نشریه نامه معماری و شهرسازی
سال چهاردهم شماره 34 (بهار 1401)

The Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning of University of Art, like any other university faculty, needs an ongoing evaluation of education quality in order to make progress and succeed. This evaluation is based on curricula and their implementation, relationship with realistic and current issues of the profession, and faculty members' and students' perspective about the education. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the quality of education as a whole as well as separately in each department and degree program. The study includes the general strengths and weaknesses of education in the faculty, significant points about different disciplines and majors of each degree program, and the commonalities and differences between the professors' and students' views. The research strategy is qualitative and uses a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods. The method of data collection is a survey method that has been selected using a questionnaire. Descriptive and deductive analysis of data and contextual commentaries have been used. The main group of respondents, the faculty members, were questioned one by one, and the second large group, that is, the faculty students, were questioned randomly with an error coefficient of 0.06 in the Cochran’s formula. Three common questions in the questionnaire of all groups are focused on the faculty evaluation. The first question evaluates the current state of the faculty in eight educational aims including: “Drawing and Manual Skills”, “Technology Application Skills”, “Applied Design Skills”, “Scientific and Legal Knowledge”, “Technical and Executive Knowledge”, “Up-to-Date and Technological Knowledge” and “Theoretical, Artistic and Philosophical Insights”. The second question is evaluating the effectiveness of academic education about the student’s possible goals, which are divided into four categories: “Completing Current Program”, “Continue to Study in Next Program”, “Starting Professional Activity” and “Participating in Research Activities”. The third question asks about the need for further education in open courses, for example, related to the same educational aims of the first question. The total results of the faculty evaluation for both groups of respondents show the highest score in “Theoretical, Artistic and Philosophical Insight” aim. “Technical and Executive Knowledge” is also a common aim with a low score between the two groups of respondents. "Drawing and Hand Skills" have a high score by faculty members, and "Up-To-Date and Technological Knowledge", "Using technology skills", are also at the lowest levels of evaluation by students. According to the total results of the question of achieving the goals, two groups mentioned: "Starting Professional Activity" as the most significant weakness, and faculty members consider "Participating in Research Activities", weakness as well. The quantitative results of the question for further education in the same fields of educational aims, indicate the consensus of the two respondent groups on the "Technology Application Skills" in the first place and "Research Skills" and "Technical and Executive Knowledge" in the next places. At the same time, the most significant difference is in "Scientific and Legal Knowledge", which is a priority for faculty members, and "Up-to-Date and Technological Knowledge", which is considered much more important for students.

The relation between an architectural work and other works is a major topic in the architectural community that challenges the concepts of compilation, originality and self-existence of the work. Lack of an approach for the methodical critique of the relationship between works necessitates a more detailed study of the topic. By asking the question of what relation exists between an architectural work and other works, the present study sought to explain the intertextual relations in architecture (interarchitecturality). To this purpose, the intertextuality approach was used which deals with how texts have an impact in forming each other or reading and perceiving texts, and explains textual reproduction. To examine and analyze relations among architectural works, it is essential to assess a work in its textual relations network in addition to the interpretation of the first layer, which is confined to direct references of a work. We need to touch upon the second layer and examine the indirect references of a work in relation to other works. In this layer, intertextual relations are interpreted in terms of relations among the components of works; in other words, such an interpretation is made using previous texts, and it is not a unidimensional, monosemic interpretation based on signification, but an interpretation where signification proceeds in different layers of the intratextual network according to intertextual rules and ties. This is a qualitative study which was conducted using descriptive-analytic and historical-interpretive methods. Data were analyzed using a descriptive-analytical and comparative approach. A new configuration was proposed as an 'interarchitectural critique' by explaining intertextuality as a tool for architectural critique. To understand the concept of 'interarchitecturality' and to explain the theoretical framework of the study, first, the location and coordinates of an architectural work were determined as a text in relation to other texts (other works). The current study shows that the intertextual relations between a work of architecture and other works are based on connections established among the components of a work including Form, Program/Spatial diagram, and Construction. An analysis and review of the components of a work in three layers within the textual relations network determine the intertextual ties in architecture, or in other words, yield an “interarchitectural” criticism. The critique structure proposed here in the two layers of the type and the degree of intertextual relation, studies the internal components of an architectural work in relation to other works. In the first layer, the type of an intertextual relation is determined that, itself, includes three sublayers: intracultural and cross-cultural sublayers; Horizontal/Syntagmatic or Vertical/Paradigmatic and the third sublayer shows that this relation is a representation of the previous work and refers to it directly, or it is an implicit, indirect relation referring to shared themes and concepts. By revealing the implicit implications of the work in a network of interarchitectural relations, results of this study in layer three show the extent to which this communication leads to the reproducibility and polysemic nature of the work, turning it into a multifaceted hybrid 'architectural texture' or an 'architectural object' with a dominant ideology. This method of critique was used in two case studies of Mellat Cineplex and Birjand Engineering Organization Building projects.

The incompatibility of new buildings with the climatic environment and the neglect of the interactions between them have led to the unbridled use of fossil fuels and disrupted the thermal comfort of their occupants. There was a climate-responsive design from the past in Iran's architecture, which unfortunately has been forgotten in contemporary architecture. In the past, buildings that were built in different climates of Iran had special features related to that climate and climate adaptation strategies were well observed. Therefore, the present study seeks to understand the climate of the country and consequently recognize the appropriate use of various solutions to provide cooling and heating to save energy costs. In this article, for obtaining different solutions for the active and passive supply of cooling and heating energy inside buildings for different cities of Iran, daily meteorological data of dry temperature and relative humidity of 155 meteorological stations from 1995 to 2018 were used. In order to evaluate the bioclimatic strategies for providing comfort inside the buildings, two redrawn building bioclimatic diagrams of Givoni were used; one for hot developing countries and the other for developed countries. These diagrams are the latest Givoni proposes for bioclimatic assessment in his book. How the graphs were placed on the psychrometric chart reduced their effectiveness, which the authors have redrawn. All charts were drawn for the stations using GIS software. The frequency of occurrence of climatic phenomena was displayed on 20 ranges of active and passive bioclimatic strategies and the output data were collected in a spreadsheet database. According to the outputs of drawing the bioclimatic diagram of each station, the percentage of frequency of different bioclimatic strategies was calculated, and based on cluster analysis, 8 bioclimatic groups were classified for Iran. Lastly, climate design suggestions were created for each of the 8 clusters, and the percentage of occurrence of thermal comfort conditions and each of the cooling and heating strategies in these 8 zones was evaluated. In heating strategies, the most common suggestion for all regions of the country is "internal heat gain", while cooling strategies in the country are more diverse. Utilization of "natural ventilation" in humid regions, "direct evaporative cooling" in hot and dry regions, "indirect evaporative cooling" in all warm regions, "night ventilation with thermal mass" in almost all parts of the country which include "active air conditioning systems" in hot and humid climates are suggested. The highest percentage of "thermal comfort" is in hot and humid climates and the lowest percentage in the humid Caspian climate, which shows that the main adverse climatic conditions in other parts of the country are because of the cold winter weather. Thus, this result is in contrast to what has always been imagined that the climate of the Caspian region provides the most temperate and favorable environmental conditions for individuals. In the present study, it was found that the lowest incidence of thermal comfort is in this area and the need for direct solar radiation is more than in other groups.

How is power exercised in planning practice? This “inevitable question” has been around in planning theory for many years, and many researchers have addressed this issue in different ways. Still, the impact of power relations on various aspects of the planning process and city development plans is remained controversial and ambiguous. Also, the inseparable links between public interest and planning have to affect public interest by power relations. Although many efforts have been made to explain the public interest in planning, the impacts of power relations on formulating the public interest are blurred. In this regard, this paper seeks to explain the influence of power relations on public interest's conformation by providing a discourse approach to the radical conception of power. According to this approach, the discourse as an “invisible power” ideologically shapes individuals' and groups' wants and desires. Based on Gaventa’s “cube of power,” the authors applied the mentioned approach to modify Lukes’ “radical view” deficiencies. To investigate this issue, Fairclough's framework is used for critical discourse analysis (CDA), which states the nature of the dialectic of power and discourse in a critical framework and interprets it in the context of its social practice. A controversial live local TV talk show was selected as the text of critical discourse analysis. The participants of this TV program were from significant principal players in the Qiam street improvement plan. This case study's results, based on the improvement plan of Qiam street of Yazd, show that the invisible power plays a notable role in the conformation of public interest’s substance. This role is manifested in how various orders of discourse combine and bring about discursive and social change. Two discursive mixes were identified: one dominant and one competing discursive mix. Findings show that the competing discursive mix has challenged the limited and utilitarian perception of public interest represented by the dominant discursive mix. This conception of public interest which represented by proponents of the plan, defines interests mostly in economic and monetary terms and insists on the value that the plan will bring about. Similarly, the opponents of the improvement plan adopted such a bounded conception of public interest too. They opposed the plan because its implementation was interfering with their business. While the dominant discursive mix included rational planning discourse, project management discourse, expert-official and economic interest discourses, the competing discursive mix is shaped by activism and participation discourses. As Fairclough indicates, these re-articulations of the orders of discourse are both a means and a sign of discursive and social transformation in a relatively creative way. In the case of Qiam street, these transformations led to a broader concept of ‘the public’ but they could not transform the conception of ‘the interests’ very much. In conclusion, even though this transformation has not changed utilitarianism’s hegemonic position, it has extended the concept of 'the public' and relatively democratized the planning process. Therefore, it can be expected that future urban design practices, at least in Yazd’s old city, would consider some forms of participation in the implementation phase.

Today, cities are faced with a multitude of issues that caused them to have injured appearances. Efforts to cure these injuries are similar to surgeries on an anesthetized city which not only has disrupted life in the city, but has also caused irreparable damage. Existing research shows that in Iran, especially in Tehran, most of the intervention strategies in deteriorated urban sites have not achieved the desired goals; goals including reducing urban poverty and social vulnerability, increasing resilience to disasters, upgrading local identity, increasing the efficiency of the transportation system, reducing environmental problems, and  achieving social justice. Considering the urban characteristics and urban planning crises in Iran, it seems that in order to achieve the goals and efficient regeneration of deteriorated urban sites, it is necessary to change the basic approach in parallel with social, economic and political changes. Therefore, it seems necessary to use a new intervention model. The aim of this study is to propose a method for prioritizing intervention sites in deteriorated urban neighborhoods through participatory processes as well as the reduction of costs, shortening the implementation time of projects, and increasing their efficiency through an urban acupuncture approach. The aim of prioritizing neighborhood sites is to achieve sites with the least problems and the most development instruments. Because of the small scale of interventions in the urban acupuncture approach, the maximum number of problems should be eliminated by using powerful development instruments. To apply this method, Pamanar neighborhood in Tehran was selected as the case study. This neighborhood is located within the Oodlajan neighborhood in Zone 2 of District 12 of Tehran’s municipality. With an area of 150 hectares and a population of 16943. It is one of the five historical neighborhoods of Tehran and many of its buildings are of great historical significance. The edges of the neighborhood are mostly surrounded by commercial uses beyond urban districts. Due to the intrusion of commercial storage uses into the neighborhood and migration of its residents, Pamanar faces serious problems such as severe depopulation, deterioration of fabrics and buildings, diminishing cachet of activities, shortage of urban services, declining environmental sanitation, stagnation in the real estate market, and increase in crime rates. The data collection and analysis methods of this study include semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions, examination of the development documents of the neighborhood, analysis of space syntax in Depth Map software package, prioritization of the indicators using the AHP questionnaire and analyzing them in Expert Choice software, and analysis and overlap of the data using ArcGIS. The findings suggest that in all phases of the study, prioritization of intervention sites is possible through analyzing motion flows and designing and implementing participatory processes in the framework of urban acupuncture. As a result, the priority of the intervention is first in the internal fabrics, second in the sites around Pamanar street, third in the sites around Mostafa Khomeini street and finally in the sites around 15 Khordad, Naser Khosrow and Amirkabir streets.

The discussion of the territory is one of the important principles and social dimensions of the public spaces. Territories play a significant role in access to sacred places; privacy of holy places is a sacred territory with special features that always need special attention and consideration by city managers, pilgrims and neighbors to maintain the sense of sanctity and identity. The construction, development and organization of the territory of these places should be in line with the culture of the pilgrimage and enhancing the quality of pilgrimage hierarchy to the holy place in pilgrims. As the ultimate goal of pilgrimage for the pilgrims is to achieve the spiritual values and religious intuitions, the territory of these places in religious cities should be in accordance with the pilgrimage customs and rituals. Hence, the attention to the spiritual territory of these places in response to the pilgrimage rituals is necessary for designing these public territories. Despite the considerations made by the city managers in recent years, the territory of the holy shrine in the historical and central core of Qom city, still encounters the following problems: the ignorance of the cultural heritage codes, the existence of the incompatible land uses against the religious spirit of this territory, noise pollution, visual pollution, traffic in the city center, disrespect to visual privacy of the holy shrine with monorail crossing Qom road and its violation to the cultural heritage of holy shrine. The purpose of this paper is to present a conceptual framework of urban design for the privacy of the pilgrimage shrines with a comprehensive territoriality approach and evaluate it in the peripheral territory of Hazrat Masoumeh’s holy shrine as a case study. This research has been conducted through a mixed paradigm and a descriptive-analytical research method. Data collection tools include library-documentary studies, opinions of urban experts, observation and a questionnaire. The data were analyzed through both quantitative and qualitative methods. In doing that, techniques such as Isovist, space syntax, SPSS software for statistical data analysis, sensewalking, soundscapes technique by Sound Analyzer TES-1358 in two time periods of day and night, and behavioral perceptions have been used to evaluate this territory. Based on the findings of this paper, the urban design framework with the aim of respecting the privacy of pilgrimage shrines could be portrayed in line with the following factors: the physical-spatial (with indicators of transformation layers, permeability, street pattern, orientation, density pattern,  grain pattern, centrality, hierarchy and identifiable thresholds, space syntax), functional-behavioral (with indicators of  land-use and activity, social participation, social ownership and surveillance, social relations and interactions), visual (with indicators of views identification, legibility of landmarks, unity in plurality), and perceptual organizations (with indicators of sensescape, symbolism, motivational, sense of spirituality, sense of humility, territory identity, imageability and clarity). The results of the evaluation of the framework in the studied case indicate the lack of attention to some indicators and measures of urban design, especially in the visual, perceptual, and functional-behavioral organizations in the territory of Hazrat Masoumeh’s holy shrine.