JOURNAL OF ARCHITECTURE STUDIES
Year:2012 | Volume:1 | Issue:1|Papers Count:6

Mohammad-Karim Pirnia, one of the most prominent scholars of the history of Iranian architecture, had two major achievements: The principles of Iranian architecture and the stylistics of Iranian architecture. In this article we will discuss his suggested principles for Iranian architecture. For this purpose, we will first show how his five principles have evolved and completed through time. Following that, we will mention his words about each of the principles which we have gathered from their original but widely spread sources and will present them in integrated and coherent terms. In another section of the article, we will deliberate upon the entirety of these principles and evaluate their worthiness for specifying Iranian architecture. We will strive to study and criticize Pirnia’s motivations for proposing them and their assumptions, and tacit implications. In the end we will show that the current order and content of these principles have an outer and inner side. Their appearance is in accordance with the necessities of Pirnia’s time and it’s possible that they may not be suited or credible for Iranian architectural historians of our time; but their inner side is a valuable element for identifying and understanding Iranian architecture in the context of Iranian culture. In this case, we will be able to reread Pirnia’s principles and use them to serve the improvement of research on the history of Iranian architecture and its development.

According to the standing points & principles of Recognition in Islamic unitary thought, the most important angle from which every subject (such as: theory of Islamic Architecture & Urbanism) is to study, define & analisis, is the angle of reason and wisdom. Achieving the clear, truthful & real knowledge, the Moslem artist, architect and/or urban designer studies the “Malakoot-i Wojood” (the unseen reasonable truth of Being) and all the flowing subjects within it, including the intrinsic truth of the city, through the way of heart (or in other words, from the sight of Godly Reason & Wisdom). Being based upon such a vision, the “clearity”, “readability”, “stability” and “consistency” of theoretical & practical structure of every issue is driven from the inherent clearity, consistency and stability of the used essential wisdom. And, therefore, the “unclearness”, “obscurity”, “doubtfulness” and insecurity in every system (such as: the spatial structure of a city) is the direct result of “ignorance” (or, in other words, the absenteeism of logical thoughts). Being benefited by a reasonable & logical mind, architect & architecture (or urban designer & urbanism) is otomatically protected from any possible doubtfulness and uncertainty, and a kind of consistency, independency and truthful–secure stability is created in the structure of the builded city. The essence of reason (or wisdom) is “Uniqeness”, and the fruitage is unity & oneness, and therefor, there is no way of multiplicity, confliction & contradiction to it.

Valuable Iranian traditional architectural works show that they were made by the artists who had high artistic, technical, and cultural abilities, and such capabilities in these people show that they had good knowledge of architecture. So, despite the lack of academic educational system during that time, the existence of these capabilities could not be carried out only by personal experiences without having proper professional trainings. The current Iranian system of architectural education has been established by imitation of some western educational system and some changes in them. So, the current Iranian architectural education deprived itself from using the past positive experiences. Hence, to improve architectural education in the contemporary era it can be useful to recognize the experiences that were used previously in our country and combine their positive aspects with current educational system. Therefore, the main question of the article is what the main characters of traditional architectural education were. This study with a qualitative approach used Grounded Theory method to study the system of traditional architectural education in Iran and evaluates it based on theory of whole brain education to recognition the positive features of it. The result shows that the traditional architecture education in Iran was not merely based on practical education and theoretical educations had also significant role in it.

Traditional architecture of the historical cities in Iran contains valuable lessons related to architecture and urban design. A considerable group of these strategies are those that are used in outdoor urban spaces in desert cities providing a safe and sustainable microclimate to live in the harsh desert for more than thousands of years. This article will decode these strategies by doing field study in hot summer and cold winter of Kashan, a historical city of Esfahan Province by nearly 7000 years of civilization in the edge of “Dasht Desert” in the centre of Iran. The weather data are collected in 11-12 July 2011 and 11-12 Jan 2012; the summit of summer and winter. A mobile Kestrel Personal Weather station is used to collect the data in the traditional part of the city such as Bazar, mosque yard, wide and narrow streets, covered streets (Sabat) and squares. The data are collected for every 30 second to clarify the differences in microclimate condition in each outdoor space. A Kestrel weather station that is fixed on the roof of a historical house is used to collect the reference data as local climate. All the data are analyzed by UTCI (Universal Temperature Climate Index) as one of the most reliable and newest outdoor thermal index. The collected weather data are compared in four levels of: 1) long-term city climate, 2) short-term city climate, 3) local climate and 4) microclimate. The long term meteorology data of Kashan is used to show the ordinary climate condition of the city in different years. The hourly meteorology data of kashan in the days of observation is used to show the short term city climate. The data collected on the roof is used to show the local climate of the traditional part of the city. The data collected by the moving Kestrel in the observed outdoor spaces is used to show the microclimate changes. To speed up the analyzing process a new software is designed called SIKRON that is able to convert the meteorology data of temperature and humidity on the psychrometric chart of the outdoor thermal index UTCI. The results of this research has shown that the effect of architectural strategies used in different outdoor spaces, have very good ability to modify.

This research pursues the cognition Architectural and Landscape characteristics of gardens of Ghasre Ghajar of Tehran and Takht of Shiraz, also trying to attain structural-essential patterns in both and the ways these two relate to each other, with the aim of revitalizing the patterns of terraced garden and then implementing in new Architectural-Landscape projects. This attempt is justified with the fact that this two gardens were the most prominent and important examples of terraced gardens which in turn was the most beautiful and rare types of Iranian gardens. The hypothesis of research is the use of patterns of architecture and landscape Takht garden in Ghasre Ghajar garden. The research that is forming with librarian method, investigates the limits of this influence to see whether it is limited to just structural and physical aspects or Ghasre Ghajar garden has also adopted characteristic design patterns and fundamental principles of Architecture and Landscape design of Takht garden. As an introduction and pre requisition for analysis and comparisons between structural-physical-characteristical patterns of this two gardens, the description and history of the Takht garden, accompanied with the precise structural description of both two gardens is presented here. The result of this research shows that considering all the analysis and comparisons–done in this research- and the succession of Ghasre Ghajar garden to Takht garden, it was influenced only structural-physical aspects of its landscape design and there are characterestical differences between design patterns of these two which have laid the ground for the realization of two different kinds of relation between garden and nature. Takht garden, like common trends of relation between nature and garden in Persian garden, has chosen the " with nature" trend, on the contrary(and to the most Persian gardens) Ghasre Ghajar garden has approached to the "dominant on nature" trend.

Meet people's schema of the house, play a decisive role in their satisfaction of the habitat. This image, which is influenced by culture among residents of a community, is an approximate unit. However, this image has been broking but there are people in some regions of Iran which have this consistent pattern and image. They did not accept new patterns and tried to revive old patterns and schema. This article examines the schema of house among Barresar residents, after 1990 Rudbar-Manjil earthquake. People in this area response to reconstructed houses which were against their schema, in different ways by physical change in the houses and some hidden manners. Since the main subjects of article are the schema of houses and determination of residents' behavior, qualitative research method undertakes to gather data and analyze them.