Iconography in Architecture

There are three definitions of the icon on which architects adopt as a usage: First, icons in the past were religious, like those devotional Byzantine paintings placed in front of the altar. The word “iconic” always carries religious overtone of veneration, of worship, of fetish. The second definition is “similitude”(形似), the technical term from linguistics. An icon, like a footprint in the sand, shares a similarity between the signifier (the shape of the foot) and the signified (foot's imprint). The third definition concerns reduction(縮化), like the icon on computer: for instance, the rubbish bin where you throw old programs is in the shape of a wastepaper basket.

You can find these three meanings even in Pop roadside architecture, for example the building in the shape of a dinosaur. It has a similitude to the large animal, it is a reduced shape, and although it has nothing to do with religion, it is meant to be spiritual and awe-inspiring in a general sense, and remind one of an eternal past, the great age of monsters, evolution, etc.

An iconic building works best when it is tied to a set of meanings that relate to the function of the architecture. We can see in Le Corbusier's Ronchamp how the church relates to the connotations of plying hands, a nun's cowl, a mother and children, and a duck and boat. Other meanings include the crab shells he used as a metaphor to design it the roof structure. Some of these meanings are convergent, on its religious meanings, and others are divergent.