Poetics in Urban Space: a Semiotics Analysis of Bagh-e-Boland in Shiraz City

According to Aristotle, poetics and art, were considered an imitation of reality but according to Bachelard, they were phenomenology of the imagination. Bachelard showed how houses are receptive to human characteristics and complexities, a house and its occupants usually match the architectural space, and residential space gives excellence to geometric space. House, in his opinion is a sheltered nest of dreams and imagination. Poetic imagination is always "text" and thus be interpreted and in reading the meaning of architecture and the city, both are studied as text. Thus poetics of urban space and architecture can be investigated from phenomenological, ethnographic and semiotics (Semio-logical) methods. Urban spaces in a semiotics approach, usually emphasize on the aspects of semantic systems. The city is filled with semantic significations which is encoded by both designers and citizens and then is decoded by the citizens. The city can be understood as a text by considering varying semiotics natures of the urban space. The question is, How to create a poetic urban space.
The aim of this research is to find techniques that can lead to poetical features in urban spaces. The urban semiology is a method to linguistic analysis meaning of urban space. The article analysed a case study of urban space that has this features by semiology approach. The case study is Bagh-e Boland (Chamran Park) in Shiraz city, designed by Mehrdad Iravanian (b. 1957). Bagh-e Boland is an urban space which allows its audience to interpret and explore the meanings. After an introduction to urban and architectural semiotics, a sociosemiotic analysis is carried out to uncover the meaning system of this built environment. In this case, the park is viewed as structured by poetical characteristics and as a text. The park has been investigated by syntagmatic and paradigmatic, synchronic analysis.
At the level of the design strategy, Iravanian has used three strategies to create a poetic space: intertextuality, defamiliarization, and metaphor. For intertextuality he linked his text with non-architectural texts such as sculptures or history of site. He has deviated from the standard language, has changed automatized meaning of the space and thereby has defamiliarized space. He has done this by increasing the scale forms, creating synchronicity spatial elements, and change in composition of the constructions. In addition, multiple meanings have been added to the space by using the architectural metaphor, amphiboly and metonymy. He suspended architectural elements and applied familiar construction and building materials in another way. He has provided metaphor by naming spaces, captured in the axis of the syntagmatic of spaces and usage of dual oppositions. Urban spaces are highlighted by exaggerating the textures used in floor, walls and furniture. It should be noted at the end that this spaces can be analyzed with other approaches, however looking at the language of this article is merely an urban space. Also intertextuality vision to text can disclose techniques of createing new meaning in space. Thus, an urban space, can help in motivation of thought, the audience, and the pleasure of discovery.