Old and New Cultural Identity: Decodification of National/ Transnational and Traditional/Modern Architecture of Mahestan

Mahestan is a shopping centre located in the City of Karaj in west part of Tehran. This building has been constructed based on idea of making connection and friendship between all those elements which considered as a very contradictional issues. Traditional elements belong to 1000 historical heritage of Iranian/Islamic architecture has been amalgamated with high-tech elements of modern architecture such as rotating restaurant, panorama elevator and many advanced modern elements of building construction. This paper is a cultural and semiological decodification of overt and covert meanings existed in the building. For such a decodification, long history of architecture tradition in Iran has been reviewed and at the same time by cultural studies approach many unseen factors of what said and what not said in the building brought into discussion. Mahestan is an example of nostalgic portrayed of Iranian culture, a culture which look for progress and tradition at the same time.