ABSTRACT
This chapter re-evaluates the complex relationship between architecture and ‘text’ which is used in order to produce and communicate legible meaning. Specifically, it interrogates how heritage interpretation has become a frontline motivator and producer of interpretative information about the history and experience of architecture and places. Questions are raised around the contemporary production, inscription and communication of interpretative knowledge: how are historical sites of significance and places asked to speak to the public? How are places and buildings annotated to provide information and to guide experience and comprehension in universally legible media? Who carries agency and authority for creating interpretation today in contrast to the past? To investigate these questions, the chapter returns to formative nineteenth-century French and English debates that explored the relationships between text, buildings and places so as to revisit some precedents for the annotation of places today through old and new means. These debates are juxtaposed with the present urban situation, using Melbourne as an exemplar, to interrogate how the unbounded expansion of both in situ and digital productions of interpretation, annotation and inscription have produced both critically moribund and interesting sites. The chapter reflects on the role of architecture and ‘text’ in this renewed production of information and meaning.
