Architecture and Language : Constructing Identity in European Architecture, c.1000-c.1650

Architecture and Language examines one of the central themes in the history and theory of Western architecture.

Seeking to understand how language provides a model for understanding architecture, the essays in this volume both celebrate the diversity of the language-architecture analogy and assess its theoretical implications in the light of the diverse historical circumstances that produced it.

The chapters examine the connections between style and nationality, vernacular and 'official' languages, the importance of Latin in giving the architectural profession a literate and cultured status, and the influence of architectural description on perception and design.

By untangling the roots of the analogy in classical and Renaissance writings on architecture, this study calls into question the extremist conclusions of semiotics and linguistic analysis about the overriding importance of language in artistic experience.