Architects use a specialized language that is taught in schools of architecture and includes various descriptive categories, plans and architectural estimates. They use typologies with which to classify various architectural elements and their formal designs in new and meaningful descriptive categories, such as those that concern “openings”. We contend that the themes of “openness” and “closeness”, which we concieve architecturally as “passage” and “living” form complex unit of signification or “sememes”. Spatial displacements and limits are indicated by semantic markers that manifest themselves in more or less prominent fashion. The sign/passage/ and /living/ can then be seen as equivalents to the large syntagmatic forms studied by linguistic, such as the sentence and may form narrative themes. By analogy with the minimal distinctive units linguists call “phonemes”, we call the minimal units of architecture “archemes”. “Choremes”, on the other hand, correspond to “morphemes” as they are semes endowed with a specific architectural meaning. /Passage/ and /living/ thus constitute distinct and opposing semiotic categories with the semic or semantic repertoire of architecture. The theme of the passage starts to dominate contemporary architecture with the works of Hadid, Hara and Gehry. Their buildings enable those who circulate within them to create more freely personal narratives of their own. Thus, as it develops a new relation with the living, the passage now offers a new way of dwelling.