Writing, Speaking, Drawing: the Distribution of Meaning in Architects' Communication

This chapter is about architects. At the end of architects’ work there is a physical creation of massive material presence, a building. Although they are closely involved with the construction of the building as well as its design, and even though they are often present on the site with dust on their hard hats and mud on their boots, architects don’t build. All they do is configure signs, including the signs that constitute writing. Their configuring of signs — alphabetic, numeric, but also, of course, graphical (that is, drawings) — makes buildings go up. How does this happen? What are the signs doing that brings about such an outcome, an outcome beyond the universe of signs, in the material world?

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