An Investigation of the Effect of Cultural Consumption Index on the External Façade in Residential Architecture: A case studies of the City of Tehran in Transition Period

The traditional structure of Tehran, as the then capital city, changed with the beginning of pseudo-modernism in the Qajar period in Iran. The transition period (the period of transferring from Qajar to Pahlavi Period), was the period of creating changes and sometimes conflict in Iranian residential architecture, which was selected as the time interval to be studied in this research. Many reasons have been mentioned for such changes and the creation of transition period, among which the index of Cultural Consumption have been selected for discussion and analysis. The most palpable element changed in the residential buildings is the façade, which employed a different approach than the preceding period, by the emergence of extroversion. Research Question: the investigations made in this study aim at providing answers to three issues of “visibility of the influence of cultural consumption on the façade of residential architecture in the transition period in Tehran”, “how the index of cultural consumption has affected the façade in transition period”, and “the relational progress of the index of cultural consumption and the element of façade, from the late Qajar period to the First Pahlavi period”.

Purpose of the Study: 

the main purpose of the current study is, particularly, investigating and analyzing the relationship between the index of cultural consumption and the element of façade in the residential architecture and its transformation progress in the transition period.

the interpretive-historical method was employed as the main method and the case study method as the complementary one.

by investigating the element of façade (especially, the urban façade) in the houses dating back to the late Qajar period to the First Pahlavi period, it seems that in Qajar period, transition period and the First Pahlavi period, the innovative, passive and relational approaches of cultural consumption have been used, respectively.