Abstract: This talk looks at how design influences the development of, and our perceptions of, space. By taking two examples, an architectural plan and a wayfinding device, Tina demonstrates how design can project a future space through the imagination of the designers, one that becomes concretised through a particular discourse. She also provides the example of a map in order to unpick how design elements and motifs can be read as signs that speak about specific ideological agendas that might not be obvious on a cursory viewing. The examples she will be discussing represent a place that will be very familiar to you, the campus at the University of Leeds. Bio: Tina Richardson is an independent scholar in the field of Urban Cultural Studies. She specialises in psychogeography, the aesthetics of urban space and the postmodern city. Completing her PhD at the University of Leeds in 2014, she is now guest lecturing while finishing her book - Walking Inside Out – which will be published in July 2015.

1. The Semiotics of Space
and the Culture of Design
Tina Richardson
Talk for the School of Design
February 4th 2015

2. Outline
Introduction
 Discourse, statements, signs and space
 Urban semiology
Yesterday
 The sixties master plan of the University of
Leeds
 Reading architectural plans
Today
 Campus maps
 Greening the map
 Places of consumption
Conclusion

3. Chamberlin, Powell and Bon

4. Chamberlin, Powell and Bon

5. Chamberlin, Powell and Bon

6. Chamberlin, Powell and Bon

7. Discourse and Planning
For Foucault an economic plan is one which “has
an aim: the explicit pursuit of growth, for example,
or the attempt to develop a certain type of
consumption or a certain type of investment”; “a
plan means the adoption of precise and definite
economic ends”.
The Birth of Biopolitics:
Lectures at the Collège de France
“Stones can make people docile and knowable”.
Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison

8. Ideology and Space
Henri Lefebvre discusses how ideology works in
conjunction with space:
“What we call ideology only achieves
consistency by intervening in social space and
in its production” and “Ideology per se might
well be said to consist primarily in a discourse
upon social space.”
The Production of Space

9. University Development Plan

10. New Development and Existing Streets

11. The Discourse
“No effort has been spared in Leeds on the part
of the City Authorities, the Hospital Board and
the Council of the University to make the
planned expansion possible despite the
extreme difficulties inherent in the
comprehensive re-planning and redevelopment
of the old City sites which have hitherto rested
in many ownerships and were laid out between
a network of streets obsolete for any present
purposes”.
(Chamberlin, Powell and Bon 1963: 269)

12. The Discourse
“No effort has been spared in Leeds on the part
of the City Authorities, the Hospital Board and
the Council of the University to make the
planned expansion possible despite the
extreme difficulties inherent in the
comprehensive re-planning and redevelopment
of the old City sites which have hitherto rested
in many ownerships and were laid out between
a network of streets obsolete for any present
purposes”.
(Chamberlin, Powell and Bon 1963: 269)

13. The Discourse
“No effort has been spared in Leeds on the part
of the City Authorities, the Hospital Board and
the Council of the University to make the
planned expansion possible despite the
extreme difficulties inherent in the
comprehensive re-planning and redevelopment
of the old City sites which have hitherto rested
in many ownerships and were laid out between
a network of streets obsolete for any present
purposes”.
(Chamberlin, Powell and Bon 1963: 269)

14. Planning and Power
David C. Perry:
“[Plans] become examples of particular
relations of power that constitute conditions of
freedom and dominance in the socially
produced urban space” and therefore become
“part of the production and reproduction of the
social relations of power”.
(1995: 213)

15. Great Food at Leeds

16. Greening the Map
“University maps are not surprisingly often
quite lovely expanses of green that eliminate
all the objectionables of real life and
underscore the campus’ placement in nature”.
(Paul Mullins 2012: 3)

17. Places of Consumption

18. Signs, Knowledge and Memory
Roland Barthes explains that signs can be
decoded and interpreted within a cultural
context which presents the sign as already
formed:
“The meaning is already complete, it
postulates a kind of knowledge, a past, a
memory, a comparative order of facts”.
(2000: 117)

19. Maps, History and Culture
Denis Wood describes how the maps form, its
raison d’etre, enables us to use it easily as a
cultural tool. In a similar way to Barthes, Wood
says:
“Because the history of the map is our history
we are already up and running (in coming to
grips with the making of maps we recapitulate
history); because the connections from the
map to the rest of culture radiate from every
part of it, we can commence with any part of it
[...] Any thread unravels everything”.
(1997: 144)

20. Conclusion - Maps
“Every map intends not simply to serve us but to influence
us”.
(Peter Turchi 2004: 88)
“We have forgotten this is a picture someone has arranged
for us”.
(Denis Wood 1997: 7)
“A good map tells a multitude of little white lies; it
suppresses truth to help the user see what needs to be
seen”.
(Mark Monmonier 1996: 25)
“The interest unavoidably embodied in the map is thus
disguised . . . as natural; it is passed off as . . . Nature
itself”.
(Denis Wood 1997: 76)

21. Walking Inside Out

22. Contact and Information
www.schizocartography.org