This thesis relates two fields, the history of perception and that of language, to each other in order to argue that the ways in which we verbally describe buildings are inherently linked to the way in which we look at and make sense of them. It will show that what we understand when seeing, what we know to have seen, is shaped by the means we find to express and communicate it. The subject matter of this research is the unfamiliar architectural object as it is perceived, described and imagined while travelling. Contextualising and linking various descriptions of built spaces in travel writings at distinct moments between the seventeenth and twentieth century, perceptual modes of British and German travellers in Italy and England are mapped out. Special emphasis is placed on the context of the seventeenth century, and the birth of Empiricism, which is argued to have led to a new way of perceiving as well as describing the built environment. Texts investigated include travel diaries, letters, guidebooks as well as novels by authors such as John Evelyn, John Bargrave, Daniel Defoe, Tobias Smollett, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Jacob Burckhardt, John Ruskin and Nikolaus Pevsner. Through an archaeology of perception, local and often fragmentary narratives are constructed - ‘snapshots’ which focus on past moments rather than providing an extensive historical panorama. Processes of rendering, ordering, thinking, looking and reading the perceived are submitted to methods drawn from the following fields: the disciplines of history - the histories of art, sciences and literature - as well as the cognitive sciences, particularly cognitive linguistics, alongside the more specific concerns of architectural history and theory. Modes of perception located and retraced include notions of immediate and detached recording, of fragmented and vectorial structuring, of emotional versus truthbearing seeing, of a pure and hyperreal looking as well as of itemizing against visual description.

This project aims to provide an analysis of Shanghai’s new architecture and cityscape during the Reform Era, on the premise that the urban built form has been utilised to convey dominant ideas to create urban meaning. Image is the core concept to investigate this urban meaning of the new Shanghai. City image, embodied in architecture and urban landscape as physical and visible factors, can be a synthetic presentation of messages relating to economic development, urban identity and national politics. The thesis opens with a theoretical conception of image and city image, and their role in globalisation. By dismantling these concepts and examining their natures, an original theoretical framework for studying the city image of Shanghai can be constructed. This is followed by an investigation of Shanghai’s redevelopment under the Reform Policy as the context of the city’s image-making project, and of its highly image-conscious urban planning in recent decades. Case studies covering four areas in which the city is frequently represented follow. First, representations of the city in a municipal museum are shown to encapsulate Shanghai’s government-promoted city image. Second, representations of Shanghai in the mass media are shown to reveal mainstream views of the new city. Third, the cityscape and architecture applied in ‘zhuxuanlü music videos’ are shown to echo and deliver the state’s urban discourse. Fourth, contemporary avant-garde artworks are analysed to demonstrate the construction of the resistant urban meanings of the new Shanghai. It is concluded that Shanghai’s city image delivers messages of the dominant urban and political discourses, and functions at the global, national and local levels for economy, political legitimacy and civic identity. The project also contributes a model and an example of city image-making to the field of urban studies.

This thesis examines the choice of ceramic materials for traditional architecture and the circumstances which influenced their selection. Traditional Chinese buildings have been studied by architectural historians more for the qualities of their timber framework and less for their ceramic content, even though this can be the major visible component of a structure. Because of their dissimilar production techniques, function and often size, Chinese architectural ceramics do not fit comfortably alongside the appreciation and study of [me ceramic wares for domestic or ritual use. Architectural components therefore occupy an interdisciplinary area bordering upon Chinese architectural history and Chinese ceramics, and this is reflected in a small but growing body of relevant literature. Field-work has focused on extant structures and archaeological remains in the former Ming capitals of Nanjing and Beijing, and on sites throughout Shanxi Province, the latter a region rich in extant examples of traditional architecture and ceramic ornament produced by elite patronage of skilled local craftsmanship. Buildings were used as the primary source and observations of architectural ceramics in situ compared against specimens in collections and described in documentary sources. Structures studied were primarily on religious sites and also included palace halls and screen-walls. The study focused on the Ming period, but structures from earlier and later periods were included in order to observe changes in styling and techniques. Chinese traditional buildings are designed for continuous maintenance, and the precise age of individual components is often mixed. The social history of a structure, with its various renovations and repairs, is therefore often more significant than its date of origin. The study examines evidence of trial, innovation and stylistic freedom alongside factors which may have promoted or hindered these choices, and very different circumstances appear to have prevailed in all three study locations.

This thesis is a study of sixteenth century Italian theories of appropriateness in architecture, of their influence on style in practice and of their origins in antiquity, the Middle Ages and the fifteenth century. The importance of such theories is suggested by the assertion of Vasari that Sansovino's Lain contribution to Venetian architecture was the introduction of the practice of varying the design of buildings according te their function and siting. As the stylistic change brought about by Sansovine in Venice was similar to that effected in Rome at the beginning of the centur, an understanding of Yasari's aeaning may help us to appreciate the essential character of High Renaissance architecture as a whole. In Part I I study the most important group of Sansovino's buildings in the light of contemporary texts and other documents. Using this material I propose a set of theories which explain Sansovino's choice of elements in their design. These theories are closely related to those in the contemporary writings of Serlio. They are also chiefly concerned with the appropriate use of the different orders,Part II is a survey of previous writings on architecture from ancient Greece to the Rome where Serlio and Bansovino were trained. Attention is paid to theories of appropriateness in general and of the use of the orders in particular. These theories are throughout related to contemporary practice which is discussed in appendices to the different chapters. Main conclusions are; 1) The style of Sansovino's buildings is largely governed by theories of decorum. 2> Mid-fifteenth century theoriet were stimulated chiefly by the need to justify morally expenditure both on large private buildings and elaborate classical forms. 3) Lt the end of the century and the beginning of the sixteenth a new respect tsr the sense of sight and a corresponding increase in the authority of the visual arts gave architecture expressive and. communicative powers which had previously been attributed only to literature and music.

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Architects usually design finished buildings and users are subjected to conform their actions to an anticipated functionality. This results from the traditional design process based on representation clearly separating design, building and use. Such a process is welcome in capitalism as design guarantees the commodity value of works of architecture. However, those best able to decide on the use of spaces are their users. So, instead of emphasising exchange value and predicting use in a finished design that obstructs people, as architects do, it is more desirable that spaces enable free and unanticipated uses, emphasising use value. The use of computers in architecture, associated with the 'virtual', reproduces the traditional design process without questioning it. Nevertheless, in this thesis 'virtual' means something that exists but has not happened yet, waiting people's interaction to manifest as an event. This might be digital or not and is related to process, not product. This thesis proposes the 'virtualisation' of the design process and architecture. The former implies the critique of representation, which, by means of drawings, fixes the final form and meaning of buildings before they are built and used, and emphasises the visually perceived over the lived spatial qualities of buildings. The latter implies the critique of finished buildings subjecting users to external constraints imposed by architects. This thesis asks architects to stop designing ends (drawings of finished buildings) and start devising means ('interfaces' such as procedures and software) with which people can engage in non-habitual and autonomous ways to negotiate the production of their own spaces. However, it proposes no particular procedure or software, as architects are not supposed to solve people's problems for them, but work towards the virtual. 'Interfaces' are possible 'virtual' products and 'cyberarchitecture' the spaces that emerge when people interact with such interfaces.

The Hebrew University emerged from a need to provide Diaspora Jews with higher education, and was developed by the Zionist Organization into an image of the Third Temple, a sanctuary for learning that would create a Zionist dominance in Jerusalem. The inclusion of "Hebrew" in its title indicates the University's connection with the Zionist cultural revival that intended to create a Hebrew culture and identity. Locating the University on Scopus created a new sanctifying meaning to both Mount and University. After the 1649 war the University moved to the "Nation's Quarter' on Giv'at Ram, but the devotion to the sanctified Scopus never diminished, until the 1967 war enabled the return of the University to its original location. Five different master plans were prepared for the first Mount Scopus campus, none of them fully implemented. Each presented an interpretation of the University concept that also related to prevailing styles and ideological trends. Erich Mendelsohn had a central role in the few buildings that were constructed. The second campus presented a serene and functional campus, yet its subdued affluence was quite outstanding within general deprivation. Immediately after the 1967 war a new campus was constructed on Scopus, in the form of a megastructure. The circumstances of the "return" to Scopus, of its planning and construction, as well as the effects of occupation shed light on the significance of the new campus. To some extent, the recruitment of the University to political goals and the implementation of an ideology prevented a number of architectural plans from offering designs that would first and foremost fulfil their purpose as academic institutions. Furthermore, as it has been a central national institution, at certain periods it became influential as a propaganda tool, a vocation quite alien and harmful to its true calling.

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