Abstract:
Man has always express himself through symbols. They help him to understand the world and to form it into a meaningful cultural pattern. From house forms to villages and cities, symbolic principal have been applied to the layout of spaces and design of artifacts. These make the concrete immaterial spaceless and timeless nature of society's values, meanings and norms. In this respect building is a symbolic expression of the perceived cosmos as contained in respective social contexts.
The intention and function of the built environments have it's origins always from context of social interaction and where those contexts do not invest space or parts of space with meaning, where they are not still visible behind the architectural symbolism, the built environment fails to become an integral part of peoples imagination.
Citation:
Kumburegama, W.M.S.L. (2000). Urban symbolism [Master's theses, University of Moratuwa]. Institutional Repository University of Moratuwa. http://dl.lib.mrt.ac.lk/handle/123/1105