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Part of
Performing Metaphoric Creativity across Modes and Contexts
Edited by Laura Hidalgo-Downing and Blanca Kraljevic Mujic
[Figurative Thought and Language 7] 2020
► pp. 197–219

Chapter 9
Sensory landscapes

Cross modal metaphors in architecture

| Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha

This chapter describes the ways architects use language to evoke the visual, olfactory, tactile and interactive experiences afforded by buildings. It discusses how architects transfer their perception of space as knowledge, and how this knowledge is communicated by using figurative language in the architectural review genre. The task of reviewers is to translate those experiences into language in a form that readers can understand and, presumably, relate to through their senses, and do so using metaphorical language that combines information from domains other than architecture as well as from the senses. In this regard, the chapter is ultimately concerned with exploring the ways in which metaphor helps shape the sensory landscapes of architects as staged in architectural reviews.

Keywords: built space, architectural reviews, cross-sensory metaphor, synesthesia, multimodality
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Reviewing built space: The genre of architectural reviews
  • 3.Re-sensing built space through metaphor
    • 3.1Metaphor and the senses
  • 4.Multimodal, dynamic spaces
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 29 May 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ftl.7.09cab
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