Honarhaye Ziba- Honarhaye Memari va SHahrsazi
Year:2018 | Volume:23 | Issue:1 |Papers Count:10

One of the most exciting periods for architectural designers in design research is the time in which design ideas turn into a major design concept. This period is called “ conceptualization” and it may occur differently in different projects. Studies show that there are several levels of idealization involved in developing a design concept. Many basic ideas related to each goal of the designer for his/her project contribute to the development of the most comprehensive concept which is called a design “ parti” . This article takes a close look at the subject of conceptualization in the design process of architecture. There are two main sections which form the structure of this article. The first section, using descriptive as well as analytic methods, introduces the two most regarded design process approaches in architecture: the step by step approach also called “ systematic” , and the interactive approach called “ environmental” . This section also reviews four major design methods frequently used by architects. They are called: analogic, typologic, pragmatic, and theoretic methods. The second section, using survey method, investigates the relation between the design process and design methods used by 30 grade-one architectural consultants in Tehran and 350 undergraduate students of architecture at different universities in Iran. As far as the function of the projects, the three most applied functions were chosen as: residential, office/commercial, and educational projects. In order to investigate about the preference of each group in using design process and design methods in each of the three categories, some questionnaires were developed and collected from the professional group as well as the student group. The responses of the participants were analyzed by SMART-PLS software. The results of the research indicate that both groups of professionals and students tend to use more “ systematic” approach in their design process, and “ pragmatic” design method in their projects. In an analytic view, one could compare the preferred design process and design methods used in each group: In the students group: In residential projects: there is a desire to use “ systematic” approach with “ pragmatic” method, “ collaborative” approach with “ analogic” method, and “ interactive” approach with “ theoretic” and “ analogic” methods. In office/commercial projects: there is a meaningful relation between “ systematic” approach and “ pragmatic” and “ typologic” methods, “ collaborative” approach and “ analogic” method, and “ interactive” approach and “ analogic and “ theoretic” methods. In educational projects: there is a meaningful relation between the “ systematic” approach and “ pragmatic” method, “ interactive” approach with “ theoretic” method, and “ collaborative “ approach and “ typologic” method. In the professional consultants group: In residential projects: there is a desire to use “ systematic” approach with “ analogic” and “ pragmatic” methods, “ collaborative” approach with “ analogic” and “ pragmatic” methods, and “ ” interactive” approach with “ theoretic” and “ analogic” methods. In office/commercial projects: there is a meaningful relation between “ systematic” approach and “ analogic” and “ pragmatic” methods, “ collaborative” approach with “ analogic” and “ typologic” and “ pragmatic” methods, and “ interactive” approach with “ analogic” method. In educational projects: there is a meaningful relation between “ collaborative” approach with “ analogic” method, “ interactive” approach with “ analogic” and “ theoretic” methods, and “ systematic” approach with “ pragmatic” and “ typologic” methods.

Development of a relationship between nature and human needs can be found on literature of environmental performance assessment systems. The purpose of these systems is directed towards environmentally sensitive buildings. However, It should be noted that implementation of such tools in explaining the environmental goals of every ecological systems has been challenging so far. Checklist-based approach to environmental issues regardless of differences in economic, social, technological, environmental and institutional conditions of each region would not play a constructive role in this field. The current study seeks to explain factors of enhancing environmental conditions in residential complexes, relying on literature reviews and scholars views in Iran. In this way, measurements, approaches and criteria of eight building performance assessment systems in relation to subject of the study have been analyzed. According to the focus of the research on residential complexes, research and systems on the issue of residential buildings was selected. In cases of Inaccessibility to the system, the authors analyzed them in accordance with other relevant studies and secondary sources of information and measures. In these cases comparative studies of more than one source have been employed. Based on information obtained from literature review, interviews were conducted with scholars to deduce determining environmental factors of construction on residential complexes in Iran. After introducing purposes of the study and areas of queries, the interviewees presented scope, trends and emphasis in a non-directive approach. Then, in second interviews using semi-structured methods, a basis for developing and modifying parameters and components of the research was provided. By qualitative content analysis of interviews and literature review, theoretical framework and research hypotheses were formulated. The theoretical framework led the authors measure the relationship between latent and apparent variables of the study. Hypotheses are: 1) Factor of Stakeholders’ Synergy in Program is the main cause of enhancing Environmental Performance of buildings. 2) Factor of stakeholders’ synergy in program with mediation of Efficiency, Habitability and Durability affects Environmental Performance of buildings. 3) There are statistically significant relationship among mediators of Efficiency, Habitability and Durability. The research has been in the field of correlation methods on quantitative survey. Forming the theoretical framework and hypotheses, the research instrument (questionnaire) and the population were formulated. The first group of 15 consulting engineers company was selected according to the programming and design of residential complexes having related experience of the subject. The second group of researchers was in master or doctoral programs at universities of Tehran with related field of research. Enhancing environmental performance of buildings as the scope of assessment is a function of stakeholders synergy in architectural program, performance of buildings (contains variables of manufacturing efficiency, operational efficiency, cost feedback and performance feedback (, habitability of environment (contains variables of indoor environmental comfort, accessibility and sociability of outdoor spaces) and durability of buildings (contains variables of building maintenance, adaptation and improvement of the surrounding environment). Experimental results showed that there is a causal relationship between concepts of the theoretical framework, (hypothesis).

City’ s competitiveness and attractiveness depend on effective management of the city’ s image. Leading cities in the world have always used different approaches in order to improve their image. One of these modern approaches is city branding. Many cities in countries ranging from India and China to Russia and England have employed this approach in order to improve their image. In a world where cities and regions aggressively compete for investment from public and private sectors, brand reputation is critical. The motivation for cities to engage in city branding frequently stems from a feeling that existing perceptions of the city have become outdated and need to be updated in order to reflect the contemporary reality of the city. Repositioning the city brand is often seen as necessary and urgent. Indeed, a brand is the DNA of a place, i. e., its material and essence which pass from one generation to another. Today, many cities attempt to use city branding concepts to find a niche in the competition for resources and wealth. Like many other cities in Iran, Urmia City doesn’ t project a strong and clear image to its dwellers and beyond. Most of its cultural, historical and natural features have been neglected. Anonymity of these features causes Urmia City to encounter problems in attracting investment and tourists, losing the competition to cities with stronger image. The main purpose of this paper is to model an image for the Urmia City based on the concepts pertaining to city branding. Since a city brand needs to be rooted in reality, the starting point for an effective and inclusive branding strategy, would be a search for the elements which the city has to offer to its current and potential residents, as well as the visitors and investors. It also needs to tap its unique assets and strengths and to address its flaws and weaknesses. Here after a review of the theories associated with city branding and its relation to city image, a theoretical was developed. This framework provided us with nine components and 46 criteria to be used in the analysis of the Urmia City’ s image. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was used in order to identify the components and the criteria which influence the City’ s image the most. Finally, priority of actions in Urmia City branding is determined and suggestions are presented. Results show that, Urmia city needs strategies which can upgrade its urban facilities and infrastructure along other measures that deal with its unique history, culture as well as its location on the border with Turkey to the west. In addition, the City’ s strong environmental quality and natural features need to be emphasized in the strategies and action plans for the sake of the City’ s image. In our findings, we can also note that the City's dwellers have a negative view of its economy and job opportunities, while the life style and social Issues are not much of an issue in formation of the City’ s image.

In the historical form of the cities of Iran, the Bazzar is considered as an integral part of the city's structure which has formed the core and the main axis of the city and has guided the bones and development of the city. On the other hand, due to the economic role of the Bazzar in the city, the issue of security has been of particular importance. Therefore, it seems that the builders of this kind of buildings have special attention to their physical aspects in order to achieve this goal. For example, the establishment of Qaisarra as a space for the supply of valuable goods in the central Bazzar segment could be a effect in securing these usages. In this regard, it seems that the qualities of the edges of the Bazzar can also have a significant effect on this. Accordingly, the present study by investigates and analyzes various edges in the area around the Bazzar, examines the level of security in these spaces. On the other hand, Timcheh’ s space was selected as a case study from among the various spaces available on the Bazzar. Therefore, the present study, while analyzing the permeability quality of the outer edges of several Timches, as part of the Bazzar space, addresses the issue of security in this type of space. In this research, space syntax technique has been used to analyze the configuration of the space of the towns. However, it is necessary to note that this technique is generally used to analyze the spatial structure of environments that consist of several small spaces. While the Timches in their physical structure are composed of spaces such as store, resting place, cellar, courtyards, corridors, entrances, Hashti, and so on. This justifies the application of this technique in the analysis of this kind of construction. After reviewing the literature, three indicators including “ readablity” , “ visual control and access” , and “ space integration” were considered as theoretical framework of the research and tools like “ Step depth” , “ Integration” , “ Connectivity” , “ Physical accessibility(Metric depth)” , “ Isovist area” , and “ Isovist perimeter” were used to analyze them in the Depthmap software environment. The results of the study showed that the impermeable Timcheh in terms of readability index is in a desirable level, and due to having only one input, it is possible to control the entrance and exit of individuals. However, the four-directional permeable Timcheh in term of control and spatial integration indicator are at a higher level than the other Timches this has a significant impact on the security of these Timches. Also, the edge properties of the input (s) are more important in providing space security. Because it determines the amount of accumulated load to space and thus the permeability to space. The location of the Timches is one of the other things that have a significant impact on their security and their creation of crime scenes. Moreover, the presence of concave geometries in the space structure leads to inadequate visual visibility and the possibility of a massive increase in space.

Recognized as the most important religious pillars and centers of urban and rural development in Muslim societies, mosques have, throughout the history of Islamic Architecture, significantly influenced the stylistic and architectural features as well as the development of urban and architectural environments. Accordingly, mosques have often reflected the most prominent and fundamental architectural characteristics of their respective eras. Therefore, careful study of Mosque Minarets Gohar Shad Mosque and Shah Mashhad is undeniably important in revealing these characteristics. The Timurid era is a significant period in the Iranian history in terms of intellectual and religious and cultural developments. During this period, transmigration of artists and craftsmen, particularly architects, from different regions of Iran to Khorasan and Transoxiana led to the revival of artistic/architectural styles in Khorasan after a period of decline. The transmigration was initially forced upon Iranian artists and craftsmen. However, with Khorasan and Transoxiana achieving cultural and economic prosperity during the reigns of King Shahrokh and other Timurid rulers, the artists started migrating to this region voluntarily. Members of the Timurid Royal Family and their high-ranking government officials were active patrons of public works and commissioned the building of many aesthetically and architecturally prominent constructions, among, mosques in particular. The special significance of the Timurid period history is due to religious and cultural developments. so, members of senior government officials built an amazing building. As semantic and decorative elements in the Islamic Architecture, inscriptions were important tools for extending the religious beliefs and policies of the ruling system in different periods. Due to their written form, these elements clearly expressed the prevailing ideas/thoughts of their respective eras. The holy decorations and inscriptions used in different architectural elements of mosques, including Divine Names, Quranic verses, and Islamic hadiths and narratives, have always inspired artists and been regarded as the best examples of Islamic and moral teachings, often being referred to by religious preachers in mosques to guide their congregation. Based on this idea, the holy inscriptions would be aesthetically combined with arabesques of various foliage and geometric patterns as well as central designs (called Toranj or medallion) to display in mosques the most exquisite and thought-provoking examples of Islamic art. As masterpieces of Iranian Islamic architecture and Goharshad and Shah Mosques in Mashhad have been provided with various decorations as well as religious inscriptions (including Divine Names, Quranic verses, and Islamic hadiths and narratives) that reflect the thoughts/ideas of their architects as well as Timurid rulers of the time. In view of this, this study aims to examine these two distinguished Timurid mosques with special emphasis on the adaptability of the holy decorations created on the minarets of these mosques in mashad. The qualitative analytic-comparative methodology was adopted based on the relevant library resources, historical documents, and field observations. Our results revealed that the minarets of the studied mosques had been built in the same historical/architectural period. We also found that the holy decorations on the minarets were highly adaptable in terms of content, color, calligraphy/orthography, Divine Names, and tiling.

Today, there is a separation between the mentality of residents and buildings in the quality of residential constructions. This is due to factors such as the rise of modernity, the increasing population and urbanization along with the complexity of the relationship between the employer, the designer, and the user, the development of singularity, and quantity-oriented approach to residential environments. The history of public mentalities through the use of memory tool is a kind of interface between our subjectivities and their representations in the residential environments. This representation sometimes monitors the problem of meaning and sometimes reveals an identity or structure and thus influences all three dimensions of the quality of residential environments including micro, medium, and macro scale. At a micro scale, internal relations among residential units, at a medium scale, neighborhood relations among units and at a macro scale, relations between a complex and city are considered. By this assumption, this research seeks to answer the following question: What has changed the history of popular housing in the present time compared to the past in Zanjan? To this end, interviews were initially conducted with two groups of residents of new apartments and those living traditional and old constructions. Then, by analyzing the content, the main categories regarding the history of public mentalities were extracted from both groups. To test the reliability and generalizability of the categories to Zanjan, we tested them through a quantitative study. The results of the research indicate that the identity layer in all three scales of modern apartments is weak compared to old ones and therefore, today's mindset about the quality of housing is an individualistic and introverted subjectivity. However, in traditional houses, communication with other residents of the neighborhood and the city is always prioritized. This leads to the formation of a collective mentality. On the other hand, today, the physical, functional, and visual perspicacity of the interior spaces and houses receives top priority. Therefore, the history of today's mentality is somewhat more in the face of visualization, consumerism, and aesthetics (from a purely visual point of view) than it was in the past. Also, due to the weakening of today's houses, the importance of religion has diminished whilst the ancient houses were based on faith and religion, and portrayed a story of priority for credibility and pragmatism. Nowadays, environmental designers, planners, architects, etc., have to make the necessary assessments and implement them based on the findings of the research and take advantage of these rich traditional architectural teachings to find solutions to the problem. It is clear that the solution to this problem, in addition to the need for a change in the physical patterns, requires discussion of culture and change in the way of history and the history of public mentality. Thus, it is hoped that the path could be redirected while referring to the fundamental categories of human needs in the public domain in the sense of habitation in an interactive pattern of behavior.

Among many aspects considered to evaluate the low energy buildings, the Life Cycle Energy Consumption (LCEC) is the most comprehensive factor that can properly direct engineers and architectures to the buildings’ optimum design. The LCEC is introduced as the total energy usage associated with all stages of a building’ s life cycle mainly consists of production of its materials, transportation of the materials and components, on-site construction, operation, maintenance, demolition and waste treatment. This study aims to evaluate the LCEC factor of a real building located in Tehran, Iran. Due to the lack of the investigations in this field in Iran, the methodology of estimating the building’ s energy consumption is comprehensively introduced in this paper. For this purpose, a real multi-family residential building with common architectural plan and residences is selected and the process of evaluating the building’ s energy consumption during various periods of its life cycle is discussed in detail. These periods include the material production, transportation, on-site construction, operation, and maintenance stage. Demolition and disposal stage is excluded from the scope of this study because of the lack of the clear information about the waste treatment process in the country. Beside, the energy usage of this stage is reported to be less than 1% of the buildings’ total LCEC according to the literature. The results of this analysis show that the embodied energy of the considered case is about 15% of its LCEC. This embodied energy that is indeed in the range of the internationally reported values can be divided into three separate parts including: 1) 12% energy usage for the building material production, 2) 1% energy usage for the material transportation and on-site construction, and 3) 2% energy consumption for the building maintenance stage. In this regard, it seems that the energy usage during on-site construction period of the building has the minimum effect on the building’ s LCEC (about 0. 2%) and consequently may be ignored in the LCEC process. It is also concluded that 85% of the considered building’ s LCEC belongs to the operation stage in which the effect of climate change in terms of global warming is considered via a simple method based on the change of the thermal comfort setpoints. Although this operational energy is in the range of the values reported in the common international investigations, it is too high for Iran where the lifespan of the residential buildings is respectively short. If the lifespan of the considered building in this study increase from 35 years to 60 years, the portion of the operational energy can increase up to 91% of the building’ s LCEC. Therefore, proper estimation of the building’ s lifespan is demanded for most of the energy assessment studies. Accurate estimation of the energy content of the building materials in Iran is also highly necessitated. If the material production industry in Iran consumes averagely 30% more energy respect to the average values of the world’ s industry, the building’ s operational energy will reduce about 3% and respectively its total embodied energy will increase about the same amount.

This written is going to express and analyze an educational experience during first-year of architecture which had been referenced to elements of nature as complete design patterns. The research method is descriptive-analytical and it is operational and based on case study which examined several semesters by different students and different natural elements. The case study, had been done in department of Architecture and Urban planning at Shahid Beheshti University. In case study, the research based on observation and understanding natural elements, study of architecture cases referenced to nature during visiting places and library studying. In case of sunflower consequence exercise, the process starts from exact observation, deep discovering and complicated origins during hand drawing of the sunflower by first-year architecture students. They compared their finding as drawing by samples of geometry in architecture cases which referenced to sunflower. They have found that the geometry of sunflower has been simplified to some extent to be easy to be used in buildings. Also they said besides the geometry had been simplified, the cases reflected nature reference which was sunflower. The process was being continued by how the rules and results of discovering could be used to design needs of students in studio. The students realized that the geometry gained from sunflower has a center oriented property and it has symmetry so it should be used to build something which needs focus on center. The volumes which students have started to build was a hanging ceiling to corridor which ends to their studio. After that choosing material and way of making something by students would be followed. The chosen materials were balsa wood and woolen. The handmade ceiling was built by 11 students. Students studio had 3 ones which were different from each other but each of them refers to sunflower. In result, it could be said that focus on nature as rich origin to be referenced by architecture students has advantages such as: encourage students to exact observation, approach to intellectual beauty, richness of analyzing, creating entrance to creation, attraction of doing in team-work, entrance to geometry and hand-made in real scale. In other hand, as feedbacks of the case exercise it must be said that such process are suitable to first-year of architecture education and they can cause to express the hidden affordances of students. The challenges which teachers are encountered by are that guiding students in such process is different and hard to some extent Because the background of students is not adapted to team-work and operational exercise. In other word, the students are not prepared to do observation in exact way to understand nature. In other hand, doing these exercises is time consuming. Also different natural elements differ to each other to understand their hidden geometry. Finally, it should be said that being in process to find origins of natural creations to create for design needs of first year architecture students is an old and responsive strategy. But, the limitation by such exercises is being surrounded by only form derived from it is not enough useful for architecture students.