Compact city, sprawled city.
Language and manipulation in commercial architectural graphic communication
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18537/est.v008.n016.a02Keywords:
architectural graphics, compact city/sprawled city, language, symbol, EcuadorAbstract
The image has acquired a predominant role in the architectural discourse, reducing the space to an object of visual consumption. The current ocularcentrism hegemony constitutes a base in the architectural and urban conception. Thus, architecture rather than a space, is an image with its own language, susceptible of multiple interpretations. Under this principle, certain values are associated in an adulterated way to recurrent elements, generating dynamics of manipulation in their graphic communication. With this background, two urban models are contrasted: the compact city and the sprawled city. The approach to its symbolic intentionality is based on the categories given to “function and sign in architecture”, proposed by Umberto Eco: primary (denotative) and secondary (connotative) functions. These concepts have been applied in the analysis of the graphics of two Ecuadorian magazines, one of specialized diffusion (Trama) and one of popular diffusion (El Portal). The contrasting of the found values finally generates a discussion about the graphic language, its ethics, and the role of the graphics of other categories of architectural diffusion, such as the scientific magazines or the ‘little magazines’ of 1960’s – 1970’s in response to the “society of the spectacle” of that time.
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