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This dissertation critiques, develops and applies a form of spatial semiotics, specifically topological semiotics, as a means of interpreting and analyzing the design, operation, use and ideological issues of West Edmonton 'Mega'-Mall (WEM) in the context of postmodern culture. Doing so promotes an understanding of the theoretical and analytical utility and limitations semiotics and postmodernism may hold for landscape studies, while furthering our knowledge about the design and social life of multi-purpose, indoor environments. Drawing from several key geographical concepts (landscape, place, placelessness), semiotic notions (icon, language, myth, sign, signification), postmodern issues (heterotopia, the crisis of interpretation, the linguistic turn), and empirical data (on-site observations, off-site questionnaires, secondary academic, government and corporate studies), the concepts of placial icon, simulated landscape and elsewhereness are developed to critique a "way of seeing" and explain what was viewed at the mega-mall. WEM's postmodern, heterotopic milieu of myths and elsewhereness is argued to collapse due to the mall's dual role as tourist centre/civic centre, making WEM an unoriginal, placeless, homotopic nowhere. Despite their theoretically overburdened and methodologically underdeveloped status, semiotics and postmodernism are shown to be useful catalysts for posing questions and initiating criticisms relevant to contemporary social theory, landscape studies and substantive social issues.