Semiotics as the “science of signs” generally involves the study of any medium as a “sign system”, and semioticians commonly refer to all types of medium as “texts”. Ferdinand de Saussure and Charles Sanders Peirce initially developed the principles of semiology for application to language. The semiotic theories of Roland Barthes, Algirdas Greimas, and Umberto Eco extended these ideas to different types of messages, including architectural works. In 1976, Gerard Lukken and Mark Searle of the Dutch group Semanet developed the Greimassian semiotic theory into a usable method for analyzing the Church of Saints Peter and Paul in Tilburg.
Architecture can establish new sources of knowledge by shifting the focus from styles and techniques to content and meaning.
Therefore, this essay aims to study the use of religious space as a visual message.
Semiotic tools were employed to demonstrate how the formal expression of architectural works formulates meaning to create corresponding readings of a reference object.
The essay has the following goals:
(1) to show that architectural language used to comment on this building could be read as text
(2) to explore the formal expression of the building from a semiotic perspective.
Semiotic concepts are used as tools for understanding religious architectural works and architecture is examined as a language.
The analysis of the forms, structures, and organizations of each case study building is performed after a brief proposal is given on how the semiotic concepts are employed to interpret by using the method invented by Gerard Lukken and Mark Searle, considering the form of the expression and the form of the content.
Semiotic decoding of architectural forms facilitates both reading and interpretation.
Church buildings may become legible while the application of semiology in architecture enhances our movement within a sacred space and enables believers and visitors to make better use of its facilities.
This paper does not offer a definitive reading of any sacred building but explores built structures of signification that make any reading possible.
