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This paper explores the notion of myth as a specific form of evidence and evidentiality of architecture. This exploration is conducted with specific regard to two key texts: the first, a philosophical text, and the second a text of architectural theory. As such, Barthes’s text:Mythologiesfirstly published in 1957 and Borden’s text:Skateboarding, Space and the City: Architecture and the Bodypublished in 2001 are explored. This paper suggests that the role served by Barthesian myth in respect to language is similar to the role served by skateboarding in Borden’s exploration of the city. It is suggested that both myth and skateboarding serve as evidence of the instability of objectivity in language, everyday life practices and architecture. We thus argue that the notion of myth will chart a new dimension of contemporary architectural thinking and prompt more possibilities in interlinking design research between architecture, the human body and the sociologic study of mass culture. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

As a form of cloth and clothing, the T-shirt "speaks" at once about the "seen" surface of materiality, of imagery and of embodiment; and about the "unseen" depth of cultural disposition, of socio-politics and of commodification. The T-shirt in this respect is considered a text, a techne of productive knowledge, and read as the textility of both thought and matter. This article discusses the "mythical" reading of the T-shirt with specific reference to the semiology of Roland Barthes. The discussion begins with the proposition of the T-shirt as material culture, the T-shirt consumed in such a way as to articulate the complex signifying fabric of cultural systems in the practices of everyday life. The "system of object" of the T-shirt in this regard is perceived as an activity consisting of the systematic manipulation of signs. We then discuss the relationship between material culture and semiology; and how the T-shirt may possibly relate to Barthes's notion of "myth." The Barthesian myth suggests the production of the "second-order language" of the T-shirt. The consumption of the T-shirt in this sense is considered at once ontologically social and ideological. This becomes a basis for exploring the mythical reading of the T-shirt using two T-shirt "works of art" : the "T-shirt painting" of Untitled (Jimi Hendrix) by Richard Prince (1992-3); and the "designed T-shirt," the "Tunku Abdul Rahman T-Shirt" by Pop Malaya (2007). It is argued that both T-shirts suggest a very particular mythical reading, i.e. of Americanization and of counter- Americanization. This mythical reading prompts the dialectical conflict between the "face and surface" of the T-shirt. We term this the "(surface of the T-shirt." This article therefore paves the way for possibly linking textile studies of the T-shirt between fashion, the human body, and the sociologic study of mass culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]