ABSTRACT
Architecture can embody a powerful concern for meaning as individual mentalities award significance, for example, to aesthetics, function, place, the collective memory, or the narrative power of historical references. Susanne Langer's proposition that 'the concept of meaning is the dominant philosophical concept of our time' requires qualification with respect to architecture as a discipline that can be actively preoccupied with meaning as defined within the limits of reductive mentalities. There is the opportunity to detail how visual languages are tied to cultural, socio-economic, and political processes, and to networks of signs that are lodged, for example, in office environments and the 'sociology of glass', in the language of domestic front doors, the commodification of the housing stock, and in the 'Bilbao effect' and the politics of aspiring cities. Architectural mentalities need to conform, but obedience is relative to a capacity for 'self-assessment' and an ability to improve the quality of knowledge.
