JOURNAL OF ARCHITECTURE STUDIES
Year:2020 | Volume:8 | Issue:16|Papers Count:12

The Persian Garden has had various functions during its history and has been host to numerous events. Henceforth, in addition to the main building of the garden, it is essential to examine other structures in it as well. The Nazar Garden of Shiraz, dating from at least the Zand period, has always been the key garden in the Zandieh complex, which has gone through many functional modifications throughout its history. The purpose of this research is to identify the buildings of this garden from the Zand era up to the present time, and their architectural and geometric values as well. The strategy of this research is "interpretive-historical" and it aims to narrate the development of the auxiliary buildings based on texts, images, photographs, and other limited available documentation. The results of this research show that this garden had always been a royal/ceremonial center up to the Pahlavi era, and in the contemporary period, it has acquired a cultural character. Other than the main building (Kolah-Farangi), other buildings include the “ Gatehouse” , the “ Ayeneh (Mirror) Building” or the “ Palace of Homayoun” (including three inter-connected buildings), and the “ Khorshid (Sun) Building” , which were built during the Qajar period. The Ayeneh Building, the most significant official building of the garden, has a mirror-worked iwan and was decorated with plinths depicting the heroes of the Shah-nameh. It was built on the northwest side of the garden. The Khorshid Building is located north of the garden and served administrative purposes. The development of the garden buildings can be classified into six phases: 1. Formation of the primary buildings (Zand period); 2. Transformation (Fath-‘ Ali Shah period); 3. Continuity and deterioration (Mohammad Shah and Nasser-ad-Din Shah); 4. Flourishing (Mozaffar-ad-Din Shah), 5. Deterioration (Ahmad Shah), and 6. Destruction (Pahlavi I).

The Jami‘ Mosque of Bam has gone through a long process of transformations including restoration, reconstruction, and renovation. Much of these works were hidden inside the physical form until the earthquake of 2003 uncovered important structures, among them, the original portal and the flanking twin minarets. These findings question the previously accepted timeline for the mosque and pose new questions that had not been discussed previously. The objective of this paper is to introduce the original form of the portal and locating its modifications on the timeline of the mosque according to a descriptive-analytical method. On the basis of remaining evidence such as architectural remnants, mudbrick sizes, the height of imposts, the thickness of the flanking pillars, and the diameter of the minarets’ shafts, the entrance portal is dated to the fourteenth century AD, very similar to other Muzaffarid and Timurid portals that are high and lofty.

During two seasons of archaeological excavations on the historical site of Veliran of Damavand, some structural remnants dating to the Sassanid period were identified. The structure consists of a tower and a rampart, as well as several rooms organized on the two sides of a passage. The architectural findings in the archeological site of Veliran help us know the Damavand region as it was during the Sassanid period, and in a broader sense, contribute to our knowledge on defensive/military architecture as well as the political and social structures of the Sassanid era. The significance of this study is that only limited excavations and studies of the castles of the Sassanid era has been carried out to date, and very little information is available regarding their architecture and construction system. Damavand area has been important in terms of geographical location and communication throughout history, especially during the Parthian and Sassanid periods. This area was located at the crossroads of Tabarestan, Rey, and Qumes, and has always been among the most important cultural centers. The study of the architecture of the historic Veliran site can compensate for our little knowledge of Sassanid-era architecture in the northern territories of the state. The present paper seeks to identify the function and the time of construction of this complex through a descriptive-analytical method, while introducing the architecture and architectural features uncovered at the historical site. The results of this research show that the architecture is that of a castle built in the late Sassanid period. It was used as food storage and warehouse of goods, and most probably was destroyed in the early Islamic period.

Designers usually use precedents in their designs. They may use them through different stages of the design process and to different ends. As this use is important, the study of its positive and negative aspects has encouraged numerous studies to find out about the correct way of using them. In this paper, the use of design precedents is studied by interviewing professional architects and the results have been compared with other studies. Therefore, the aim of this study is to assess the ways professional architecture designers in Iran use design precedents, how they find them, in which stages they refer to them, and how they utilize them in their design process. Survey research is conducted using semi-structured interviews with nine professional architects of Iran, and qualitative content analysis is performed on the results of the interviews. The results identify different criteria that were used in the selection, study techniques, and adaptation of precedents, and reveal that reference to precedents happen at all stages of the design process. However, the type of selected precedents and the strategies to use them are very important to the final design, and reference to precedents cannot be limited to any special architectural type or to any specific stages of design.

Entrance to sacred places where pilgrims enter enthusiastically for pilgrimage and request for divine bestowal expose one of the characteristics of pilgrimage called the hierarchy of entry. There have been numerous studies on the necessity and quality of sequential spaces for entry to sacred sites in Iran, but little research has been done on the cognitive impact of this hierarchy on the visitor (pilgrim or tourist). The findings of this study show that the shrine of Hazrat-e Ma‘ soumeh (pbuh) always had a spatial hierarchy during the Safavid and Qajar periods, although it was constantly modified, and still different from how it is currently. This paper seeks to study the cognitive impact of the hierarchy of entry on the visitors of Hazrat-e Ma‘ sumeh holy shrine. In order to reconstruct a proper picture of entry into the shrine in the Safavid and Qajar periods, a descriptive research method was used to analyze library sources, most importantly, pictorial sources (maps, engravings, and photographs) and written sources containing the history of the city of Qom— especially the travelogues written by pilgrims, merchants, and travelers who traveled to or passed through Qom. Since this study seeks to understand the cognitive impacts of the hierarchy of entry to sacred places, travelogues are the most important sources of research as they express the perception of writers upon their entrance to the shrine. Examination of visual sources and texts of travelogues reveals a clear picture of the hierarchy of entry to the shrine, as well as its development from the Safavid period to the end of the Qajar period. This paper, for the first time, introduces the hierarchy of entry to the holy shrine of Hazrat-e Ma‘ soumeh (pbuh) with details of sequential spaces and their cognitive impact on visitors.

Ecological Psychology and Micro-Sociology studies concerning behavioral-milieu systems have created an important basis for evaluation and prediction of the performance of built environments. In this context, the Behavior Setting Theory introduced by Roger Barker in 1968 defines the complicated behavioral-milieu framework or synomorphy as the determining factor of the environmental behaviors of people. Therefore, comparing synomorphy of various behavioral settings will help enhance the performance of built environments. Understanding the interaction of environment and behavior, behavioral affordances of the built environment, and behavior occurrences in coordination with the ecological environment are the aims of this research. This research is a comparative study of the Tajrish Historical Bazaar and Arg shopping center in Tehran, Iran. This applied, descriptive-analytical research uses a qualitativequantitative approach, with data collection through surveys, ethnography, and fieldwork techniques such as observation without intervention. Data analysis is done through deductiveinductive reasoning. The result of eight surveyed behavior patterns shows that regarding "quality of mobility", "affordance of hosting behavioral diversity and change over the time", "quality of social interactions", and "quality of behavioral control", the two behavior settings differ. Comparative study of 28 parameters of milieu structure and 4 parameters of social structure in these two ecological environments point to behavioral mobility, diversity of innovative behavioral strategies, and passionate and brief human interactions in the Tajrish Bazaar, whereas to less mobility and reduction of selective and social behaviors in Arg shopping center. This research concluded that the Tajrish Bazaar is high in synomorphy, which has resulted in the development of ongoing and innovative interactions between people and the ecological environment, while Arg shopping center is low in synomorphy, resulting in the limited diversity of environmental behaviors.

This research is aimed at reviving the positive aspects of extended family households. The impacts of extended family living on housing design are studied in two steps. In the first step, the history and precedents of extended family housing are explored in both traditional and modern societies. Aside from courtyard houses, numerous other models of extended family housing are introduced and it is shown that there are many such architectural models within and outside the Islamic societies. With the reinterpretation of the “ extension” of family, many alternative types of modern communities and housing can also be regarded as relating to this study. In the second step, research was conducted on Afghan immigrants to recognize their extended family conditions as an ideal model within the Islamic context and the feasibility of its contemporary reproduction. The selection of Afghans for the study was reasonable for their relatively long presence within Iranian society. Ultimately, thirty-six families were selected with semi-snowball sampling. The ethnographic study was done in two stages. At the first stage, data was collected through direct observation, open-ended questions, semi-open-ended questions, and interviews with families. For the second stage, in-depth interviews with three of the thirty-six families were conducted. They were those families whose life experiences covered almost all ranges of extended-family lived memories. Data analysis was done through three conceptual frames: mental-emotional persistence, behavioral duration, and bodily (physical) continuity within new houses. The study shows that people with previous experience of extended family living inside traditional houses not only preserve their emotional relationships with those behavioral patterns but also try to regenerate those space-behavior patterns inside the not-so-compatible modern house designs.

Kashan is a city in Iran with a host of traditional houses that date to the Qajar period. Sociocultural and climatic factors have had the greatest impact on their spatial configurations. In this study, focusing on entrances, the spatial configuration of houses in Kashan is analyzed. Houses are first categorized in terms of physical form in four categories: single-courtyard houses with massing on two sides; single-courtyard houses with massing on three sides; single-courtyard houses with massing on four sides; and double-courtyard houses with massing on four sides. In the second step, the number of entrances and their positions were identified. Next, spatial configuration analysis is used to analyze entrances in each category. In this regard, two indices of integration and step depth (visual connection) are assessed. In the third step, the arrangement of summer and winter sections of houses in each group was investigated based on Justified Graphs and Visibility Graph Analysis. The main hypothesis of this study is that houses in each category have similar spatial connections and that the spatial organization of the summer and winter sections are different. In addition, the relationship between the entrance spaces and residential spaces in each category is discussed. The results show that in terms of spatial configuration, there are houses with different visual depths in each category, but similar sociocultural implications are evident in all configurations that are based on sociocultural characteristics of Iranian-Islamic architecture in Kashan. Also, the spatial organization of the summer and winter living sections is varied. With regard to entrances, it was observed that in all categories, an increase in the number of entrances does not necessarily reduce the visual layering of houses.

The structure of public spaces, particularly, the religious sites of Iran in the Islamic era follow the teachings and principles of Islam. Hosseinieh buildings are among the most significant of this type of public spaces whose function is related to one of the most significant religious communal rituals, i. e., mourning for the Third Shi‘ a Imam. The main purpose of this study is to identify functional patterns in space by observing the behaviors performed in communal rituals in hosseiniehs of Taft. For this purpose, twelve hosseiniehs of Taft were studied according to a descriptive-survey research method with data collected from field surveys as well as documentary and library studies. After sampling, the physical conditions of selected buildings were drawn through field surveys. Next, during a specific timeframe (the first ten days of the month of Muharram), activities and behaviors of mourners were recorded through non-interventional techniques such as photography, note-taking, as well as the types and locations where certain behaviors occured without awareness of participants. Subsequently, the recorded behaviors were converted to graphs based on graph theory. By analyzing the graphs, common features were determined and then, the final patterns of behavior was produced. The findings of the investigation illustrate that establishing a “ relation between behavioral patterns of communal rituals with the spaces in a hosseinieh” contributes to making shared collective memories, a sense of belonging to space, and an opportunity for social interactions. Accordingly, it leads to the interaction between the physicality of the building and the content of the rituals.

It is essential to ensure that adequate daylight penetrates in, especially, educational environments. In spite of positive significant impacts of daylight on the emotions, concentration, and learning of students, an exceeded amount of light will lead to glare and visual dissatisfaction. Over the last few years, with the help of simulation tools and lighting indices, it is possible to predict lighting quality and assess the visual comfort of occupants. This research aims at determining the accuracy of daylight metrics in scholastic environments. To achieve this, the daylight performance of twenty studio spaces in Tehran was investigated through: 1) simulation and calculation of daylight and glare metrics; 2) design and analysis of a questionnaire to determine the degree of satisfaction of students. The outcomes of both methods were compared. The results show that among the metrics for predicting the amount of light, there is a stronger correlation between respondents’ perception and EP>n lx (nϵ [100-300]). The correlation decreases with EP-LEED, sDA, and UDI respectively, while no significant correlation is observed between glare metrics and respondents’ perception. According to the results, UDI300-3000, 50%>75% and ASE1000lx, 250h<10% are appropriate criteria for predicting visual comfort regarding lighting and disturbing glare.

The mismatches between the sensitivities, interests, attitudes, and values of an architecture instructor and the students regarding valuable and noteworthy elements of a design situation have always been encountered in architectural education. Specifically, as long as noteworthy elements from an instructor’ s point of view are not internalized in students’ value system, there will be no belief in their value or usefulness in the students’ design process and so, no guarantee of applying them in practice. The main question of the paper is, "How does internalization of a value and its placement in the student value system happen in the architectural design studio? " Thus, the main purpose of this paper is to formulate a model/theoretical framework for 'internalizing values'. In this regard, an educational "value internalization model" is first proposed by interpreting and analyzing library resources, with a special focus on the five-stage model of affective development known as the taxonomy of affective domain. It has five levels and reflects the learner's affective encounter with the value of things. The higher these levels go, the greater the value in the internal structure controlling one's behavior. The five levels of the proposed model are: passive motivation, active motivation, planning the value discovery scenario, planning the practice of facing multiple values, and finally planning practice in different situations. Then, to evaluate the practical performance of the proposed model, a quasi-experimental test is designed, implemented, and reported. The results show that applying the suggested model in the architectural design studio can increase the students’ affective development over what the tutor is looking for. Thus, if the mentioned valuable item is in the design situation, the students consider it important and use it in their design processes.

Annotations usually refer to marginal notes that explain a difficult or ambiguous subject, provide a general definition or a critical remark for a particular part of a text. Historically, annotating was a well-known tradition in Islamic sciences and was used especially in times when there were less new potentials for generating new knowledge. The main question of this research is, can the tradition of annotation transition to architectural studies and be used for mobilizing theoretical discussions? Accordingly, the main aim of this research is revitalizing this technique in contemporary architectural scholarship in a democratic way to develop new domains in science and theory, most distinctively regarding architecture. This research investigates the dimensions by descriptive-analytical and interpretive-historical approach. The paper consists of four main parts. In the first part, the necessity of paying attention to the mobilization of theoretical discussions in architecture is discussed. In the second part, related terminology and their meanings and a summary of annotation history are provided. In the third part, the applications and dimensions of annotation in architectural theory are presented. The final part contains some practical ideas as well as content-based and graphical methods of annotation. The main result of the research is a proposed framework for systematic thinking and applicable models of approach to the architectural literature review. The results show that annotation can help mobilize the internal intellectual movements in architecture. It can make use of newly available media that can affect architectural texts and their continuing regenerations.