A dialectic construct for the urban environment

Abstract

This thesis examines the relationship between meaning in architecture and its role in defining urban space. The definition of meaning as it applies to this thesis is a designation for those essential qualities of the man-made environment which produce in man a cognition of place. Without meaning man has no point of reference or orientation for his world. The individual act of construction that occurs within the larger framework that we call city has a responsibility to that institution of man. The city is the manifestation of man’s aspiration for order in a mutable world. Architecture as a primary element in the urban environment makes the city comprehensible to man and through architecture man carries out his intentions in the world.