Japanese architects frequently use mimetic words when describing their buildings in texts. The mimetic words give concrete description of buildings and embody what architects intended to actualize in the design of the buildings. The meaning of a mimetic word by its linguistic nature is expansible and has associative power. It can embody from material aspects of a building to connoted conceptions behind them. The objective of this paper is to identify embodiment in architecture, of what architects considered in the design of buildings, through the examination of rhetorical expressions by mimetic words in the text descriptions of buildings published in the monthly Japanese architecture magazine, Shinkenchiku.
The flow of this research is as below:
1. Extract sentences which contain mimetic word expression used by architects to explain their design of the buildings from Shinkenchiku published during 1950 - 2010.
2. Extract Subjects, Mimetic words and words expressing Represented meaning. The Subject refers to a building itself or a physical constituent of architecture depicted by a mimetic word in the sentence. The Mimetic word is defined as a sound-symbolic word that describes the Subject in the sentence. The Represented meaning is a meaning expressed by subjects being qualified by a mimetic word.
3. Classify subjects, sound-symbolic meanings of the mimetic words and represented meanings, and then cross-reference the subjects with the mimetic words and the represented meanings respectively to analyze and derive semantic tendencies when they are combined.
4. Map out embodied aspects of architecture rhetorically characterized by mimetic word expressions with a matrix in which the vertical axis is the tendency of meaning by the combination of the subjects and the mimetic words, and the horizontal axis is that of the subjects and the represented meanings.
As a result, four semantic tendencies are found from the analysis of combination of the subjects and the mimetic words: (1) Scale of physical property perceived by body, (2) Qualitatively defining boundary of internal and external of building, (3) System of architectural space actualized by clearness or vagueness, and (4) Surplus aspect of space. From the analysis of combination of the subjects and the represented meanings, four semantic tendencies are found: (A) Optimization of building part by amplifying physical property, (B) Obtaining sign by primary component, (C) Conversion of surrounding components to scene, and (D) Space with effect on emotion. In the end, 26 typical embodied aspects of architecture expressed in mimetic word descriptions are identified through the mapping.
In summary, architects use mimetic words to extend the meaning of buildings and reveal their relational characteristics with the surrounding environments. The mimetic expressions depict giving and receiving actions between building components and environmental elements and elaborate the active and passive relationships of each other. They also add conceptions implied beyond immediate appearances of buildings expressing architects' own sensitivity. Furthermore, they describe building configuration and space assembly as a part of the given environments within which building components behave. Through the research of the mimetic word expressions, this paper revealed a thought of Japanese architecture that is comprehended as dynamic relationships among architectural space constituent elements placed in environments.
