Identification and Examination of the Criteria of Tradition and Modernism in Academic Buildings(Case study: Universities of Tehran)

In the modern era, numerous political, cultural, social, economic, etc. factors caused fundamental alterations in Iranian architecture. As a result of architectural developments, changes in appearance, and sometimes structures of public buildings, including universities, are happening which mirror the cultural conditions of their time. So, identifying and examining the criteria of modernism and tradition in the architecture of Tehran’s universities with the aim of shedding more light on the history of contemporary Iranian architecture are of great importance. Accordingly, this study aims to examine and identify the criteria of tradition and modernism used in faculties to answer the question of "To what extent have each of these criteria been effective in the manifestation of tradition or modernism?" To this end, a combined nest-to-nest methodology is used, which simultaneously utilizes interview and questionnaire. First, the criteria of tradition and modernism are extracted from the concepts, and then the coding table is formed. Next, interviews are arranged according to which the variables used by tradition and modernism in the buildings are presented. The questionnaire is then used for verification. The qualitative and quantitative findings are extracted using two Atlas.ti and SPSS software, respectively. These results indicate that 22 criteria of tradition and modernism have been used in these buildings, most of which were the criteria of modernism. It is found that the most evocative factors of tradition are “use of bricks in facades” and “uniaxial symmetry” and the least evocative ones are “spatial hierarchy”, “spatial organization”, and “limited use of form-physical elements”. Also, in modernism, “lack of ornaments” as well as “simplicity and purity of volumes” are the most evocative factors and “not being tied to geometry” and “form follows function” are the least evocative ones.