Rereading Iran's Modernist Architecture from the Perspective of Peirce's Semiotics

Establishing a meaningful relationship between the architecture and the audience is one of the important goals of architecture. Semiotics is one of the approach of reading meaning in architecture. In the 1940s and 1950s, in Iranian architecture, buildings were designed with a inspiration of traditional Iranian and modern architecture, which are considered to be successful. The failure of today Iranian architecture in designing monuments and meaningful communication with the audience requires the necessity of investigating the reasons for the success of this architecture. so that solutions for design can be found in this review. One of the approaches of reading meaning in architectural works is semiotics. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to read the signs in these buildings and answer these questions: what kind of signs are used in this architecture from the point of view of semiotics? Which of these signs have been used more? What is the relationship between the use of signs and the function of the buildings? In this research, documentary and library studies were used to collect information and Delphi method was used to validate the obtained signs. Then, the method of field observation and documentary studies have been used to investigate signs in architectures. For this purpose, the indexes, icons and symbols used in Iran's modern architectural style were studied by Peirce's semiotics and the data were analyzed using descriptive-analytical methods. The result is that symbols are used alot in Iran's modernist architecture. In the design, historical metaphors have been used the most, which are mainly tangible metaphors and abstract perceptions of the forms, styles and architectural elements of Iran's past. among the investigated functions, monuments (monuments and non-monuments) have used symbols more than other buildings.