A Comparative Study of the Influence of Culture on Entrances of Qajar Houses in Gilan and Mazandaran

The entrance of any house is a way for relationship between exterior and interior spaces and expressing the cultural characteristics of the residents and their beliefs in privacy and veil. The entrance of each building is the first place to encounter and familiarize with the house. This is also the identity of the building and plays an important role for representing the cultural characteristics of its inhabitants as a connector element of public realm to private space. This body is composed of components responsive to environmental, cultural, social and economic factors. The input space as a separator space is also a communicative one. One of its most important goals is to control the movement and to extend its path from outside to inside space. It also specifies the limits and methods of their social communication. It seems that Qajar houses of Gilan and Mazandaran, and consequently their entrances, due to the similarity of climate, are very similar. This comparative study reveals some differences in the shape and spatial organization, the degree of privacy, and the method of control of public and private domains. It is due to several factors such as differences in culture, geography, society and way of livelihoods. Although Qajar houses in Gilan and Mazandaran are very similar, they are not the same. This heterogeneity, which can be studied in both general form and spaces of the house, can be due to cultural, environmental, economic and social differences in the two studied areas. This paper focuses on cultural differences firstly by prioritizing culture in shaping the entrance, and then it shows the influences of the culture on the entrance of the houses.The hypothesis of this study is that the entrance features in Qajar houses in the cities of Gilan and Mazandaran are distinct due to different ways of life in these regions. To assess this claim, we will first consider into cultural differences. Then, we will select 12 cases of Qajar houses in old fabrics of Gilan and Mazandaran provinces, to examine the impact of lifestyle and culture on the structure of entrances. The samples were matched in two provinces equally. This means that houses belonging to the social classes are compared with each other in order to control the impact of the social class variable on the results of the research. The questions of this paper are as follows: 1) is the formation of the entrance of Qajar houses related to cultural characteristics in Gilan and Mazandaran? 2) Given the relationship between culture and architecture, do cultural differences affect the shape and organization of the inputs in the two regions? 3) Which features in the inputs are exploring cultural differences? In this research, cultural differences are first studied in Gilan and Mazandaran. In this regard, the four cultural layers are extracted from the Rappaport theories and analyzed in Gilan and Mazandaran communities of Qajar era. The first layer, which unites the architecture of houses, is lifestyle that has been associated with livelihoods in the studied area. It determines the extent and manner of social and kinship communication. The nature of the meetings and social relationships is the second layer of culture in the present study. The third layer is the customs that appear as a result of repeating behaviors and lifestyles. It is influenced from the fourth layer, means indigenous and religious beliefs. These four factors have led to the formation of relatively different social identities in Gilan and Mazandaran.In this paper, by the method of comparative research and case study, we will compare the entrances of houses. The results show that in Mazandaran houses, the controlled entrances with hierarchy in privacy are reflection of introverted culture. But, the lifestyle of people in Gilan reduces separation between public and private spaces. The results of the study of the abovementioned factors and the comparison of the construction typologies show the different input characteristics and analyze how the culture reflects on the form and the space of entrance. The results of presented analysis show that the lifestyle, customs, beliefs, and social interaction influence the culture structure. And cultural differences in the structures of societies make significant changes in the shape of entrances of the houses.In summary, the results of the research show that the social link between women and men in the form of agriculture work and livelihoods leads to a difference in lifestyle and housing and justifies the extraversion of Gilan houses. This also defines the shape of the entries and eliminates the privacy layers of them. But the fanaticism of most Mazandaran families on religion and veil has affected the shape of the house and has made the entrances more confined. The shape of the entrance is influenced of the house shape.