DE/SIGN

Everything is a "sign".

There is a parallel connection to what we see or heard and what we "think of", but they are usually two different things. This is because everything we perceive is a sign, representation, or reference of something: a pre-perception. Even the words that come out of our mouths are signs, a clear example being onomatopoeias like 'BANG!' or 'POW!' that give an automatic feedback of a gun or a punch being fired. One other good example from the lecture was were given this picture and were asked "what is it?"

A lot of people mentioned a house. But it is not actually a house, in front of our eyes is a "pentagon" and "is" nothing else. But because it has become an iconic association of a house, therefore we "think of" a house when we see this polygon. Artist, Rene Magritte has shown this understanding through "Ceci n'est pas une pipe (this is not a pipe)", where he denote that it is not a pipe but a painting of a pipe. This painting is "sign".

In a profession like designer we are "DE-signing". We are trying to generate a new sign, to be different to the pre-perception, to surprise clients (as said in my response to the Lethal Theory below). Though in architecture it's a little different because not everything necessarily communicate "meaning", they are made to "function". If you look at this stair design, it doesn't visualize the usual 'pre-perception' of a stair, it has been DEsigned so that it's still able to function as a stair, allowing one to ascend/descend with movements of stepping left and right like normal stairs does.

Staircase in Samitivej

This particular stair i found in Samitivej Hospital. With an additional design decoration, this stair has become a "sign" of fitness.