International Journal of Architecture and Urban Development
Volume:3 Issue: 2, Spring 2013

Islam spread rapidly after its founding, encompassing much of North Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. The art of this vast region draws its distinctive character both from Islam itself and from the diverse cultural traditions of the world’s Muslims. Because Islam discouraged the use of figurative images, particularly in religious contexts- unlike Christian art- Islamic artists developed a rich vocabulary of aniconic, or nonfigural, ornament that is a hallmark of Islamic work. This vocabulary includes complex geometric patterns and the scrolling vines known outside the Islamic world as arabesques. Figural representation, to the extent it was permitted which varied from time to time and place to place, first developed most prominently in regions with strong pre-Islamic figural traditions, such as those that had been under the control of the Roman and Byzantine empires. Stylized forms for representing animals and plants developed in the regions that had been under the control of the Sassanian dynasty of Persia (modern Iran), the heirs of the artistic traditions of the ancient Near East, who ruled from 226 to 641. Because the Arabian birthplace of Islam had little art, these Persian and Roman Byzantine influences shaped Islamic art in its formative centuries.The elements of early early Islamic architecture were formed to respond effectively to people’s physical, environmental, social, physiological and religious requirements at their time. The research demonstrates that architects used to copy-paste various elements of the Islamic historical buildings in their design work without understanding the meanings and values that it holds. Such approach would only transfer the element’s form though strips it from its historical context and values. The paper argues that architect should comprehend not only the hidden values of the historical elements only but also how values interacted and are integrated into these elements. By doing so, the architect would be able to correctly perceive and read these elements thus incorporate it successfully in his/ her design. This article gives perspective of early Islamic architecture and structural configurations of the related era.

Regionalism is an analytical and critical perspective which focuses on preserving special features of place and attempts to fill the vacuum in architecture. Globalization is a complex multi-stage process that causes increasing complexity of time and place, greater awareness across the global and acceleration of cross cultural interactions. Therefore, the present paper attempts to analyze global-regional interactional approach through investigating contemporary Iranian architecture in relationship with the aforementioned phenomena and also tries to provide practical advice on establishing a constructive interaction. The research methodology is based on content analysis and case study.The results obtained from investigating striking cases of 4 eras of contemporary Iranian architecture and presented as a table of global-regional interaction components (physical, semantic and ecological) show that an interactional approach is becoming increasingly popular and global-regional coexistence is being formed in contemporary Iranian architecture, which associates with spirit of time and its regional components. A dynamic presence and playing a componential role by contemporary Iranian architects in this interaction have some prerequisites: an understanding of contemporary pluralism, an understanding of the other and establishing interaction, emphasis on the role of thought, creation and innovation, objective research, a good understanding of identity and place, past recall and identifying components of Iranian architecture.

Khoy, one of the major cities in the west Azarbaijan province is known for its nature, military, border positions, proximity to the Silk Road, including many different cultures and overall is one of the important settlements in the area. This essay investigates Khoy city’s expansion, from early Islam until late Qajar (Fourth - Fourteenth century) according to historical documents. This article has been completed, by the help of different types of historical written sources, itineraries,documents and maps (Matrakiminiature and Russian map). This article also illustrates how the location of the town citadel has frequently changed during centuries. In the Fourth century (AH), the citadel was located in the west of its current position but unfortunately in the fifth and sixth centuries it has had an ambiguous location and eventually sometimes in the Seventh oreighth century was shifted to its today’s location. Next centuries (eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth) until 1941AD/ 1360AH, location was in current position. Also destruction of khoy is mentioned 4 times in sources.

Islamic and Iranian cities, both, East and West, know the physical monuments of Islamic culture1 based on one of the features of the Islamic cities. Meanwhile, other religious centers, including Tkaya, Hosseiniyeh and hospice is not the case to considerate, while these elements cause to shape group behavior, strengthen social ties and strengthening of cultural integration, have always played a major role. These reasons reflect the role of the religious and their religious mission to, Imam Hussein: have been lasting and eternal ever. On the other hand, religious buildings, including mosques, Hosseiniyeh, the convent, the grave and so for various reasons such as “governing their spirituality,” “Historical Background”,“architectural style” and “cultural works - social among people of the past had been of special aspects “sanctity”. Materials and Methods, “descriptors” and “analytic” in addition, with reference to theories and models of sustainability and sustainable urban spaces using “argument” and “analog” to review these theories and extend them to Hosseiniyeh and Tkaya discussed and some results in this direction are mentioned. Research findings show the survival of Tkaya and Hosseiniyeh beliefs, beliefs, customs and religion of citizens, especially their integration with the components is related to religious values and reflecting the traditional city is based on the formation of beliefs is that survival, Protection and maintenance Hosseiniyeh paid actor and in which viewers of this show and passionate Hosseini mourning single entity to have formed; If due to the impact of beliefs and opinions of people throughout history has been a Hosseiniyeh as a phenomenon of religious values and that its inclusion has been persistent throughout history and reflect the beliefs of religious people and the world towards Imam Ali, Imam Hussein: future date will remain the eternal.

Following the changes in the paradigm of urban studies in recent years, sustainability has become an increasingly important issue in the neighborhood’s planning and designing. However, this concept has originally been developed for American and European neighborhoods’ planning, it could also be customized for other neighborhoods’. Additionally, in the neighborhood scale, the quality parameter factors are more sensible and understandable. Therefore, attention to use these parameters may have better results for neighborhood sustainability concept. This paper claims that if subjective indicators that customized with local context and derived from residents’ perception about sustainable neighborhood are being used, significant differences between residents’ valuing on subjective criteria of sustainability from one neighborhood to another would be found. For this claim, the paper has studied the two neighborhoods of Tehran, as a metropolis with different socio-economic and socio-cultural diversity in its neighborhoods. The findings show that the resulted criteria in the neighborhoods of Tehran, in comparison to each other, have meaningful differences.

In recent decades, urban planning has tended to humanist urbanism. In this regard foot travels and bicycle use are the two strategies that urban planners and transportation engineers are using them as adequate alternatives for making cities more people friendly. Using bicycle is known as a strategy that has a great role in decreasing traffic among developing countries in recent decades. These countries have taken great steps by reducing traffic congestion and environmental pollutions to reach the sustainable development using comprehensive legislations in this context. This paper aims to assess and analyse the successful countries’ experiences specifically Holland and Denmark as countries that have eliminated extensive amount of traffic difficulties by using bicycle transportation system. Also, investigating this form of transportation regarding the improvement of bicycle use culture in the case study of Niavaran district will be conducted. This article has been implemented in the basis of library–based phase of the research, case study method and observation for its field study phase. Tosum up, the findings of this study comprise the feasibility of bicycle use in the mentioned case study; in which despite of district¢s high slope, efficient proposals have been used to achieve sustainable development.

This paper evaluates and ranks the temporal dimensions, known as fourth dimension of urban design, of a number of places in a city by TOPSIS method. TOPSIS method is technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution. TOPSIS is one of the renowned methods for classical multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) problems that defines the positive ideal solution and negative ideal solution to maximize the benefit criteria and minimize the cost criteria. The best solution is a point that has the shortest distance from the positive ideal solution and the farthest distance from the negative ideal solution. Because of the vagueness of the input data, triangular fuzzy numbers are applied. In addition, Euclidian distance and a new positive and negative ideal solution are used in this paper. This technique is implemented in Marand, Iran to evaluate fifteen important places based on eight criteria of temporal dimensions. Closeness coefficient values verify the ranking order of fifteen important places, which is a vital decision for the urban managers.

Constructed upon a height (by footing) or breaking in to the ground, in a building, making a close relation between earth and soil is of great importance. In addition, earth as a prior factor in creation of a shade and residence, plays a crucial role in architecture history. Throughout the different area, earth is paid attention differently: as a source of cool (in China), a source of heat (Cappadocia, Turkey), and conversely as an offensive source in Amazon forests. In hot-arid climates, proximity to earth is useful to apply the heat in the buildings. Present study aims to investigate the mentioned factor in Dastkand village located at Kerman province. Mountainous moderate climate, cold and icy winters and moderate summers is of the considerable properties of the studied area. The maximum and minimum temperature was recorded, 42 and -18° C during summer and winter, respectively. Hence, in addition to cultural as well as economic factors, temperature fluctuation played a key role in breaking the buildings in to the ground. So, this study assists to investigate the studied area within natural bed, in plan and section. On this basis, technical methods of earth profiting throughout the studied area have been investigated, in order to profit earth in modern architecture. Results showed a harmony between dominant winds and buildings in winter and summer.Moreover, profiting from high sun shining with special architecture is of Meymand village characteristic. Using breaking in to the ground technique, 26.57 % decrease occurred in cooling need, annually. On the other hand, Day-Degree heating need has reduced to approximately 13.65 % annually solely by earth profiting technique. Overall, results demonstrate a harmony between applied technique and the studied region climate. Besides, there reported a proper isotropy between temperature fluctuation and air aridity throughout the region.

Community is the main pillar of the urban body; and balance of social life in cities depends on preserving communities. During the twentieth century, the idea of residential-centered community has been offered in many modern theories and has been widely accepted for solving urban various problems such as management, social and human relations, health and welfare issues and aspects of meaning and identity. On the contrary, the concept of sustainable urban development has been considered a scientific issue in all societies in recent decades, when much of the literature on urban development has been allocated to the issue. The main argument of this paper is two issues of sustainability and urban communities, as well as how to link them in a topic. The paper will describe the necessity and importance of creating sustainable communities which have been originated from the consequences of climate change. Then, the concepts of sustainability and community are clarified; and finally the components of creating a sustainable community will be examined.

Earthquake has always endangered cities. This article mainly focuses on the question “whether seismic damages could be diminished through the presentation a preventive operational pattern dealing with physical and nonphysical features of civil defense”. Tehran, the most populous metropolis among Iranian cities is to the south of Alborz mountain range, located on potentially dangerous fault- lines.By Civil Defense Emergency Management (CDEM) preventive guidelines in a part of district 10 of Tehran, within the Ray fault’s danger zone, it is recommended that the earthquake vulnerability zoning plot of the area be compiled and accordingly, operational solutions encompassing organizing open spaces, redistributing and re-allocating land uses, enhancing relocating disaster management centers to more commanding locations are offered to be implemented within the physical structure of the area. The IHWP method and the Raster Calculator tool in GIS have been used for compiling the zoning of earthquake vulnerability.