Abstract

Just as housing has more cultural meaning than a mere shelter, the study area’s traditionally orally centred people appreciated architecture, urban design, and the arts in multi-sensory, semiotic ways until the ‘culture contact’ with the modern language of architecture. Architecture is a functional and cultural semiotic symbolic language that includes ornamentations used to express the culture of its builders before the advent of print media. Semiotics itself, as a language of signs and symbols, is applicable to interpret architecture among other disciplines. This semiotic study argues that traditional Yoruba ornamentation in built-forms serves as a crucial, multi-sensory language encoding cultural values and historical narratives, offering a sustainable model for contemporary architecture in Southwest Nigeria. Saussure’s and Pierce’s concepts of Semiotics, in line with Eco’s concept of semiotics of metaphor, were deployed. This paper systematically reviewed literature and case studies in selected southwest towns with cultural Yoruba built-forms. Semiotic theoretical frameworks of theories of Saussure’s dyadic and Pierce’s triadic, as well as denotation and connotation deployed to decode. It is concluded that a balanced interpretation of our rich architectural heritage would ensure a sustainable environment.