Metaphors: It’s Relationship, Significance And its Impact On Design

Metaphors: It’s Relationship, Significance and its Impact in Design by Andy Chua

As designers in this 21st century epoch, we are incessantly in acquaintance with metaphor. It is by and large that we are engaged with it knowingly or sub-consciously. At its most simple echelon, metaphor explains and describes the use of body knowledge and language about one’s concept to understand or even to comment on a different or another concept. Metaphors in design are particularly a powerful when used to understand a concept that we are foreign to, or a concept that appears unapproachable to us. Metaphor is also the expression of an understanding of one concept in terms of another concept, where there is some similarity or correlation between the two. A very good example will be Alberti conceived of the city “. . . no more than a House . . .” [1]In which he suggest that readers should conceive the House as a “little City”. He in addition invites his readers to visualize one thing of something else. He requested them to shift their concentration and to think of the dwelling as a city, conurbation and vice versa. In other words, he asks his readers to employ an allegory so that they could understand or acquire a better understanding on the metaphor he employs. Most of us carry out metaphoric acts firstly, whenever we are attempting to transfer references from one subject to another. Secondly, when we are making an effort to “catch a glimpse of” a particular subject or object, as if these subjects or objects are of something else. Lastly, we transfer the focus of our scrutiny from one area of concentration or from one inquiry into another. This is done in anticipation that by balancing or from beginning to end by addition we possibly will clarify our scrutiny of a subject matter in an innovative way. The subject here refers to either the concept or the object that we wish to transfer, “see” and displacement of our focus.

Another classis example of metaphor not related to design. The use of metaphor is the attempt to understand death and dying: in religious belief aside, there is no definitive explanation of what will happen to a person’s consciousness after death has been established. In this case consciousness is been define as soul, karma. However on a direct level, the majority of the people have no clear idea or understanding of this milestone. However on the contrary, most people do have a personal concept of what will happen at death, and this concept is usually based on metaphor.

Be it in design usage, language or other applications, metaphor are often been perceived as a trope. A trope[2] is the figurative use of an expression. Figurative language is a departure from what speakers of a particular language apprehend to be the standard meaning of words, or the standard order of words, in order to achieve some special meaning or effect.

At its most complex level, metaphor is considered a type of figurative language, specifically a trope or “figure of thought”. Figurative language[3] is typically divided into two classes, tropes, in which words and phrases are used in a way that effects a conspicuous change in what we take to be their standard meaning, and schemes [as distinct from schemas, see below], in which the departure from standard usage is not, primarily, in the meaning but in the order of the words. In a simile, a comparison between two distinctly different things is indicated by the word “like” or “as”. In a metaphor, a word or expression which in literal usage denotes one kind of thing or action is applied to a distinctly different kind of thing or action, without asserting a comparison. In metonymy, the literal term for one thing is applied to another with which it has become closely associated. In synecdoche, a part of something is used to signify the whole, or more rarely the whole is used to signify the part[4]

Metaphor is a powerful tool for understand concept, social, political, geographical and programmatic context. A simple metaphor can evoke a broad array of elements that will affect our way of thinking. And it is with this we can accomplish this evocation of understanding metaphor with a slight hint. It is with this slight hint or the simplest element; we develop a better understanding on the concept of employing metaphor. Along with this conception, we can swell into a structure of elements and relationships.

Schemas and simile are powerful because they are ways of organizing characteristics, information, relationships, and things into recognizable and manipulate-able structures. Schemas help us apply meaning to concepts. Metaphors are powerful because they provide shortcuts to concepts — sometimes a single word can call to mind a broad and complicated topic — and provide ways to hash out meanings for less understood concepts. And this can only be approached through metaphor. Thus by doing so, we can use it on conceptual development. It is perhaps; the best substantiation on the strength of metaphor application, schema and simile is pretty straightforward and simple. To the same degree, we use it unconsciously for the most part of design concept development. As designers, we are constantly using metaphors, schemas and similes to generate a better understanding on the concept.

Metaphor, been a very powerful channel, it is more useful to the creator than to the users or critics. It is in reality; the best applied or employed metaphor and its practices cannot be revealed by users or critics. In these cases, metaphors are been classified as “little secrets[5]. Again the power of metaphor can be consider as a core structure of imagination. This means that metaphoric channel can be very useful and beneficial to whoever uses it or created it. This procedure allows us a vast amount of opportunities to see a contemplated work in another perspective. This will compel us to probe for new sets of questions and come up with new interpretations. This will allow the mind to transit into a previously unknown aspect of territories. The use of such metaphoric acts can be universal. However, this does not mean that everybody finds it easy to understand, and let alone use it. For those who use it, they can be known as devotees of these metaphor applications. These people are often grateful to the vast horizons open up to them. Metaphor can be useful and helpful in achieving the “new” elements and concepts in points of building, designing and conceptual development. The overall organization can be seen as more expressive in terms of its contents. Through metaphor, especially when it is approached with the technique of displacement of concepts, (Schon 1963, 1967), one may apply the knowledge and interpretations already understood for the case of the named item of displacement[6]. This may be object, subject, a situation or another art.

Metaphor can be grouped into several categories. They can be grouped into Intangible, Tangible and Combined. In intangible metaphors, these are which the metaphoric departure for the creation is a concept, an idea, a human condition or particular qualities. Particular qualities can be listed as individuality, naturalness, community, tradition and culture. In tangible metaphors, these are the metaphoric departure stems strictly from some visual or material character. This can be a house as a castle, the roof of the temple as the sky. In combined metaphors, these are the conceptual and the visual overlap as the main ingredients of the point of departure and the visual is the excuse to detect the virtues, the qualities, and the fundamentals of the particular visual container. This can be the computer, the beehive, both being “boxes” of relevant proportions, yet having the qualities of discipline, organization and cooperation[7]. And these are the types of metaphor that can be found or are present. They are: -

1. An extended metaphor, or conceit, sets up a principal subject with several subsidiary subjects or comparisons. The above quote from as you like it is a good example. The world is described as a stage and then men and women are subsidiary subjects that are further described in the same context.
2. A mixed metaphor is one that leaps, in the course of a figure, to a second identification inconsistent with the first one. Example: “He stepped up to the plate and grabbed the bull by the horns,” 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. Example: “to grasp a concept” or “to gather you’ve understood.” Both of these phrases use a physical action as a metaphor for understanding (itself a metaphor), but in none of these cases do most speakers of English actually visualize the physical action. 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 cliché.
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, for instance: “This is a crisis. A large crisis. In fact, if you’ve got a moment, it’s a twelve-story crisis with a magnificent entrance hall, carpeting throughout, 24-hour porter age and an enormous sign on the roof saying ‘This Is a Large Crisis.’” (Black Adder)
5. A synecdoche metaphor is one in which a small part of something is chosen to represent the whole so as to highlight certain elements of the whole. For example “a pair of ragged claws” represents a crab in Eliot’s Love Song of J. Alfred Prufock. Describing the crab in this way gives it the attributes of sharpness and savagery normally associated with claws.

Other types of metaphor have been identified as well, though the nomenclatures are not as universally accepted:

1. An active metaphor is one which by contrast to a dead metaphor, is not part of daily language and is noticeable as a metaphor. Example: “You are my sun.”
2. A complex metaphor is one which mounts one identification on another. Example: “That throws some light on the question.” Throwing light is a metaphor and there is no actual light.
3. A compound or loose metaphor is one that catches the mind with several points of similarity. Example: “He has the wild stag’s foot.” This phrase suggests grace and speed as well as daring.
4. An absolute or Para logical metaphor (sometimes called an ant metaphor) is one in which there is no discernible point of resemblance between the tenor and the vehicle. Examples:
5. “The couch is the autobahn of the living room.”
6. “Six Flags is the aquarium of roller coasters.”
7. An implicit metaphor is one in which the tenor is not specified but implied. Example: “Shut your trap!” Here, the mouth of the listener is the unspecified tenor.
8. A submerged metaphor is one in which the vehicle is implied, or indicated by one aspect. Example: “my winged thought”. Here, the audience must supply the image of the bird.
9. A simple or tight metaphor is one in which there is but one point of resemblance between the tenor and the vehicle. Example: “Cool it”. In this example, the vehicle, “cool”, is a temperature and nothing else, so the tenor, “it”, can only be grounded to the vehicle by one attribute.
10. A root metaphor is the underlying association that shapes an individual’s understanding of a situation. Examples would understand life as a dangerous journey, seeing life as a hard test, or thinking of life as a good party. 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. For example, some religions see life as a single arrow pointing toward a future endpoint. Others see it as part of an endlessly repeating cycle. In his book World Hypotheses, the philosopher Stephen Pepper coined the term and proposed a theory of four ultimate root metaphors–formism, mechanism, organicism, contextualism.
11. A conceptual metaphor is an underlying association that is systematic in both language and thought. For example in the Dylan Thomas 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. The same conceptual metaphor is the key to solving the Riddle of the Sphinx: “What goes on four legs in the morning, two legs at midday, and three in evening? –A man.” Similar to root metaphors, conceptual metaphors are not only expressed in words, but are also habitual modes of thinking underlying many related metaphoric expressions.
    Because they both underlie more than just the surface metaphoric expression, root metaphors and conceptual metaphors are easily confused. For example: In the United States, both conservatives and liberals use ‘family’ metaphors for the national politics, though in different ways. Both types of usage would ultimately resolve to “organic” root metaphors in Pepper’s nomenclature, while Lakoff would distinguish between several different varieties of the “A Nation is A Family” metaphor.
12. 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 saves people the trouble of developing original language to express an idea. It is all but dead. In short, it is cliché. Example: Achilles’ heel. Orwell suggests that writers scan their work for such dying forms that they have ’seen regularly before in print’ and replace them with alternative language patterns.

The category of metaphor can be further considered to contain the following specialized subsets:

1. Allegory: An extended metaphor in which a story is told to illustrate an important attribute of the subject
2. Catachresis: A mixed metaphor (sometimes used by design and sometimes a rhetorical fault)
3. Parable: An extended metaphor told as an anecdote to illustrate or teach a moral lesson

Extracted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphor

These categories of metaphors have been employed by architects and have experienced a varying extent of triumph. These examples can be found in the 20^th century. Some of the major movements in architecture of this century have been identified by the metaphors they employed. For example, “The machine was the metaphor of the Modern Movement; the ruin has been attributed as the metaphor[8]”. Other branches or schools also applied these metaphors as their basis for inspirational departures. Alvar Alto, one of the foremost Finnish architects of the century, whom based on the usage of insubstantial allegory, developed metaphoric acts based on the hypothesis of individuality, naturalness, community and so on. These actions allow us to produce buildings based on the insubstantial metaphor of humanity, which is perhaps the most greatest of all metaphors. Many of the developments envisage as metaphors often display problems of scale. This is maybe owing to the fact that metaphors have a tendency to produce aphoristic, utopian, universalized[9]results, in spite of the initial good intentions of the originators.

In Japan, the architects there are great devotees of metaphor applications. It was said that these architects have long favoured metaphor. Some of these recent best architects who have used or employ metaphors are, Arata Isozaki, Kazuhiro Ishii, Minoru Takeyama, Kazuo Shinohara and Kisho Kurokawa. These architects remedy metaphors as a source for inspirations. Take Arata Isozaki for instance, he is one of the most poetic and prolific architect and writer of theoretical essays. He was given the priority to metaphors as a connotation to architectural creations. Although many of his works became as a literal interpretation, in which one of it, a club house building which looks like a question mark. The departure of his creative quest is usually metaphoric. His critical sense of the architecture of his peers is also at its best when he uses metaphoric screening.

To most of us practicing design, architects or designers alike, may not out of necessity have to have all these metaphors in mind. Well, it is after all how we interpret them. It is us who uses these metaphoric interpretations for our own creative design purposes. We require further reading, study and contemplation to understand the suggested metaphors and to draw our own personal conclusions. We on our part should be receptive to the widely accepted metaphoric interpretations that have come to us in forms of history, tradition, culture, political, nature, geometric and geographical representations because only through their acceptance, then will we be able to build for and within the intellectual context of a particular community and its people.

In metaphor, design benefited from it. One of the famous town planning concepts, the Finger Plan for Copenhagen[10], was based on a metaphor. It was based in a metaphor of a great hand resting over that city[11]. In 1947, that great hand has guided Copenhagen[12] developments into a merchant harbour, after which the city was named. It sits in the palm of a guiding hand. The fingers pointed ways to new development. Power lines, telecom lines and mass rapid transit lines follow the bones, arteries, veins and the nerves of the fingers. Between those fingers, we found the green land of Demark, Holland. Copenhagen was made into a garden city but the hand itself, urban development was grey by itself. Geometrical metaphors have been playing an imperative responsibility in the city planning and regional improvement. Town or Urban Planners often seek to speak of the grid cities[13], radical cities and even organic cities. It is through these spatial patterns that these characteristics convert Copenhagen into a city with green heart. The lower part of Holland has been seen as a ring city. The corridors were seemed as haulage passageways as well as expansion poles. The benefit of these metaphors arises from the assistance they presented to the planners in thinking about huge and obscured issues. Dis-benefits are capable of take place when concerns are becoming over-simplified. A city should be so much more than a street pattern; surrounding countryside should be so much more than a “green’ belt. Road plans do not show the city structure: they show one of many structures.

 

 

Some interesting metaphors create more popular buildings. Le Corbusier’s chapel at Ronchamp can be perceived as a crab, a duck, a hand, a hat and much else. Utzon’s Sydney Opera House can be seen as shells, a flower, or sails. The soaring curves of Saarinen’s TWA terminal in New York symbolize flight. The Archigram building concepts of the 1960s were described as pods. There is something in common; these buildings were curvilinear in designs. Curves “carry’ ideas from the natural world. Rectilinear is a metaphor for intellectualism and the works of man. Geometric can be used as a metaphor too.

Kisho Kurokawa[14], born April 8, 1934 is a well-known Japanese architect and one of the founders of the Metabolist Movement. Born in Nagoya, Aichi, Kurokawa studied at Kyoto University, graduating with a bachelor’s degree from the Department of Architecture in 1957. He continued his studies at Tokyo University School of Architecture under the guidance of Tange Kenzo, achieving a master’s degree in 1959 and a doctoral degree in 1964. Together with some colleagues, he founded the Metabolist Movement in 1960; its members were known as Metabolists. It was a radical Japanese avant-garde movement pursuing the merging and recycling of architecture styles around an Asian philosophy. The movement was very successful, peaking when its members received praise for the Takara Beautillion at the Osaka World Expo 1970. The group broke up shortly thereafter. Kurokawa has a daughter from his first marriage, who works as a landscape architect. His second marriage is to Ayako Wakao, an actress with some notable films in the 1950s and 1960s. Kurokawa’s younger brother works in industrial design, but has also cooperated with Kurokawa on some architecture projects. Kurokawa is the founder and President of Kisho Kurokawa Architect & Associates, established on 8 April 1962. The company has its head office in Tokyo, and branch offices in Osaka, Nagoya, Astana, Kuala Lumpur and Beijing. The company is registered with the Japanese Government as a First Class Architects Office.

In 1960, at the age of 26, he made his debut into the world as one of the founders of the Metabolism Movement. Since then, he has been advocating the paradigm shift from the Age of Machine Principle to the Age of Life Principle. Concept he advocated such as Symbiosis, Metabolism, Information, Recycle, Ecology, Intermediate Space, Fractal, etc. are all important concept based on Life Principle. His publication includes “Urban Design”, “Homo Movens“, “Thesis on Architecture I and II”, “The Era of Nomad”, “Philosophy of Symbiosis”, “Hanasuki”, “Poems of Architecture”, “Kisho Kurokawa Note”, and “Revolution of City”[15]. “Philosophy of Symbiosis”, which was awarded the Japan Grand Prix of Literature, was first published in 1987 and was revised in 1991. The book “Philosophy of Symbiosis” was translated into English and was cited Excellence from the AIA in 1992. His major works in Japan are the National Ethnological Museum, the National Bunraku Theater, Nagoya City Art Museum, Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, the Museum of Modern Art, Wakayama,1994 Ehime Prefecture Museum of General Science, Osaka International Convention Center (Grand Cube Osaka), Oita Stadium, Toyota Stadium; his major works abroad are the Japanese-German Centre of Berlin in Germany, the Chinese-Japanese Youth Center in Beijing, China, Melbourne Central in Australia, and Pacific Tower in Paris, France, Republic Plaza, Singapore, the Kuala Lumpur International Airport, Malaysia, and 1999 New Wing of the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam. His recent works include: The Japanese Nursing Association Building, The National Art Center, Tokyo, which will open in 2006, the Zhengdong New City of 1.5million for the Zhengzhou City, China, New Kunming Airport City, China, International Financial Center, Chunking, China, Maggie’s Centre, England and Tea house and Japanese Garden of Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, U.S.A.

The School of Metabolist Architecture[16] was started in the late 1959, where a group of Japanese Architects and city planners came together and form the Metabolist Group. Their forethought for a city of the near forthcoming to be inhabited by mass civilization was to be characterised by a large scale, flexible and extendable structures that could enable an organic growth process. In their view the traditional laws of form and function were obsolete. They were strong believers on the laws of space and functional transformation that held the future for the city and culture.

 

 

Famous projects include the floating city in the sea (Unabara project)[17], K. Kikutake’s tower city, the wall city, the agricultural city and the ‘Helix City‘ by Kisho Kurokawa.

 

 

Kiyonori Kikutake

 

Over the last 4 decades, Kisho Kurokawa had created architectures that have attempted to challenge the Machine Age and have moved towards the age of the Life. The key concepts of his principles are metabolism and symbiosis. These 2 words are chosen by him with intention. His works are constantly revolving around these concepts. He fiddles with the forms, styles and materials in his designs. This is done in accordance with the weather, program, cultural identity and the geographical of the given project. He felt that architecture is slowly moving away from the World of Machine and is opening up to the world with a dialogue[18].

Take his work on the Sony Tower in Osaka, Japan, 1973, was designed as a solid showroom for Sony Electronics. From the beginning, Sony Tower was planned to be a real-time, on-line “information tree”, connecting other Sony Towers in New York, London, Paris and other major cities by satellite. Along the outside of the central display space, the stairs, elevator, escalator, and toilet are capsulated. The capsules are the same size as those of the Nakagin Capsule Tower, but the exterior is made of stainless steel. To connect the basement to the public parking lot, the utility rooms are all placed on the roof. The utility pipes are exposed, also like those of the Nakagin Tower, to facilitate the maintenance and recycling of the pipes. The Sony Tower is another prototypical example of sustainable architecture.

Metamorphosis ’65 designed in the 1961, was a radius expansion of large cities that has reached the limit of structural growth. The linear structure of network city must be constructed to reform the radius pattern of urban structure with its single-cell type public and service centres located in the heart of the city. Shrinking stage of cities of matured countries need to reconstruct urban area, to make a compact linear network city. In the linear city, nature and urban life are in parallel, there is no city centre and there is considerable growth potential. Super high-rise building will be designed freely on fractal surface, along with land surface and land form.

Another example would be the Fukui Prefecture Museum of Dinosaurs, 2000. Japan’s first dinosaur museum and research centre is located in Katsuyama City, the largest excavation site of prehistoric remains in Japan. Visitors first enter the museum by taking an escalator from the ground floor, and are then guided through a display of fossils still embedded in rock, and then, quite suddenly, enter an enormous exhibition hall. Because the display path opens up into a gigantic space, one can understand their place in the museum. A series of egg shaped pavilions tantalise the imagination with images of a giant dinosaur egg. This understanding of place creates a space for the visitor to take part in the display, allowing it to be an interactive experience and was placed as though buried in the centre of the topography; the abstract rotated ellipse shape of the research section stands out.

Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, 1989 was located on the top of Hijiyama Mountain, it is the first art museum built in Japan after the war. The circular space at the centre of the architecture is intentionally empty, the cut notch indicating the direction where the atomic bomb was dropped. The stones beneath the columns are those exposed to the bomb. The left side of the central circular space houses the museum’s permanent collection, and the right side hosts the special exhibitions. The many gabled roofs come together as an entity like that of a village, the symbiosis between part and whole.

In summary, the metaphoric conduit, to design and architectural creativity that analysis the buildings and concepts as if they were something else about what the designers or the architects should have a specific erudition and channel that is treated with an elementary and systematic manner. The metaphoric channel has been one of the largely fashionable during the contemporary years and has been well-received due to its theoretical handling at this juncture by radiating a precision in the definitions, categorisations and even right down to the weighing of the various factors of metaphoric practice for design purposes, addressing and discussing the use of metaphors by individual designers and architects. Lastly, attention is also required while focusing on the issue of factual vs. metaphoric fundamental, as this is crucial for its appropriate use of metaphor under any creative circumstances.

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[1]As Aiberti observes “conceive of the City” (Poetics of Architecture: Theory of Design 1992 : 29)
[2]Lakoff, George. 1987. Women, fire, and dangerous things: What categories reveal about the mind. Chicago: University of Chicago.
[3] Johnson, Mark. 1981b. “Introduction: Metaphor in the philosophical tradition.” In Johnson 1981a 3–47.
[4]Johnson, Mark Ed. 1981a.Philosophical perspectives on metaphor. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota.
[5] As Anthony C. Antoniades A observes “little secrets” (Poetics of Architecture: Theory of Design 1992 : 30)
[6] Poetics of Architecture: Theory of Design 1992 : 30
[7] Poetics of Architecture: Theory of Design 1992 : 31, 32
[8] As Anthony C. Antoniades A observes “The machine was the metaphor of the Modern Movement” (Poetics of Architecture: Theory of Design 1992 : 30)
[9] As Anthony C. Antoniades A observes “a tendency to produce aphoristic, utopian, universalized . . .” (Poetics of Architecture: Theory of Design 1992 : 34)
[10]Extracted from http://www.copcap.com/composite-8109.htm
[11] Extracted from http://www.inro.tno.nl/transland/Copenhagen.html
[12] Reference from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Copenhagen
[13] As Aiberti observes “conceive of the City” (Poetics of Architecture: Theory of Design 1992 : 29)
[14] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kisho_Kurokawa
[15] Kisho Kurokawa Architects & Associates: The Philosophy of Symbiosis From the Age of the Machine to the Age of Life
[16]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metabolist_Movement
[17] http://www.kikutake.co.jp/e/top/top.html
[18] Kisho Kurokawa Architects & Associates: The Philosophy of Symbiosis From the Age of the Machine to the Age of Life