The history of public mentalities as an influential factor on the quality of housing

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.