N. 21 (2024): Meaning in Architecure, now

Edited by Carlo Deregibus and Aurosa Alison

The connection between form and meaning has been so intrinsic and obvious that it has been implicit for centuries. Then, around fifty years ago, the issue of meaning suddenly burst into the architectural world, with many scholars and practitioners bustling to introduce semiology and semiotics into design. Now, after the globalisation and the atomisation of thoughts of the last decades, those debates could seem pretty meaningless, the form being mainly an aesthetic feature or a counterfeit fetish for everchanging, feeble poetics. Yet, we continue to design, produce, and critique architecture, attributing meanings, intentions, and hopes to its forms. Once more, we will explore and discuss the elusive yet unavoidable connection between meaning and architecture: four thematic sections to understand the place and dimension of meaning in, of, from, to, after, or maybe even for Architecture.