Phenomenological investigation in the event of archetype recognition in Islamic-Iranian architecture

In recent years and mostly in the shadow of modernism thinking in architecture and urban fields, some buildings and contexts have been emerged which their developers are, more than anything proud of their Avant-Garde and unique creations and even their whimsical features. Insistence of modernists on creating environments with same standards and different characters for people, has led to bewilderment, chaos, confusion and triviality in modern urban environments. However with passing of the time and clarification of the issues related to developing constructions without paying attention to the culture and history of nations, the necessity of thematic review led to start of new investigation in searching original basis for constructions and environmental elements which could reconnect the people and their local environment. With the rise of discussions in Environmental Psychology, history, native culture and etc., Archetypes were proposed as one of the most important and determinative aspects in designing human-built environments. Archetypes are defined as ‘The Basic, Original and Sustainable Ideas’ which is the result of thousands of years of history, experience and human collective memory which has been stored in human’s unconscious memory. Likewise in the cultural zone of Iran with all the past history, such basic ideas and various archetypes must have existed in order to integrate different social groups in this large and colorful society through relatively coherent set of environmental elements. Therefore this article is an effort to answer to the related questions; can the model and bipolar idea of ‘Up-Down’ be defined as an archetype or basic idea in Iran? Does the possible existence of this idea only belong to the past? Is this idea present at human environments and models of architectural and urban environments in the present time too? For this purpose, besides mentioning the meaning of Subjective/Objective axis of Up-Down and its vital relation with linguistic concepts, worthiness and behavioral patterns and templates of various local architecture environments, the existence of this archetype or basic idea is proved via research in different samples and cases and its application has also been analyzed here. The method used here is Descriptive Analysis, and in particular; Content Analysis and inferential Analysis. Research data have been quantified and analyzed using Cochran formula and the questionnaires have been distributed by random sampling method for each case, and the data has been descriptively analyzed. The results of the surveys show that our perception of traditional and even modern environments is still influenced by linguistic concepts and basic ideas and the Archetype mentioned in this research has an unmistakable presence in our life today.