Buildings are meaningful parts of the environment; and when they are architecture (as over “mere buildings”), they aspire to greater meaning. Several accounts of architectural semiosis have been offered based on analogies to biology and language. These are critiqued. Critiqued, too, are accounts of semiosis generally that use systems-theoretical concepts and language. The essay goes on to outline what could be a contribution to biosemiotics from the work of perception psychologist, J. J. Gibson, as brought through architecture in the form of isovist field theory. This theory is not treated as an example of systems thinking as it usually is, but, with the help of philosopher Martin Buber as well as Jesper Hoffmeyer, as a way out of it—able to describe the meaning of objects and space phenomenologically and ecologically at once.

建筑物是环境中有意义的部分；当它们是建筑时（如“纯粹的建筑”），它们渴望更大的意义。基于对生物学和语言的类比，已经提供了几种关于建筑符号学的说明。这些都受到批评。受到批评的还有对通常使用系统理论概念和语言的符号学的描述。这篇文章继续概述了感知心理学家 JJ Gibson 的工作对生物符号学的贡献，这些工作以等势场论的形式通过建筑带来。这个理论不像通常那样被视为系统思考的一个例子，而是在哲学家马丁布伯和杰斯珀霍夫迈尔的帮助下，作为一种出路它——能够同时从现象学和生态学上描述物体和空间的意义。