ABSTRACT

Physical language exists on a continuum from simple to complex forms of communication. Most philosophy and its appropriation into the jargon of the design disciplines segregate direct, felt, haptic experience from language; a residue of Descartes body-mind split. This tendency to see language as non-bodied and thus not fully human diminishes the breadth of languages and their mediation of self and other. As the structuring matrix of our engagement with the world, physical language is acquired evolutionarily. The supra-human quality of complex forms of language. The tendency to differentiate is evident even when one views a single language. In Classical eras, physical language was more transparent than its written counterpart. Architects who attempt to avoid the difficulties of physical language by recourse to sensual solipsism or technological instrumentality or banal formalism create artifacts that occupy space as incomplete presences and strike the visitor as bombastic, indecipherable or trite.