Can building or architecture be written or read? This questioned has been answered by Roland Bartes and his semiotics approach. In his essay about the Eiffel Tower, Roland Barthes, a well-known literary critic and theoretician made a significant contribution to semiology and urban or architectural studies vice versa since it promised for an original interdisciplinary study between architecture and linguistics. In this paper, using Barthes' analogy, I plan to revisit another tower which is as iconic as Eiffel, is the Great Bell of Big Ben and I will synchronically analyse this building by using system of sign and specifically connotation, denotation and metaphors as in Barthes did in Eiffel example. Aim of this paper is to show that, architecture is more than an object to be written about but it is a visual language system that can be read or transferred into the words. Also Barthes and his semiotic approach were important for the architectural theory so that will be explained by using Big Ben to show the applicability of this methodology. In sum, my paper suggests an interdisciplinary aspect of architecture and its strong relationship with linguistics.

Barthes, semiotics, Bin Ben, architecture, linguistics.