Semiotic analysis of contemporary Coptic Orthodox church architecture; A case study of Virgin Mary and Saint John the Baptist church in Bab El Louk, Cairo, Egypt

Abstract

Within the quest of better understanding of architecture, interpretation of signs and symbols play an important role. An article was presented earlier to analyze an ancient Coptic Orthodox church, within the course of an ongoing PhD, studying the visual message of this architecture (Guirguis et al., 2016). Now, a contemporary case study is being examined, to investigate whether the modern architecture of the same building type carries a message as its counter in the antiquity, and what the meanings projected might be. The study uncovers meanings imbued by the building showing that this contemporary architecture is an offspring of the Coptic heritage and that it delivers a message to the congregation. Keywords: Semiotics of architecture, Coptic architecture, Meaning in architecture, Semiotic analysis, Interpretation of architecture, Contemporary Coptic architecture