محمد ضمیران

In this essay we try to seek the relation between architecture and textual thought. Texts, whether being literary or non-literary, are viewed by modern theorists as a lack in any kind of independent meaning. The act of reading, theorists claim, plunges us into a network of textual relations. To interpreting a text, to discover its meaning, or meanings, leads those relations. Reading those becomes a process of moving between texts. Meaning becomes something which exists between a text and all the other texts to which it refers and relates, moving out from the independent text into a network of textual relations. Metatextuality is a form of intertextual discourse in which one text makes critical commentary on another text. Transtextuality is defined as the "textual transcendence of a text". Transtextuality is "those things that modulate the text`s relation, whether revealed or concealed, with other texts". Transtextuality "covers all aspects of a particular text". The following are the descriptions for the five subtypes of transtextuality and the relation between them and architecture:  Intertextuality could be in the form of quotation, plagiarism, or allusion. (for instance in architecture: the relation between villa-savoye and  partenon)Para-textuality is the relation between one text and its para-text that surrounds the main body of the text. Examples are titles, headings, and prefaces. (For instance in architecture: the relation between georges-pompidou and the buildings around it.)Architextuality is the designation of a text as a part of a genre or genres. There are three methods for relation between each building and the context of it: Harmony, Conflict, Creator  Metatextuality is the explicit or implicit critical commentary of one text on another text.Hypotextuality or hypertextuality is the relation between a text and a preceding hypotext; wherein the text or genre on which it is based but which it transforms, modifies, elaborates or extends. Examples are parody, spoof, sequel, and translation. In information technology, hypertextuality is a text that takes the reader directly to other texts.The architecture has been consisted of different layers of meaning like a text. The analysis of architecture and its spatial configuration is always seen between cognition, culture, knowledge and society. These layers would make different meanings and senses for projects to be appeared in the deepest layer of a scheme. The spectator, according to his mysterious understanding, unveils the messages in layers of the text and also tries to make interpretation of it.Eisenman believed that viewers are capable of understand the meaning of the architecture because it has derived from the same linguistic and syntactical structures we use ourselves to express our thoughts. Following the Derrida's theories, Eisenman perceived architecture as textual reading.Actually the thought of post-structuralism, uses different perspectives to create a multifaceted interpretation of a text, even if these interpretations conflict with one another text. It is particularly important to analyze how the meanings of a text shift in relation to certain variations, that involve the reader`s identity. We are dealing here an approach of architecture and textual thought.