Abstract/Summary

Exploring how client requirements undergo representational and transformational shifts through the design process, a social semiotic framework is mobilized to examine a series of construction project representations of hospital department configurations in their context of use as meaning making resources. The analysis reveals how semiotic resource use is intrinsic to design work: the deployment and use of sign constructs influencing multiple processes including communications, relations between parties and stakeholder engagement. Supported by practitioner opinion, it is contended that construction project design work may be understood as social semiotic practice: both client parties and designers judiciously employing sign constructs to represent requirements in a process that can be politically sensitive, competitive and temporally constrained.