Sara Berahman - Ph.D. Student in Architecture, Department of Architecture, Shiraz Branch, Islamic Azad University, Shiraz, Iran
Mohammad Parva - Assistant Professor, Department of Architecture, Shiraz Branch, Islamic Azad University, Shiraz, Iran
Tahereh Nasr - Assistant Professor, Department of Architecture, Shiraz Branch, Islamic Azad University, Shiraz, Iran

The deficiency of Iranian contemporary housing architecture has made this method of Architectureunable to meet the needs of Iranian families in recent years. Architecture is part of the identity of asociety and has concepts and features derived from the community of its time. Therefore, in orderto provide a correct solution for the modification of the Iranian contemporary housing architectureand to create its identity, it is necessary to recognize and analyze the signs existing in Iranianarchitecture throughout history. In this study, the architecture of the traditional Qajar era housesand contemporary residential complexes in Shiraz, with a semiotic approach, were analyzed in twolayers of architecture and meta-architecture. The results of semiotics mechanism, questionnairesand interviews showed that the lack of attention to different layers of the signified and conformityof the signifier and the signified is the missing link of identity in the contemporary architecture ofresidential complexes. Also, it seems that the application of Qajar architectural signs tocontemporary housing architecture can create identity in modern housing.

Semiotics; Sign; Identity; Texture; Semantics