Search Results (31)

This study examines how contemporary religious architecture mediates sacred meaning through the interaction of symbolic form, embodied practice, and sensory-spatial conditions, using the Namaste Dagoba at Famen Temple as a case study. Integrating architectural semiotics with exploratory empirical research, the study employs questionnaires and semi-structured interviews, supplemented by architectural field notes, to investigate how visitors perceive and interpret the space. An exploratory structural equation modeling (SEM) framework is used to examine possible relationships among Symbolism and Aesthetic Experience (SAE), Embodied Spatial-Ritual Perception (ESRP), and Perceived Sacred Meaning (PSM). The findings indicate that while symbolic and aesthetic perception provides an initial interpretive basis, perceived sacred meaning appears to be strongly associated with reported embodied spatial experience. Spatial configuration, ritual pathways, mandala-based geometry, and gradients of spatial intensity are interpreted as design conditions that may shape visitors’ reported perception, movement experience, and sense of sacred meaning. The observed mediating role of ESRP suggests that architecture may operate as an experiential interface rather than only as a static symbolic system. By integrating semiotic theory with exploratory questionnaire and interview evidence, the study proposes a tentative embodied and processual model of architectural meaning-making. Rather than suggesting a rupture from historical Buddhist spatial traditions, the study identifies one contemporary design strategy in which inherited cosmological symbolism, ritual movement, threshold experience, and sensory atmosphere are recomposed through a monumental modern architectural vocabulary. Full article

Building details are often treated as technical externalities, subordinate to form, image and architectural narrative. Reading details as liminal spaces reverses that hierarchy. The joint concentrates transitions between the inside and outside, public and private, exposure and protection, and these transitions are constructed as intervals, experienced through thickness, reveal, edge condition, shadow, touch, and the small resistances that accompany crossing. The article develops its analysis through archival hand-drawn detail drawings from the Azrieli Architectural Archive. It defines building details as both technical assemblies and threshold devices, points where architecture becomes accountable to perception as well as to climate, labor, regulation, and everyday use. A semiotic reading of large-scale sheets shows how line weight, hatching, notation, and layout encode priorities, marking boundaries between what must be precisely resolved and what may remain adjustable. The archive is treated as a laboratory of “detail families,” recurring junction types such as windows, stairs, and envelope edges that reveal office-specific languages of joining. Two case studies, by the architects Ram Karmi and Arieh Sharon with Eldar Sharon, show how micro-variations in depth, overlap, and edge control tune thresholds, producing perceptual tipping points where comfort can shift into irritation, calm into unease, and openness into vulnerability. Although grounded in a local archive, the argument addresses a broader condition of contemporary practice: standardization and digital production chains can relocate authorship and responsibility away from the joint, precisely where buildings most affect everyday conduct. The paper proposes a liminal literacy of detailing as both a historiographic method and a design ethic aimed at making threshold decisions legible, contestable, and accountable in present-day workflows. Full article

A growing body of empirical study recognises a tendency for users to form (para)social bonds with Large Language Models, even when users know explicitly that these systems lack interiority or personhood. This contribution argues that such attachments arise from evolved human capacities to attribute being, moral status and, in some ways, ‘soul’ to nonhuman others—and that this capacity now operates without the belief-systems that have historically mediated it. When users encounter helpful, patient, emotionally available behaviour in conversational agents, they project the interior states that would produce those behaviours in themselves: authentic interiority and phenomenal consciousness. Humans have been making such assessments throughout our cultural history, developing ontologies and theologies for managing our relations with nonhuman, mythic and spiritual others. By contrast, modernity has disenchanted its landscapes, dismantling these cultural models even as the ‘ensouling architecture’ of our social and semiotic cognition remained unchanged. Contemporary users thus encounter machine others through the same neurocognitive lens as their ancestors did with spirits and animals on enchanted, animate landscapes, but without the mediation of culture, norm and taboos which place a premium on appropriate conduct, reciprocity and moderation. The resulting condition—a ‘Turing Animism’—leads users to ‘feel soul’ where there is only simulacrum. Full article

Against the backdrop of globalization and rapid urbanization, the weakening of regional cultural identity has emerged as a significant challenge in contemporary architectural practice, particularly within the context of large-scale campus development. University architecture must navigate the complex task of balancing functional demands with long-term cultural and social sustainability. However, the prevalence of homogenized architectural forms in many newly constructed campuses often undermines local distinctiveness, leading to diminished place identity and reduced social sustainability. In response, this study takes the Yan’an University new campus in China as a representative case to explore how regional culture can be sustainably integrated into campus architecture through spatial organization, typological strategies, and symbolic translation. The study employs qualitative analysis and a life-cycle perspective, integrating architectural semiotics and typological methods to construct a multidimensional analytical framework of “space–material–culture”. This framework is systematically applied to examine how the loess culture, revolutionary heritage, and folk art of Yan’an are translated and expressed in a contemporary context. The findings reveal that achieving cultural sustainability does not rely on direct imitation of historical forms but rather on an adaptive spatial framework, modular architectural typologies, and a performance-integrated material system, which together shape a resilient and organically evolving campus entity. Specifically, the design employs strategies such as “symbolic translation from archetype to type”, “dialogue between traditional materials and contemporary craftsmanship”, and “spatial translation from enclosed courtyards to open landscapes”. These approaches facilitate the organic embedding of regional cultural genes, promote the continuity of collective memory, strengthen local identity, and enable phased development throughout the campus’s life cycle. By extending the concept of sustainability from environmental performance to cultural continuity, social cohesion, and spatial adaptability, this study provides actionable design pathways and theoretical references for campus development in regions with profound historical backgrounds. Full article

This article introduces Memetic/Metaphorical Digital Twins (MDTs) as a novel extension of Digital Twin typologies by twinning conceptual schemes, complementing Industrial, Human, and Cognitive Digital Twins. MDTs embed cultural, organizational, and semiotic knowledge into digital frameworks, enabling the recombination and evolution of knowledge structures across disciplines. Drawing on Schlaile’s economic perspectives and Mavromatidis’s architectural lens of entropy and constructal thermodynamics, this study demonstrates how MDTs can address systemic challenges in communication, knowledge transfer, and design. A Digital Community Platform, under development for supporting decentralized Personal Knowledge Management Systems (PKMS), provides the operational foundation, integrating iterative KM cycles to support knowledge co-creation. Its logic and logistics substitute the traditional document paradigm with a memetic approach by utilizing memes as replicable, adaptive knowledge units, thereby mimicking biological evolution and ecosystem resilience in digital platform environments. It aims to offer distributed, decentralized, bottom-up, affordable, knowledge-worker-centric applications prioritizing personalization, mobility, generativity, and entropy reduction; its mission is to serve a knowledge-co-creating community characterized by highly diverse individual Abilities, Contexts, Means, and Ends (ACME) facing increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous futures (VUCA). A Boundary Object Taxonomy to Omnify Memetic Storytelling (BOTTOMS) is proposed to further structure atomic units of meaning—such as memes, mythemes, narratemes, and reputemes—into a unified framework for authorship and dissemination. The article situates MDTs within a design science research paradigm, outlines current implementation progress, and identifies future developments, including AI-supported curation, personalized metrics, and expanded boundary objects. Together, these contributions position MDTs as a universal framework for adaptive, transdisciplinary knowledge co-creation. Full article

Application of Artificial Intelligence-Generated Content (AIGC) in architectural design has increased rapidly. However, contemporary interpretations of traditional architectural heritage produced through such approaches often remain visually imitative, resulting in compromised cultural integrity and reduced semantic accuracy. To address this issue, this study proposes a traceable and constraint-driven framework that transforms architectural heritage knowledge into reproducible AI-assisted design outcomes, using Huizhou-style architecture in China as a case study. Methodologically, the cultural genes of Huizhou architecture are extracted and encoded through grounded theory. The priorities of these genes are then quantified using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and subsequently translated into weighted constraints embedded within AIGC prompts. These constraints are further structured through a three-layer symbolic transformation framework encompassing morphology, semantics, and behavior. The generated outcomes are empirically evaluated using the User Experience Questionnaire (UEQ) and paired-sample t-tests. The results indicate that the proposed workflow significantly enhances users’ perceived cultural accuracy, emotional resonance, and overall perceived quality of AI-generated outputs. This research presents a reproducible AI collaborative workflow that contributes to sustainable and verifiable heritage translation within intelligent design environments. Full article

Sensory mapping in architecture lacks a guiding theoretical model, leaving practitioners without a clear way to relate spatial design to embodied experience. This study introduces a structured methodology that links phenomenological observation with affordance theory and sensory semiotics, framing sensory data within architectural contexts. Fieldwork in fourteen courtyard houses of Damascus had residents trace their movements on simplified floor plans, switching colors as sight, sound, touch, smell and taste became dominant. The analysis reveals that visitors pass through a narrow entry corridor, enter the courtyard, and converge at the central fountain, which emerges as a focal point for multiple senses. Residents consistently trace tactile interactions along the fountain’s stone rim and at raised benches in the liwan (open space). Gustatory (taste-related, food-linked) markers appear along the route from kitchen thresholds toward the fountain, suggesting how food preparation and communal gathering overlap. Using 28 sensory maps and a three-level analytical process, comparison, synthesis, and spatial interpretation, the study produced a unified sensory map of the Damascene courtyard house. This pattern highlights how sequential spatial arrangements shape sensory engagement and suggests conservation strategies that preserve these experiential pathways. Architects and conservators can reinforce welcome gestures at thresholds and design water features and planting schemes that invite lingering. The proposed methodology fills the theoretical gap and offers clear guidelines for crafting spaces that respond to human perception. Full article

Deindustrialization has left many industrial buildings inactive, raising questions about their role in contemporary urban life. This article explores how semiotics and psychogeography can reframe such structures as dynamic architectural happenings, shifting emphasis from preservation toward social value and collective experience. This research focuses on Komotini, Greece, where the Technical Chamber Square is reinterpreted through references to the adjacent Tobacco Warehouse. By integrating architectural traces of the past into new recreational and sporting functions, this study demonstrates how heritage can be embedded into everyday practices. Methodologically, this research employs qualitative approaches, including demographic and historical analysis of Komotini’s urban and industrial development, alongside psychogeographic drifting walks. Twenty interviews were conducted with local business owners, residents, and visitors, as well as psychogeographic walks, generating insights into how communities interact with industrial heritage. The findings indicate that semiotics and psychogeography are effective tools for activating public spaces near former industrial sites, enabling the built environment to be understood as a layered record of successive interventions. The study concludes that adaptive redesign offers designers a methodology that can embed industrial fragments into vibrant public realms that sustain diverse communities, catalyze local economies, and honor historical identity through lived practices. Full article

This study investigates the relationship between architectural colour and cultural identity in the ancient villages of Hebei Province, emphasising the role of colour in cultural heritage preservation and sustainable development. The research aims to (1) identify the dominant chromatic attributes of Hebei’s village architecture, (2) interpret their cultural and symbolic meanings, and (3) construct a colour model applicable to heritage conservation. A qualitative case study approach was employed across four representative villages, combining field surveys, semi-structured interviews, and digital colour analysis using the COLORO system. The findings reveal that the prevailing hues—ranging from red and yellow to ochre and brown—derive from local stone and timber, embodying values of stability, humility, and harmony with the environment. Decorative elements in bright red and gold signify celebration and community vitality, contrasting with the subdued architectural tones. Integrating these empirical and cultural insights, this study proposes the Colour Symbol System for Hebei Ancient Villages (CSSHAV)—a model that unites quantitative colour parameters with qualitative cultural interpretation. The CSSHAV serves as a practical framework for guiding colour conservation, policy development, and sustainable design in rural heritage contexts. The originality of this study lies in bridging scientific colour measurement with cultural semiotics, providing both theoretical advancement and actionable guidance for the preservation of regional chromatic identity. The findings identify increasing risks of colour homogenisation under the pressures of globalisation. Through the CSSHAV model, it proposes strategies to preserve Hebei’s traditional chromatic identity by integrating digital colour analysis with cultural interpretation. This balance between conservation and innovation contributes to sustaining both the aesthetic integrity and cultural vitality of ancient villages. Full article

This article interrogates the theoretical articulations of the body–space nexus through the formulation of an alternative methodological framework. It advances the premise that body and space cannot be reduced to physical parameters or representational models; rather, they are continually reconstituted through experience, perception, cultural contexts, and relational processes. Against the backdrop of fragmented spatial, phenomenological, and socio-political readings of space, Joseph Kosuth’s “One and Three Chairs” [1965] is posited as a conceptual compass, while semiotic instruments are mobilized as analytical devices. Within this constellation, the body–space relation is examined through a trialectical configuration that couples three relational modalities—distance, togetherness, and plurality—with three representational dimensions: object, image, and definition. The analysis shows how each modality delineates a distinct regime of bodily–spatial interaction and exposes the ways in which these regimes become manifest within architectural experience, social production, and conceptual potential. Within this framework, the notion of the flesh of space is advanced to describe space as a relational field in which bodies, materials, images, and definitions become mutually entangled. The principal contribution of this study lies in advancing a methodological orientation that transcends normative metrics and reductionist representational paradigms, thereby enabling body–space relations to be apprehended through relational dynamics and multilayered processes of signification. In doing so, this article provides a critical ground for rethinking architectural epistemology from a more flexible, experiential, and plural perspective, and proposes a transferable analytical scaffold for future case-based and design-oriented research. Full article

This article examines the role of visual and plastic art as a key instrument for constructing and interpreting cultural space. The study synthesizes a corpus of diverse theoretical works on the interaction between art and landscape, systematizes the principal issues within the field, and proposes avenues for further discussion. It investigates how art not only reflects but also physically, visually, and semantically transforms the landscape. Functioning as a mediator between spiritual, material, and symbolic realities, art creates distinctive forms of spatial experience. Through artistic practices, the aesthetics of a landscape are formed, along with visual and semantic codes, and new centers and loci that alter the perception of the environment. On a theoretical level, the research draws upon the semiotics of space, the philosophy of art, and the concept of landscape as text. The mechanisms through which landscape is endowed with meaning—via architecture, sculpture, painting, and literature—are examined, with a focus on narrative and symbolic modes of artistic interpretation. Particular attention is paid to art as a tool for shaping cultural memory, from memorial complexes to heritage museums, which become spaces of a different temporality and “reservations” of meaning. The cultural landscape is a site of interaction between the sacred and the profane, tradition and innovation, and elite and mass art. Art forms the codes for reading the landscape, translating visual characteristics—color, form, the vertical, the horizontal—into the realm of cultural significance. Thus, art is presented as a form of world reconstruction: an instrument for the spiritual and semantic appropriation of space, one that transforms the landscape into a text perpetually rewritten by culture. Full article

This article examines how ethnographic methodology and literary theory can advance research engines and artificial intelligence systems beyond the reductive computational approaches that dominate contemporary AI development. Drawing on recent Stanford research revealing fundamental gaps in large language models’ ability to distinguish factual knowledge from belief, I argue that contemporary AI systems enact what I term “abducted semantics”—appropriating the inferential logic of human meaning-making while systematically attenuating the culturally embedded, phenomenologically grounded capacities that generate authentic understanding. Through close analysis of Clifford Geertz’s thick description, Charles Sanders Peirce’s triadic semiotics, and canonical literary works—Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote and Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude—I demonstrate that human understanding operates through complex semiotic processes irreducible to pattern-matching and statistical prediction. The article proposes concrete interventions to transform research engines from tools of semantic extraction into technologies that preserve and enhance interpretive richness, arguing that ethnographic and literary methodologies offer essential correctives to the epistemological impoverishment inherent in current AI architectures. Full article

Architectural heritage, as a highly symbolized medium of cultural expression, plays a vital role in transmitting collective memory and shaping intercultural tourism experiences. Yet, how visitors from diverse cultural backgrounds perceive and emotionally respond to Chinese architectural symbols remains insufficiently understood. This study addresses this gap by integrating architectural semiotics with cross-cultural psychology to examine perceptual differences across three visitor groups—Mainland China and Hong Kong/Macau/Taiwan (C), East and Southeast Asia (A), and Europe/North America (UA)—at eleven representative Chinese heritage sites. Drawing on 235 in-depth interviews and 1500 online reviews, a mixed-methods design was employed, combining semantic network analysis, grounded theory coding, and affective clustering. The findings reveal that memory structures and cultural contexts shape symbolic perception, that cultural dimensions and affective orientations drive divergent emotional responses, and that interpretive pathways of architectural symbols vary systematically across groups. Specifically, Group C emphasizes collective memory and identity, and Group A engages through structural analogies and regional resonance, while Group UA favors aesthetic form and immersive experiences. These insights inform culturally adaptive strategies for heritage presentation, including memory-anchored curation, comparative cross-regional interpretation, and immersive digital storytelling. By advancing a micro-level model of “architectural symbol–perceptual theme–emotional response–perceptual mechanism,” this research not only enriches theoretical debates on cross-cultural heritage perception but also offers practical guidance for inclusive and resonant heritage interpretation in a global tourism context. Full article

As an essential medium for the cultural narrative of architectural space, studying the cognitive transformation mechanisms of traditional ethnic decorative patterns is critical for their effective preservation and innovative application. This research focuses on typical decorative motifs found in She ethnic architectural heritage, systematically classifying them into five categories—animal, plant, human figure, totem, and geometric—based on symbolic themes, formal structure, and cultural function. Correspondingly, 20 sets of standardized black-and-white line drawing stimuli were developed for experimental use. Methodologically, this study utilized the EyeLink 1000 eye-tracking system to acquire real-time gaze metrics, including fixation duration and saccadic amplitude, as well as pupil dilation responses from participants engaged in a controlled pattern observation task. Immediately after observation, participants completed a semantic differential assessment using a five-point Likert scale. Data analysis employed descriptive statistics, analysis of variance (ANOVA), Kruskal–Wallis tests, and Bonferroni-adjusted post hoc comparisons (α = 0.05). Attention allocation was further examined through heatmaps and gaze trajectory visualizations to provide comprehensive insight into visual engagement. Two principal findings were identified: first, male participants showed a predominant focus on holistic structural composition and cultural symbol representation, whereas female participants exhibited a processing bias towards fine details; second, concrete symbols imbued with historical significance elicited more pronounced emotional responses, while abstract geometric patterns necessitated formal reconstruction to enhance cognitive accessibility. These findings offer empirical support for gender-inclusive architectural design strategies and inform practical approaches for safeguarding cultural heritage within contemporary architectural environments. Consequently, modern reinterpretation of traditional decorative patterns should balance cultural narrative fidelity with functional adaptation, achieving inclusive expression through contextual reconstruction and interactive design strategies. Future research directions include expanding participant demographics to encompass cross-cultural cohorts and incorporating multimodal neuroimaging techniques to elucidate the underlying cognitive and affective mechanisms, thereby advancing the sustainable transmission and innovation of ethnic cultural heritage. Full article

This article explores the concept of textuality as embedded within contemporary architecture, understood as the capacity of buildings to generate meanings, narratives, and interpretations that transcend their physical and functional dimensions. An interdisciplinary approach is adopted, integrating architectural theory, semiotics, hermeneutics, and cultural studies, positioning architecture as a form of symbolic production deeply intertwined with current social and technological contexts. The primary aim is to demonstrate how certain paradigmatic buildings operate as open texts that engage in dialogue with their users, urban surroundings, and cultural frameworks. The methodology combines theoretical analysis with an in-depth study of three emblematic cases: the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the Seattle Public Library. The findings reveal that these buildings articulate multiple layers of meaning, fostering rich and participatory interpretive experiences that influence both the perception and construction of public space. The study concludes that contemporary architecture functions as a narrative and symbolic device that actively contributes to the shaping of collective imaginaries. The article also identifies the study’s limitations and proposes future research directions concerning architectural textuality within the context of emerging digital technologies. Full article