HOVIATESHAHR
Year:2017 | Volume:10 | Issue:28 |Papers Count:8

The old cities of Iran have different qualities that some of them cannot be seen in contemporary cities. Experiencing the invasion of cars and people’s new life style during the last century, old city gradually lost their forms and function. Such changes caused new challenges and demands by which various qualities of old cities have been altered or vanished forever, as urban cohesion and wholeness. Cohesion and wholeness are two related concepts where the former one is a fundamental condition to reach the later one. In this paper, wholeness is defined as an integrated system, consisted of different elements and their relations which can tolerate no changes, since a trivial one may change it into another system. Moreover, cohesion is considered as an important quality of relations between different elements of the whole. Although cohesion can be seen with various scales in different layers of cities, the layer that is emphasized in this paper is the built environment.For the theoretical framework of this paper, we used complexity theory with emphasis on Christopher Alexander and Nikos Salingaros theories about wholeness and coherent urban form. We extracted principals of urban coherence to evaluate the cohesion of central part of Shiraz and to make design guidelines to achieve cohesion. These principles are: coupling, diversity, boundary, forces, organization, hierarchy, interdependence, and decomposition. And also a wide range of valid records, documents, and maps are used which enabled us to illustrate the main structure of this old city, before its destruction in Pahlavi era. Taking into account all of these principles, we focused on these questions: does cohesion exist in the ancient area of this city? Can we find some application of these principals in the old city that could be as a foundation for design guidelines?As our first contribution, we used the principles and evaluated their existence by applying them to an old area of Shiraz city which dates back to the Zand dynasty. Due to our promising results, mentioned principles can be seen in old city. On one hand, the existence of these principles in the old city means that the old area follows the rules of complex system theory so it emphasizes that the old area is a coherent area. On the other hand, it suggests some design principals and patterns that can be considered as a foundation for design guidelines towards coherence and coupling contemporary city. Our second contribution is a design guideline for cohering contemporary cities by connecting two adjacent areas. These guidelines are: complementarity of adjacent areas, increasing the permeability of area in its edges, reducing unlimited views, reducing parcel size of edges, reducing the distance between adjacent areas, increasing the permeability of edge parcels, priority of pedestrian movements, increasing the diversity of functions, increasing the diversity of forms, and increase the homogeneity of parcels in a street. By using these guidelines we can increase the connectivity of two adjacent areas in the first step and increase the cohesion of the whole city in the last step.

Historically, growth of each city was dependent on it’s natural, ecological, economic and political potentials leading to homogeneous spatial-physical structure of the city. The slowness of this growth was another factor which has been harmonizing the interaction between human life and spatial-physical structure of the city.The area which is now referred to as an old texture of city had a perfect and efficient urban life during ancient time. It’s perfection and efficiency were resulted from human and environmental interaction leading to a balance due to speculation and frequent trial and errors of several generations. Not only the old texture of city in Iran pertains an ambiguity in its definition and actual territory in urban structure, but also it implies some negative concepts such as deterioration, inefficiency and reluctance in it.After the industrial revolution, due to impacts of industrialization and globalization, most cities faced tremendous changes in cultural and socio-economic aspects of urban life. The result of these changes has been much more obvious in historic and old district of the city leading to diverse problems and also inefficiencies in urban life. In Iran, transposition of traditional society to modern one, have made many pleasant and unpleasant influences on our life style, behavior as well as cultural patterns and also on spatial and physical structure of cities and buildings. Due to disappearance of traditional urbanization in Iran, spatial-physical structure of cities have been changed and by prevalence of motor vehicles in urban life and their consequent changes in geometry of urban circulation have become more obvious. It seems that since Iranian society has experienced transposition of traditional to modern society without any scientific, cultural, educational and artistic infrastructures, the most of the problems are related to the old texture of city in Iran which has resulted from inadequate recognition and understanding of its character, capabilities as well as cultural, socio-historic and architectural heritage further disabling it to adopt contemporary urban life. Besides, most of the challenges which has been faced in the rehabilitation of old texture in historic cities of Iran, are not unique; however, the magnitude of the issues is compounded by the size of the old area in each city, the excessive rapid growth of the city and the precarious nature of the urban structure. Pragmatic approaches and flexible mechanisms are needed to create opportunities for the growth and capable development of driving the area’s economy, in order to attract new urban life, investment and ensure that the benefits of growth are equitably distributed. As the city continues to grow, the social and economic issues facing planners and city officials will become increasingly complex to negotiate and resolve. The greatest challenge is the elaboration of a comprehensive understanding of development process of the city that will promote local growth objectives in light of its physical, social, political and economic characteristics.It is decided in this paper to depict a clear definition of old texture of the city in Iran is presented and its spatial-physical characteristics are analyzed.

A series of cultural and environmental factors including (but not limited to) individual and collective values, events, forms, colors and textures shape the place identity. Place identity is a dynamic phenomenon and is subject to change through the time and due to relevant spatial and functional changes. City squares as public spaces and the places for social interactions have an important role in configuration of urban identity, place identity and people sense of belonging. Ayalat square of Urmia and Hassan Abad Square of Tehran, which both of them have been designed and constructed in early 1930s, have also been faced to changes through the time. Certain buildings with different architectural styles and patterns are added and some of their spatial and functional features have been altered as a result of some repair and restoration activities. Consequently, the place identities of Ayalat and Hassan Abad squares have been changed. In addition, the sense of belonging to place is an influential factor in the assessment of human - place relationships and a major consideration to creation of city public spaces. Nevertheless, the sense of belonging to place and investigation of place identity configuration basic factors are so important. The focal point of this study is a comparative evaluation of citizens’ sense of belonging to Ayalat Square of Urmia and Hasan Abad Square of Tehran regarding the place identity. The place identification factors are considered and specified to define the relationship of the place identity in the sense of belonging to a place. A descriptive/analytical research method has been adopted and implemented based on the direct observations and the field surveys as well. In addition a literature review has been done to find out how far the relationship between the sense of belonging to place and the place identity is studied in the realm of architecture and environmental studies. The result of this review demonstrates that there are a few materials on the subject and may say the research can be considered as an original one. The field surveys are mainly carried out using a Likert Scale questionnaire which was designed to detect and examine the sense of belonging to place in correlation with the place identity indices. In each case study a 100 person/citizens are randomly asked to fill the questionnaire on site in Tehran and Urmia. The statistical societies are configured by individuals from a divert spectrum of occupancy, age and education. Data analysis and interpretation of the extracted results from the questionnaire suggest a meaningful relationship between the sense of belonging to place and the place identity. So, the research findings show that where the place identification factors are scored as low, the sense of belonging to place is dropped to the lower levels. The comparison of the gained results from the two case studies indicates that the citizens’ sense of belonging to the Ayalat Square of Urmia is stronger than the citizens’ sense of belonging to Hasan Abad Square of Tehran, at least in the relevant surveyed statistical societies.

One of the most critical aspects of controlling the quality of a design project, is believed to be the "Evaluation" stage. Architects’ responsibilities are not well defined and reinforced in the design process of a project in our country. On the contrary, in the US, the American Institute of Architects contract defines "Post Design Evaluation" as the sixth step of the architect’s responsibilities in a design process. In that country, General Services Administration (GSA) uses Post Occupancy Evaluations (POEs) to assess how building projects perform. The evaluations take a close look at the end-user satisfaction, sustainability, operational effectiveness, and compliance with GSA’s design standards. In contrast to GSA’s building Commissioning Program, which evaluates building performance from project planning through tenant occupancy, a POE evaluates how a building performs six months to two years after occupancy. It provides an overview of how a building functions in operation. During this evaluation five steps recommended as the process steps: a) Determine the appropriate approach; b) Collecting data; c) Analysis; d) Conclusions and data explanation and e) Test the results.GSA’s POE tools and methods are characterized by evaluation of real world performance of occupied buildings:• Physical measurements of indoor environmental quality (acoustics, air quality, lighting, thermal conditions),• Evaluation tools such as space utilization surveys, floor plan analysis, and social network analysis objectively records about the use under occupation space,• "Assessment factors" are assessed conditions by evaluating systems, controls, energy use, and water use, and by interviewing facility managers,• Web-based surveys broadly gauge occupant satisfaction with as-delivered building services and design features.By looking at the massive records of constructing buildings in Iran it is obvious, except for a few percentages, that most buildings do not satisfy their users and inhabitants. Most users complain about the low quality of their projects. Since the users pay a lot of money, they expect to receive a better-quality buildings than what the architects/builders provide. In order to overcome this shortcoming and deficiency in Iran, it is necessary to look at the Post Occupancy Evaluation, and expect the architects to consider that during the design process.Concepts such as "maintenance" and "post occupancy evaluation" seem to be unfamiliar to the field of this profession. As a result, most problems and Difficulties with constructions seem to repeat themselves in most projects.This article makes an attempt to review the importance and necessity of "post occupancy evaluation". It reviews different methods of evaluation, and it defines the most appropriate evaluation methods during each phase of the design process. Evaluation in architecture is also considered as a method for management control and analysis. Concepts related to evaluation in the field of construction are very broad and they are usually valid during the whole process of design and performance.The results of this article will provide the architects and the constructor managers different Post Occupancy Evaluation models to compare between different evaluation methods within various aspects of "phenomenon", "process evaluation", "functional performance" and "technical performance" in a project.

Cities are the living organisms and constantly changing and evolving. Changes in the physical, socio-cultural, and natural environment are inevitable in the process of urban development. These changes are the result of planning through development plans or they happen without any planning. Obviously, changes that are along with the past are optimized and changes that are discontinuous with it are not. Trend of changes in recent decades shows that natural values and sometimes historical and heritage values have been overlooked. The disappearance of these values, results in destroying the identity of cities.Citizens take more responsibility to their urban environment. Their behavior in the urban environment that called "environmental behavior" may seem small, but when it is viewed as a whole, shows its importance. Citizens don’t only have the right of contributing to improve the urban environment but also have the duty of protecting different values in cities. Citizens should recognize their duties and know that they should raise their awareness of the urban problems, being sensitive and concern for the problems, enhance their skills to decrease these problems, and participate in solving these problems, to create environmental citizenship behavior.Thus, in this paper, after reviewing the existing literature in the field of environmental behavior, the most important contexts and factors of environmental behavior have been extracted. Environmental behavior of Qazvin's citizens has been reviewed and analyzed also. This city, in recent decades, had faced with considerable development pace and some problems such as, loss of orchards surrounding the city (environmental values) and the loss of historical contexts (historical_ heritage values). So, after evaluating the sensitivity and concerns of Qazvin's citizens about the main changing trends, the level of environmental citizenship behavior is questioned and both the causes and contexts of this behavior are obtained. Total purpose of this study is identification and analysis of contexts of Qazvin citizen's environmental behavior and its methodologies are survey and Correlational. Population of this study is Qazvin citizens that base of Cochran Formula, the number of sample is 233 people. In order to analyze the questions of the questionnaire, one-dimensional square test and to find the correlation between variables, Spearman correlation and Kruskal–Wallis tests are used. The results indicate a low level of environmental citizenship behavior of citizens in Qazvin. The most important factors in this case, are the low level of knowledge, lack of infrastructure, institutional, and legal factors for the occurrence of these behaviors.In fact, among the three actions that are defined in this study as the environmental behavior (including membership in environmental organizations, increase the knowledge on urban environmental issues, and protest to urban environment problems), Qazvin's citizens only study environmental issues, and other behaviors are very low. Accordingly, Citizenship education, codification (according to the Legal rights and criminal rights together), demonstrating the desired behavior or the consequences of inappropriate behavior and providing the contextual factors to outbreak the behavior (especially increase the communications between the public and authorities), are the main suggestions for changing environmental citizenship behavior.

The aesthetics is the quality of being pleasing, especially to look at, or someone or something that gives great pleasure, especially when looking at it. The conception of aesthetic is used in art, sociology, social psychology, and culture. Thus, aesthetics is one of the issues which are parts of concern to all human beings, and especially architecture and urban planning designer. The factors achieving to it that help to success and then to enhance the function of a residential area. Therefore, considering the importance of addressing this issue and extract metrics, this study aims to provide aesthetic standards in the design of housing and residential areas, consider to identify of the aesthetic elements of traditional houses in Yazd. Yazd has a rich architectural and historical importance. Therefore, it could be fertile ground for recognizing the criteria of aesthetic in architecture. In order to achieve this goal, it is tried based on Grounded Theory Method and identification that derived from the design of housing and residential areas on the aesthetic elements of the home that shaped based on the perception of the aesthetic of interviewees from the spaces. In this way, in order to study first, seven examples of traditional houses in Yazd, used as Architectural College, which considered as a case study, The continuous presence and personal observations and interviews realized in the deep and open to present residents of these houses that include 25 students and staffs. Aesthetic elements of these houses identified by using a systematic method, Strauss and Corbin analyzed and explained in three openings, axial and selective coding. A study using grounded theory is likely to begin with a question, or even just with the collection of qualitative data. As researchers review the data collected, repeated ideas, concepts or elements become apparent, and tagged with codes, which have been extracted from the data. As more data are collected and re-reviewed, codes can be grouped into concepts and then into categories. Finally, in order to further the validity of research results, research findings obtained from field studies in comparative comparison put by the concepts and principles. The results show that four general agents such as: A) Effects on aesthetic of nature, such as the manifestation of the trees, sky, water, clay and effects of light. B) The manifestation of unification by using simplicity, arrangement, symmetry, rhythm, concentrative geometry, duplication, using proportion; C) Emphasis on the effects of space on the observer (attention to depth watch in different views) by creating virtual images in water, creating consecutive views and using customary decorations D) The emphasis on meaning through symbolic elements and the concept of the amazing memories (The possibility of The manifestation of mind familiar phenomena from the perspective of these houses present residents were reconditioned by creating niches). It is noted that each of these elements have been achieved through the factors that have been detailed expressed during the investigation. The results obtained in this study can be followed as a new research for affirming theories obtained.

In this paper, with a different perspective, the understanding of people (common people and architectural specialists) of "Contemporary Iranian Architecture" term was analyzed. For this purpose, at first definitions and characteristics that have been described by theoreticians of Iranian contemporary architecture for Iranian architecture were overviewed and an intern structural classification of those definitions was provided based on logical reasoning research method using fundamental components of definitions to specify the position of this study. Later, focusing on four intellectual movements classified by Habibi (2006) in "Description of Intellectual Movements of Architecture and Urban engineering in Contemporary Iran" Book: (fundamentalism, traditionalism, modernism-vernacularism and mannerism), the peoples' understanding of these distinguishes and its general validity were assessed.For this purpose, two specified semantic components of each one of these classifications were extracted and mixed with each other (total eight components). Thereafter, two images of architecture related to each category were selected. These images were offered in a survey study to two groups of audiences for assessment including common audiences and professional architects, based on quantitative method and semantic differentiation technique, using eight semantic components. To use the components in semantic differentiation table, agreed and opponent item of each one of components was provided in a table. This study was applied with the objective of specifying if selections of audiences are close to the main classifications or not, secondly specifying the significance of disagreement of two audience groups (professional architect and common audience) statistically and specifying the closeness of ideas of each one of classes to the characteristics claimed in the main theory of this classification.Nowadays, it is discussed on Iranian architecture or Islamic architecture and there are very agreements and disagreements in this relation. Basically, Iranian architecture is attributed to historical architecture; whether if Iranian architecture is supposed excluded to those models or something arising from principles and structures stipulated herein. Its history also may be assumed different. For instance, the architecture related to a period that Iran was very powerful in governing and conquest and what remained from this era as monuments are supposed as monuments remained as Iranian symbols and models and use of those symbols whether symbolically or functionally is assumed as Iranian architecture. Another group assumes the Iranian architecture containing principles which have been applied as basis for definition of Iranian architecture and these principles may be represented referring to the history and instances of Iranian traditional architecture.In all of them, the instance of Iranian architecture and what is assumed as Iranian-being is relied on the opinion of specialists, but it is not very obvious that if common people can understand the Iranian nature of architecture with these instances and principles. Thus, in this paper, the subject of Iranian architecture definitions is analyzed with a different viewpoint and as perspective of audiences except specialists which are presented in two theoretical (analysis of Iranian architecture and revision of Iranian architecture definitions) and practical parts (field survey, analyzing that concept practically and comparison of common and professional architects' opinions).

Upgrading environmental security of historical context that are going to be abandoned, due to main components in addition to creating peace from being in a safe environment, also it causes to attract tourists. Success and sustainable growth of tourism depends on well-functioning and coordinated numerous elements and factors which are interconnected. One of the most important of these factors is the safety of tourists and tourist destination. Accordingly, by recreating in accordance with maximum efficiency and increasing security, the abandoned environments provide people optimal background activities in these environments. The development of tourism industry in Iran as a way of diversification of revenue of the country should be considered more than ever by planners and policy makers, because Iran despite of having a history of ancient civilizations and diverse historical and cultural attractions still has not used the advantages of this industry in a proportional place. The unfulfilled security needs of the audience with the historical context of cities, not only prevents from reaching to higher level needs such as self-actualization, aesthetic, knowing and understanding, but also reduce social interaction and ultimately they are followed by vacant and abandoned historic neighborhoods.So, the impact of the main components in increasing environmental security in two groups of residents and tourists of Charkhab neighborhood is targeted. In order to collect data on the theoretical basis, the studies in five sectors including the historical context of tourism, health & safety in connection with the tourists, safe urban environment, security of urban fabric, and similar examples in the world are followed to respond the research question based on that gathered information. The used method in this study is causal-comparative and by means of questionnaires and observation to analyze the views of residents and tourists and by taking advantage of existing library resources and collecting information, Charkhab neighborhood is selected as the sample and it is periodic. Data analysis was performed by using SPSS software that Student T test for independent groups of the assumption of homogeneity of variances was used to check the effect of the main components of environmental security Statistical population of the study, due to the uncertainty of tourists' population, is available sampling method considered, as 120 people were used (60 people per group). Finally, research indicates that between environment main components that include: Form and size of the space, environmental visual comfort, spatial organization and permeability, quality of buildings and land use perspective from two groups, there is a difference and in terms of tourists compared to Charkhab neighborhood residents is less secure. However, in prioritizing the main components in terms of both groups, visual comfort is in highest rank and permeability is lower in rank. So, in the end by presenting the main strategies to promote environmental security has been provided, and the threat of spatial opportunities to reduce the security feeling cause the increasing presence of more tourists in historic neighborhoods that have strong potential for tourism in Iran, and promote the dynamism and vitality in historic neighborhoods.