The Nature of Signs and Their Role in Enhancement of Sense of Place in Architectural Spaces

Since the excess attention to the performance in the modern view has faded out many aspects of cognitive architecture in relation with the audience, the loss of meaning in society today became more important. The postmodern perspective, which was emerged to cover the shortcomings of modern view, due to its excessive attention to the physical aspects of semantics, failed to provide a comprehensive view to give a sense of Place to the architectural places. Also, the quantitative development of human societies and facility and physical space expansion, caused meaning requirements in physical spaces. Therefore, the quality of spaces and conceptual and mental properties which creates the meaning of spaces has been attracted designers and managers. Cognitive signs enhance the relationship between audience and architectural space; and bring the sense of belonging to the place. Studying the defining factors is an efficient way to induce a feeling of familiarity to architectural space and the use of semiotics principles is one of the best solutions on how to make spaces meaningful. With presentation of the concept of “Death of the Author”, knowing the perception of signs as a creative issue, the importance of the semiotic in art and architecture become more and more evident. Nowadays, architecture as an intersection of art and science, with the goal of improving the quality of places, is widely deal with the ideas complicated issues of semiotic. Concepts such as visualization, interpretation and hermeneutics, design etc. which are the outcomes of semiotic science in different field of art, has a great impact in explanation of architectural issues. Since signs, include meanings due to the connotation between signifier and signified, they can play an important role in sense of place of architectural space and enhancement of the quality space and its conversion to a favored place. Constructional and social semiotic designers emphasize on the text signs. Regarding this approach, signs which are influenced by culture, society, religion, or any other psychological signs, are effective in visualization and receiving the concepts of any places. Semiotics principles of cognitive science which is rooted in many cognitive sciences, relying on the concept of connotation causes the relationship between architectural spaces with the audience. So the different aspects of the syndrome of functional, structural and semantic are considered simultaneously in the form of architectural space, can step in and make space meaningful and create the sense of place for the audience. This study examines the role of signs in the perception of architectural space and its role in improving semantic concepts of sense of place. Thus, after studying the various features of the sign with the structuralist view, the nature of symbols in architecture and how it relates to the architecture and the way of perception of concepts is studied. Since the "sense of Place" is one of the most important criteria of the quality of the architectural space, the role of the symbolic meanings in creating the sense of place has been investigated with the phenomenological approach.