“ICON. A fork in the road is an icon of a rest stop; the Eiffel Tower is considered an icon of Paris. Yet Peirce would have cautioned against confusing the operation of signs with the materiality of the structure itself. If an icon refers to the Object and its resemblance to a sign through what he called a shared Ground, then the Burj Al Arab represents an icon insofar as it refers to a modern naval vessel or ship.

And a symbol… insofar as it marks a virtual stand-in for Dubai as the Arab center of the world.”

-Maryam Monalisa Gharavi, “Semeiotic Dubai: Peirce and Pop Architecture”