An Evaluation of the Relation between " Awareness" of Persian Garden Pattern and " Desire" to Use it in Landscape Designs Comparing landscape architecture students with professional designers

Persian Garden is a cultural landscape which has been made from an interaction between Iranians minds and the nature of geographical context over a long period of time. Lack of continuity in using Persian Garden Pattern for contemporary landscape design in Iran was like a danger bell, which first rang when Naser al-Din Shah ruled as the king of Iran, by starting construction of parks. In fact the sound of that bell is being heard louder nowadays. Although it was a decade ago when the degree “Master of Art” (M.A.) has established for a discipline called “the landscape architecture” in Iran relying on understanding and appreciating the importance of Iranian nature as well as the cultural characteristics, the process of using imported design patterns and lack of continuity in using the pattern of Persian garden is still in progress. The process is a serious threat for Persian Gardens. The first step, in this paper, is the introduction of Persian Garden as a cultural landscape, and the second one is emphasizing the role of architecture education in speeding up the process of switching from “gardens” to “parks”. The consequences of new architecture education system, which is the gap between “academic education” and “practical jobs”, are among the main reasons of this change. Among lots of reasons for lacking the continuity in using the mentioned pattern and with regard to degree of M.A. in landscape architecture in Iran and the quantitative method, in this paper, understanding Persian Garden by landscape architecture students and designers as well as the experts identified as the key point of landscape architecture education. The results of this research show that academic education has led to raise awareness and increase in understanding Persian Garden by landscape architecture students, designers and experts. However, raising awareness was not fair to everyone. The level of awareness and understanding Persian Garden pattern is higher among designers and experts in comparison with landscape architecture students or newly-graduated students who may not have many practical experiences. This means that the process of raising awareness for understanding the pattern should not be stopped by graduation, and practical experience may provide opportunities to answer the questions which might not have answered or even brought up during academic education. Other results of the investigation demonstrate that the difference in level of awareness does not directly result in desires to use the pattern of Persian Gardens in landscapes. Among the students, raising the awareness results in using the pattern more; and it is not so necessarily among the professionals. This shows the existence of other factors in practical experience. In other words, even though the issue of education is still remained, and finding a solution for the problem has great importance, it may not lead to boost the use of Persian Garden pattern. In this paper, firstly the necessity of revising the subjects studied in this field in universities of Iran is exposed in order to fill gaps. Secondly, it identifies the importance of many factors which do not guarantee the use of Persian Garden pattern as a result education. Recognizing these factors may be the beginning of another research.