Reading the city: #Roland_Barthes in Paris and Tokyo | Essay | Architectural Review
▻https://www.architectural-review.com/essays/reading-the-city-roland-barthes-in-paris-and-tokyo/10038988.article
From ‘The Eiffel Tower’ to Empire of Signs, Roland Barthes teaches architects how to interpret places
We all dream of the Eiffel Tower.
A kiosk halfway to the sky. Where you can buy paper aeroplanes, burnt sugar-coated peanuts, dense rolls of newspaper, shiny magazines and innumerable keyrings in the shape of the Eiffel Tower. You can probably buy a stamp on the Eiffel Tower to affix to your postcard showing the very same site. I would like to write to the tower. It might be the beginning of a flirtatious correspondence. I know it has been married before.
It is a friendly building, seen throughout the day by the inhabitants of a city. Winking here, blinking there, but never failing to touch them all with its kindly glance from time to time, as though to say ‘Hello, we’re both still here’.