It is difficult to ascertain any inherent meaning from a building because objects do not contain inherent meaning. Objects only have meaning because humans assign meaning to them. The text you are reading right now are mere pixels of light illuminating from a screen; that is all it is. It is a human thing to look at those pixels and think that they look like letters. Humans also assign meaning and ideas to certain arrangements of these perceived letters, or words. The same applies to spoken words, which are merely longitudinal waves traveling through air; they are merely waves, and only have a meaning because humans have assigned meaning to certain wave configurations, or spoken words. The same applies for architecture. The bricks that make up a building have no inherent meaning on their own. Further, a thing whose constituents individually have no inherent meaning cannot itself have meaning; the conglomerate of meaningless pieces must also be meaningless. It follows that buildings cannot have an inherent meaning, and any message or meaning thought to be conveyed by a building is humanely generated.

Furthermore, if a thing had inherent meaning, there would not be a discussion over whether or not it had meaning, or if it did, what that meaning is, for if the meaning truly were inherent there would be no dispute over its meaning. However this is not normally the case; the interpretation of a building’s meaning usually varies greatly. For example, the “reflecting pool” of Hussein’s mosque was thought to represent “a map of a the Arab world,” and a certain mound in the water was thought to represent “Hussein’s thumbprint” (Sudjic). The purpose of the pool was actually its 28 jets, meant to “symbolize the 28th day of the month” of April, Saddam’s birth day and month respectively, according to the mosque’s imam (Sudjic). Most of the mosque was meant to represent his birthday (the four minarets representing the 4th month of the year, April, and the height of the minarets of 37 meters represent 1937, Saddam’s birth year). There is a huge disparity between the perceived and intended meaning of the mosque.

Therefore, architecture, or any object for that matter, cannot be used as an effective means to convey a message or meaning unless there exists an agreed meaning for which that object is to represent.