Morphological Study of Shiraz Buildings’ Columns in Last Four Centuries

Columns and their architecture have a major role in recognition of each architectural style in the history of world architecture. Persian architecture is not an exception and a simple glance towards the architecture reveals existence of huge diversity of columns in each era. This is while after ancient times, in contrast to their western rivals, not only column's diversity has not been studied in any major resources, but conducting research regarding their typology and structural components were also reduced. In fact, with the passage of time and manifestation of vault architecture in the Sassanid period and Parthian style, for various reasons such as advances in construction technologies and the increase of curved ceilings against flat roofs or the emergence of the first approaches and tendencies of introversion in Iranian architecture, the columns prominent role in architecture has decreased and hence vault and domes’ architectural study replaced the columns’ research. However, due to the travel of artists, intellectuals and architects to Europe in Qajar era, one can see the influence of European architecture in various aspects of architecture throughout Iran. The noble and aristocratic family houses started to imitate European palaces and mansions. Columns one more time started to play more important roles in Iranian architecture. The tendency towards extroversion in architecture and also the use of gables that were common at that time, provided the means for the re-appearance of columns in the facade of the buildings and as a result huge decorated columns in the villas and palaces of the rich appeared. This paper by stratified sampling with disproportionate allocation of 100 columns in Shiraz and their precise study tries to elucidate the evolution of columns within Shiraz from Safavids to mid-Pahlavi era. To conduct research, in the first stage, with reference to historical resources about Shiraz such as Shirazname reference books, a list of buildings that the architecture of their columns was described were extracted and studied (43 columns were surveyed). Then, by referring to the documents available in the Research Institute of Shiraz Cultural Heritage Organization, a separate list of registered buildings in Shiraz that has columns was extracted and their columns were surveyed (24 columns). Finally, in order to comprehensively study the morphology of Shiraz columns and considering the possibility that there are species of valuable columns that have been neglected in the previous lists, two of the oldest neighborhoods of Shiraz (namely Sang-e Siah and Sar Bagh) were visited house by house and if there existed a new column’s type in these houses, it was surveyed (33 columns). In the second stage a complete list of main characteristics and features of all surveyed columns –including their constitutional components’ dimensions, types, materials, structures, plans, sections and etc. - were provided and documented separately as unique identity data sheet for each column. Finally, these extracted ID data sheets were studied to provide a logical and comprehensive structure for classifying the Shiraz columns based on their constituent components. Accordingly, it tries to present a comprehensive framework for recognition of column's types based on their structural elements' typology as a main tool for classification of Persian columns. This framework can be used as a reference base for studying column's typology in Persian architecture. Accordingly, this paper by manipulation of the given framework reveals how each era's column architecture differs from the others due to the morphology of their structural elements - plinths, pedestals, bases, shafts, capitals and bolsters- in Shiraz. Finally, apart from depiction of wide diversity of columns with different classes in Shiraz, the paper also shows the frequency distribution of each element's types within the city.