, marriage, death and other universal life experiences can convey a very different meaning to different people, based on their level or type of religious conditioning or otherwise.

14. a conceptual metaphor is an underlying association that is systematic in both language and thought. For example in the Dylan Tomas poem “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night,” the conceptual metaphor of “A Lifetime is a Day” is repeatedly expressed and extended throughout the entire poem.

15. a dying metaphor coined in his essay Politics and the English Language, George Orwell calls a dead metaphor one that has been worn out and is used because it save people the trouble of developing original language to express an idea. It is all but dead. In short, it is cliche.

The category of metaphor can be further considered to contain the following specialized subsets. However, there are certain types of metaphor which have not been identified and some are not universally accepted.

• Allegory :   an extended metaphor in which a story is told to illustrate an important attribute of the subject

• Catachresis :   a mixed metaphor (sometimes used by design and sometimes a rhetorical fault)

• Parable :   an extended metaphor told as an anecdote to illustrate or teach a moral lesson

Throughout this century, the use of metaphor as a means of communication to architectural creativity has been rather popular. This usage has been found to be a very powerful tool. This usage is found to be more useful to the creator than to users or critics. In some cases, the best metaphors and their best uses are those that can not be visualized by users or critics, thus these metaphors became the creator’s “little secrets”.

Metaphors also act as an useful tool to the architecture instructor. In recent years, many instructors have used them and through design exercises, it is possible to test and to develop students’ fantasy and imagination. For those students who are already imaginative, they will not have problems with “metaphor” and “metaphor” will only act as an extra tool that expands their fantasy and imagination. [9]

Metaphors have been widely used in literature and language and metaphors are often associated with simile.

So, what is the meaning of metaphor in space? How can metaphors be translated into spatial designs?

Winston Churchill enjoyed the experiences of large-scale metaphors and he used them to manipulate large-scale concepts. In 1942, he saw the south shore of the Mediterranean as a springboard for an attack on “the soft underbelly of Europe”. The idea was almost instance. In 1946, he told an American audience that “An iron curtain has descended across the Continent”. This metaphor framed the Cold War period and may have inspired the Berlin Wall. [10]

 

Churchill used the “iron curtain” and “spring board” metaphors for strategic planning

Winston Churchill admired the master of metaphor, William Shakespeare, like most English authors do. Shakespeare often created new words by fusing older words so that the meaning of “an idea from one area of thought to another” still exists. Shakespeare also created metaphors that reflected Churchill’s and many other’s “view of their native land”.

This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,
This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings.

William Shakespeare [11]

A fortress; a precious stone; a blessed plot; a nurse; a mother: these metaphors have had a profound influence on Britain’s strategic planning. The power of metaphor has been greatly appreciated by respected architectural educators, who have even considered it to be the basic principles or facts of imagination which will offer opportunities to see one’s work in another light, probe new sets of questions and suggest new interpretations.

Japan’s leading literary critic, Kojin Karatani is perhaps best known for his imaginative readings of Shakespeare, Soseki, Marx, Wittgenstein and most recently Kant. His works, of which Origins of Modern Japanese Literature is the only one previously translated into English, are the generic equivalent to what in America is called “theory”.

Karatani’s writings are important not only for the insights they offer on the various topics under discussion but also as an example of a distinctly non-Western critical intervention.

Kojin Karatani is a Japanese philosopher who teaches at Kinki University, Osaka and Columbia University. He is the author of Architecture as Metaphor (MIT Press, 1995) and Origins of Modern Japanese Literature. He founded the New Associationist Movement (NAM) in Japan in 2000. [12]

Karatani detects a recurrent “will to architecture” that he argues is the foundation of all Western thinking, traversing architecture, philosophy, literature, linguistics, city planning, anthropology, political economics, psychoanalysis and mathematics. In Architecture as Metaphor, he analyzes the complex bonds between construction and deconstruction, thereby pointing to an alternative model of “secular criticism”, but in the domain of philosophy rather than literary or cultural criticism. [13]

As Karatani claims the “will to architecture” is practically non-existent in Japan, he must first assume a dual role from his point of view. One that affirms the architectonic (by scrutinizing the suppressed function of form) and another one that pushes formalism to its collapse (by invoking Jurt Godel’s incompleteness theorem). His subsequent discussions trace a path through the work of Christopher Alexander, Jane Jacobs, Hilles Deleuze and several others.

Finally, the drive that motivates all formalization, he confronts an unbridgeable gap, an uncontrollable event encountered in the exchange with the other thus his speculation turns towards global capital movement. While in the present volume he mainly analyzes familiar Western texts, it is precisely for this reason that his voice discloses a distance that will add a new dimension to our English-language discourse.

Metaphor can be helpful in achieving the “new” at many points in the building and the design/conceptual process. Ever since the discovery of the cave, humans have made use of nature’s geological formations. [14]

Only recently, the developments in structural engineering have made it possible to engage the earth’s surface as a building element in its own light. With an increasingly awareness of our planet’s limited natural resources and with landscape architects exerting ever-greater influence on contemporary design, the most acclaimed architectural practices from around the world are building into the earth, merging man-made forms with the contours of the land.

The results are at once preternatural and breathtaking. From Zaha Hadid’s Tram Terminal in Franceto Snohette’s Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt, from Future System’s hill-burrowing house in Wales to Antoine Predock;s Spencer Theatre in the United States, over fifty projects expose the breadth and depth of this new direction in architecture. [15]

Geometrical metaphors are essential to city planning and regional development. Planners speak of grid cities, radial cities and organic cities, though it is only the street patterns that have these characteristics. The advantages of having these metaphors came from the help they give to planners in thinking about large and complicated issues. [16]

Alternative town geometries - when drawing or planning “rectangular”, “radial” and “concentric” cities, planners are overusing their metaphors

“Buildings replace the land. That is architecture’s original sin. A building makes something new but does not do so in a void. What was once open land, filled with sunlight and air, with a distinct relationship to the horizon, becomes a building. The artifices of human supersede what nature has deposited on a given place. The bulk of a building stops air, sunlight and views. The memories that we built up around that particular place, either individually or as a culture, also disappear. In their place is a structure that is new, if only for a moment and that aspires to have a perfect form, function and appearance. Some buildings even hope to move as far away as possible from the land on which they rise. In all cases, a building is one thing above all else - not the land.” [17]

More attractive metaphors create more popular buildings. In the Water Pavilion for the Delta Works, Neeltje Jans, the Netherlands, the edge between water and land becomes blurred. Nox demonstrated the fluidity of form which expresses how the Dutch make land out of water and how water itself takes many forms to allow from transportation and field irrigation.

The pavilion is a monument to an element that is threatening the life-giving. On one hand, it is a timeless object whose abstraction yet brings to mind prehistoric creatures and on the other, it is a fluid sculpture of natural conditions with shapes that are complex enough to demand continual interpretation or experience. [18]

 

“Articulate” comes from the Latin for “jointed”. Designers have found the idea very useful. But it is only a metaphor. Patently, it is not possible to design a town without having a series of views or joints between successive spaces.

The Tree of Life has been a significant symbol since ancient times and can still guide spatial planning. Jung believed that the tree symbolizes the growth and development of psychic life, as distinct from intellectual life (Smith et al., 1989). The Tree of Life represents humanity;s undying sense of bring part of a continuous process which extends from our distant past into the life hereafter.

One finds the Tree of Life in manuscripts, in textiles and in architecture. In the Bhagavad Gita, for example, “They speak of an imperishable tree with its root above and branches below. It leaves are the Vedas; he who knows the tree, is the knower of the Vedas’ (Smith et al., 1989)”. A good king was one who planted trees along the sides of the roads to provide shade. Abercrombie’s open space plan for London might have gained strength from being conceived as a Tree of Life. Individuals and community groups could think that they were adding branches, leaves and roots to the tree. [19]

Anthropomorphic metaphors can also be used to plan spatial relationships. A path can be thought of as kissing a hill. The hill can hold a conversation with another hill. One of the two hills can be clad with a forest. The edges of the forest can be frayed or cut on the bias. A town might crown the hill or march through a valley. Anthropomorphic metaphors help people relate to places. Longer metaphors, in the form of stories, allow more sophisticated relationships.

In the summer of 2000, a beach appeared in the middle of Queens, New York. As part of an ongoing series of site-specific installations by architects at Rs.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York collaborative SHoP used closely spaced slats to lay out a ripping landscape through the courtyards in front of the building. Lawn chairs and beach umbrellas completed the feel of sandy beaches and dunes frozen into hillocks and caves but whose articulate surfaces gave them an urban sensibility.

In May 1968, the situationist promised “the beach below the paving stones”. SHoP, however, made a new beach - perhaps revolution can be avoided through art? [20]

 

CONCLUSION

Metaphor is being used increasingly in recent years as it acts as a reflecting tool and also bringing an idea from one area of thought to another. Therefore, a concept, an idea, a human condition or a particular quality can be re-looked upon.

Metaphor for Inspiration?

The word “inspiration” means stimulation or arousal of the mind and feelings to a special activity or creativity. From my point of view, metaphor’s existence inspires architectural and spatial design. This existence created new ways of looking and perceiving a particular element and therefore opened new doors to future designs. From all the research I have gathered, metaphors are used universally and are inspirational in all dimensions.

FOOTNOTES AND REFERENCES

[1] Quoting from Leone Battista Alberti in POETICS OF ARCHITECTURE: Theory of Design, Anthony C. Antoniades, Van Nostrand Reinhold, United States of America (1992)

[2] Quoting from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphors

[3] Quoting from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphors

[4] Reference from METAPHORS WE LIVE BY, Chicago, University of Chicago Press (1980)

[5] Reference from METAPHORS WE LIVE BY, Chicago, University of Chicago Press (1980)

[6] Reference from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Lakoff

[7] Reference from POETICS OF ARCHITECTURE: Theory of Design, Anthony C. Antoniades, Van Nostrand Reinhold, United States of America (1992)

[8] Extracted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphors

[9] Reference from POETICS OF ARCHITECTURE: Theory of Design, Anthony C. Antoniades, Van Nostrand Reinhold, United States of America (1992)

[10] Reference from http://www.gardenvisit.com/landscape/architecture/7.2-metaphor-and-planning.htm

[11] Quoting from William Shakespeare in http://www.gardenvisit.com/landscape/architecture/7.2-metaphor-and-planning.htm

[12] Reference from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kojin_Karatani

[13] Reference from ARCHITECTURE AS METAPHOR, Edited by Kojin Karatani, Translated by Sabu Kohso (1995)

[14] Reference from LANDSCRAPERS: Building with the Land, Aaron Betsy, Thames & Hudson, London (2002)

[15] Reference from LANDSCRAPERS: Building with the Land, Aaron Betsy, Thames & Hudson, London (2002)

[16] Reference from http://www.gardenvisit.com/landscape/architecture/7.2-metaphor-and-planning.htm

[17] Quoting from LANDSCRAPERS: Building with the Land, Aaron Betsy, Thames & Hudson, London (2002)

[18] Reference from http://www.noxarch.com/flash_content.html

[19] Extracted from http://www.gardenvisit.com/landscape/architecture/7.4-metaphor-and-space.htm

[20] Reference from http://www.metropolismag.com/html/content_0501/shp/index.html and http://www.ps1.org/cut/press/shop.html