A Tectonic Approach to Public Buildings of Contemporary Iranian Architecture in the First Pahlavi PeriodCase study: Alborz High School, Museum of Ancient Iran, School of Fine Arts, Tabriz Municipality Building

The development of science over the years, particularly in the recent area, has led to the separation and specialization of the fields of knowledge and technology, itself leading to the highlighted distinction of structures, building systems, and architecture after these developments. As such, the tectonic approach corresponds to the combination of meaning and construction in architecture.

The purpose of this study was to explain the tectonic components of world architecture and the tectonic interpretation of selected the First Pahlavi architectural buildings using the aforementioned criteria, and finally to extract the tectonic framework governing the architecture of public buildings of that era. Also, this research seeks to identify and explain the impact of architectural tectonics on the creation of spatial and construction harmony in public buildings of the First Pahlavi period of contemporary Iranian architecture.

This research employs a mixed, interpretive-historical method and a predominantly qualitative approach for collecting and analyzing the data. Furthermore, the authors analyzed the documents driven from the descriptive phenomenology of observations carried out by elites. The samples for the case study were selected by reviewing the findings extracted from questionnaires distributed among architectural experts. For this research, MaxQDA and SPSS were employed to prioritize and select buildings. Finally, using the three-way approach (phenomenological reading, researcher inferences based on available documents, rich tectonic literature), the strength and validity of the research were examined from different perspectives.

Given its role in determining the form and inducing visual stability, the observations revealed that the tectonic dimension of the structure was evident in all four cases of public buildings of the first Pahlavi period, sufficient for creating an efficient spatial organization. With its traditionalist architectural style, the building of Alborz High School was more in line with the tectonic dimensions. Tabriz Municipality building proved to have the least tectonic features corresponding to the classical architecture of the first Pahlavi period.