In the third chapter of Materiality and Society, Tim Dant states that "what is of significance for sociology is that the increasing tempo of technological change has changed the pace of material civilization and this has led critics to argue that technology has changed humankind's relationship with nature and the relationship between individual and society."[i] Dant's position is that the critics of technology, despite having given salient pointers "to the cultural dynamics of technology... have avoided dealing with the practical and detailed ways that materiality is being altered in technological societies."[ii] Technology as well as ethos and aesthetics have provided a basis for identifying meaning within architecture, as will be demonstrated herein. The three "philosophies" of architecture and meaning that are relevant will be addressed, including postmodernism, semiotics, and deconstruction.
It will be argued that of these theories of meaning, the deconstructionist perspective will be most beneficial in considering the nature of social reality and the contingent nature of social constructs. This approach to critical thinking functions to a degree as a defense of the status quo and as a theory of meaning with a strong affinity with the habits of mind that have produced the post-World War II American landscape, replacing Marxism and becoming "the ultimate intellectual justification of the privatization of modern life."[iii]
Based in part upon the philosophy of Jacques Derrida, Deconstructivism asserts that the meaning of a given "text" is result of the difference between the words used rather than their reference to the things they stand for. In other words, "the different meanings of a text can be uncovered by taking apart the structure of the language in which it is written."[iv] In architecture, this approach calls for acquiring meaning by taking apart the elements of conventional buildings and reassembling the...