مجله صفه
پیاپی 97 (تابستان 1401)

In memoriam Christopher AlexanderNikos Salingaros  Architect and design theorist Christopher Alexander passed away on 17 March 2022 after six decades of efforts in deepening architectural thought and practice. He left behind a valuable legacy in both fields. The present text is by his close friend and colleague Nikos Salingaros, who has made it available to Sofeh for the Iranian Alexander aficionado.Footnotes:The following works of Alexander have been translated to Persian: Notes on the Synthesis of Form, A New Theory of Urban Design, The Timeless Way of Building, The Linz Café, A City is Not a Tree, A Pattern Language, The Nature of Order.The following works of Salingaros have been translated to Persian: A Theory of Architecture, Anti-Architecture and Deconstruction.Sofeh would like to thank Dr Zoheir Motaki for communicating with Dr Salingaros.      Christopher Alexander (1936–2022).    Finding God Through Architecture. By Nikos A. Salingaros The visionary architect Christopher Alexander showed us how to reconnect to the world, and with the deep meaning that the universe contains, through architecture. He gave an antidote to our civilization’s eager pursuit of self-annihilation.The four volumes of his monumental book The Nature of Order (2001-2004) document geometrical qualities that we perceive unconsciously. Characteristics of what Alexander calls “living structure” in The Phenomenon of Life connect us viscerally to our surroundings. While his purpose was to derive a method for designing beautiful and health-giving environments, Alexander’s investigations probed into the nature of matter itself.Alexander worked strictly with empirical observations drawn from his own insights and his students’ experience. It turns out that traditional and vernacular architecture, art, artifacts, buildings, and utilitarian objects all connect to their users in a healing manner. Alexander’s design method describes how the human body benefits only from a very special type of complexity. Today, eye tracking, neuroscience experiments, and visual attention simulations confirm this phenomenon.This important result explains what many deeply suspected: that the human mind instinctively creates things that are beautiful as well as utilitarian. There is no distinction between what we create to use, and the special qualities that give us joy in using them. Nevertheless, by validating traditional architecture and art, Alexander’s work posed an existential threat to contemporary architecture, which denies historical practice and legitimizes itself through erasing what has gone on before. As a result, Alexander lost influence in architecture schools and with the practice of design in our times. Even today, his obituaries published in the mainstream architecture journals are half-hearted and deprecating! I sensed a sadness in Christopher towards the end of his productive life. He saw further than anybody else, and what he saw was terrifying. He clearly discerned humanity’s self-inflicted moral and sensory numbness leading to nihilism. Built structures, from urban complexes, to buildings, to rooms, to windows, to door handles, to furniture, propagate a cultish anti-life, inhuman aesthetic. The massive global economy derives its growth from generating dead, soulless objects, while at the same time wiping out natural ecosystems. Dominant culture had deliberately institutionalized the destruction of life and the generation of ugliness as something fervently desired. Christopher warned of the folly of losing the nourishing sense of beauty and the sacred, yet our media and educational systems urge our disconnection by promoting visual styles that suppress living structure.Alexander’s approach to designing the built environment diverges radically from the flashy world of egomaniacal Starchitects fueled by big money. His numerous buildings can often seem unremarkable in photographs, yet they offer an immensely enriching emotional and physical experience to those who are actually there. This is diametrically opposite from dominant iconic architecture, which photographs splendidly but which is more likely anxiety-inducing and oppressive when experienced in person. Some people mistakenly believe that Alexander’s buildings follow a traditional style: that’s not true; since all of them are highly innovative and do not simply copy the past.Having to forgo one’s ego is a precondition for connecting to a higher level of existence. The same rule is a prerequisite for putting the designer in a suitably sensitive state to design a healing environment or structure. Its opposite — an architect’s arrogant and ego-filled mood of imposing “created” design — lies at the core of inhuman environments generated by decades of industrial modernism.Three outstanding points of Alexander’s theoretical contributions may be summarized. First, he and his colleagues published a collection of practical design solutions as A Pattern Language (1977). Each pattern is a recurring socio-geometric solution (that is, a geometrical configuration that enables and even encourages stress-free human action) discovered at different times and in different locations around the world. Traditional builders evolved those solutions by trial-and-error over centuries. Two examples of these geometrical configurations are: “light on two sides of every room” (where we mean natural sunlight), and “main entrance” (which stands out visually to attract people approaching the building). Readers can check the utility of these two patterns through the perceived dreariness and disorientation of situations when they are absent. Every doorway, entrance, garden, room, wall, window, and urban space that feels naturally comfortable and life-giving embodies several design patterns.Second, Alexander attributed the overall feeling of belonging, of being in a life-enhancing environment, to the “Quality Without A Name” — the QWAN, introduced in his book The Timeless Way of Building (1979). Alexander later used the descriptor “living structure” for the same strongly-felt characteristic of environments that nourish us emotionally. Computer scientists adopted the term QWAN to denote complex software that works in an elegant and near natural fashion.Third, we have the body of results presented later in The Nature of Order. Those include 15 geometrical properties recurring in all stable configurations in nature. The 15 properties link biologically-based aesthetics to structures explained by biology and physics, which have nothing to do with philosophy. An inescapable (and incendiary) conclusion is that beauty is not relative and subject to individual taste, but actually depends upon the structure of matter. A separate tool, the “Mirror of the Self” test, can be applied to judge the relative “life” between two similar objects or settings.His work was appreciated, astonishingly enough, by the computer science and software community, which found in his analysis of complexity the appropriate tools needed to create the revolution in computing that resulted in Agile, the iPhone, Object-Oriented Programming, SimCity, and Wikipedia. Computer scientists provide easy-to-use interfaces to facilitate people’s lives; whereas the architecture-industrial complex is obsessed with imposing its limited abstract forms onto the world, regardless of whether people feel comfortable in them or not.The process of writing The Nature of Order forced Alexander into spiritual explorations. His research into the ordering of matter and the process of connecting us in a deeply human sense revealed another unexpected set of rules. Those were more than the physical rules of how matter is arranged to create stable complex structures, but which remain external to the human consciousness. Attachment and life made sense only when conceived as mechanisms acting in an engulfing field that includes our body and mind — and visceral human feelings — as part of the interactive environment. But, importantly, Christopher did not believe this to be a merely phenomenological or psychological effect (such as affordance), but a genuinely physical one. Trained as a physicist, he had come across surprising metaphysical explanations for the observed phenomena.Christopher’s mechanisms for connecting and ordering were uncannily reminiscent of, if not identical with, spiritual descriptions of similar phenomena in the world’s great religions. He interpreted the discovered order in the physical world as evidence of metaphysical action that paradoxically combines the concrete with the mystical yet still has measurable consequences. His thought was not that belief opened up a divine order in the world; but rather that discovered order pointed towards belief in something beyond the self. “The best way to produce good architecture must somehow be linked to God—indeed, that valuable architecture was always about God.” Spiritual exercises were developed throughout the ages for precisely this end: to connect the self to the universe.On several occasions he told me that he was mystified and even frightened by what he was discovering, since he was trained as a scientist to use empirical methods of observation and rely on scientific proof. However, Alexander found that he could not ignore his own discoveries; therefore the scientifically honest thing was to acknowledge them and try to document them as faithfully as he could. He gave convincing explanations, which, however, remained incomplete from a logical point of view. And yet they were not fanciful inventions, but simply the best interpretations for what Christopher was seeing. There was also a serious problem with language, an appropriate vocabulary not being ready at hand to describe the phenomena.As one of the editors, I encouraged him to bring some of the most unconventional ideas forward in volume four of The Nature of Order, entitled The Luminous Ground. There were intriguing concepts tucked away in the chapter footnotes of his early draft, yet those really helped to clarify and enrichen the main text. Asking Christopher why he relegated this “way-out” material to the footnotes, he answered that he was afraid readers would ridicule him for even writing this stuff down. I assured him that that the “hidden” material made much more sense in a central position. In fact, it lends a coherent meta-logic, even as it might alarm a reader who is bound by the conventional logical framework.Moving in the realm of the sacred further contributed to Alexander’s ideological break with his architectural colleagues. His discussion of God in the context of the design process anchored in structural geometry promises to have immense future implications for re-awakening religious sentiment in human culture. This aspect of the Nature of Order is totally unexpected. Not pretending to be a spiritual guidebook on “finding oneself”, it is a grand theory for building a healing environment. The end result of successfully applying the design tools described therein is to connect oneself so profoundly with surrounding structures that one is healed. Medical research is verifying Christopher’s pioneering insights 20 years later. Yet the connecting and healing processes go far beyond physiological healing, into the transcendental.Certain architectural achievements have spiritual power, and most of the world agrees with this assessment. People have experienced the life-changing connection to very special configurations of matter. It is only architects, trained in the goal of severing our connection with both healing environments and the sacred, who dismiss this process out of hand (since it delegitimizes their work). Christopher gave us the tools for switching the historical causality in building culture: “faith generates healing architecture” to “healing architecture can help to resurrect an extinct faith”. It is up to us to use these tools, or choose to ignore them.     Dear Dr. Zoheir Mottaki, It’s a pleasure to know that my Obituary note on Late Christopher Alexander Is going to be published in Shahid Beheshti University (SBU) Journal of Architecture and Urban planning (SOFFEH). As you know, I began working with Christopher in 1982 or 1983 after I met him in Berkeley. I had known his work long before then and admired it greatly, considering his books Notes on the Synthesis of Form and A Pattern Language to be works of genius. He then asked me to help him edit The Nature of Order, and we worked on it for 20 years until it was published during 2001-2004. We had to organize the text after it kept expanding in size, since Christopher was continuously adding new concepts and sections, and so we decided to separate it into what eventually became the four volumes.I am very happy to learn that SBU was the first academic hub to introduce Alexander thoughts and ideas in the last four decades starting with Prof. Razjouyan and Prof. Hadi Nadimi both of whom kindly wrote illuminating introduction to the Persian translation of my book “A theory of Architecture” which was elaborately translated by you and Saeid Zarrinmehr. I am sure that with the help of faculties and students like you have at SBU the battle ‘The Battle for the Life and Beauty of the Earth’ would attract more attention and dedication and auspicious outcomes.Thank you and best wishes,Nikos Salingaros

Considering the prevalence of poetry in the Iranian culture, the present paper is of the belief that poetry is interwoven into Iranians’ poetic instincts and ethnic spirits, and that architectural poetics and inspirational qualities correspond with parts of sublime human desires of a people long associated with poetics. This study, therefore, reflects on the nature of ‘poetics’ and its aspects in areas such as philosophy and literature, where poetics enjoys a clear definition, and then moves on to investigate ‘architectural poetry’ in the related literature.It finds ‘architectural poetics’ one of the essential sublime needs, a quality which arises from ‘external affordances’ on one hand, and ‘internal competence’ on the other. This ‘internal competence’ is the individual’s ability resonate the poetic potential of space, and the ‘external affordance’ is the unveiling of the spirit of ‘collective imagination’ in the visible. Imaginations which are archetypes of human life, timeless patterns dividable to ‘embodiment imaginations’, ‘nature imaginations’ and ‘time and timeliness imaginations’. Incorporations of these imaginations in poetic works of architecture reify architectural poetics. Poetic works of architecture facilitate the unveiling of imaginations in incremental or reductive processes through which the visible is organised around the collective soul.

Architectural criticism currently encompasses a range of diverse concepts and meanings, indicating uncertainties and difficulties in this field. Despite the wide range of existing literature, one can spot many overlaps and ambiguities that leave the question of architectural criticism unclear. Architectural criticism is not a constant and timeless concept. It changes during history, and these historical changes are neglected in most research. Furthermore, the concepts have emerged from a variety of cultures, schools, and languages with various goals, which renders further inquiries and detailed investigations all the more necessary. In order to show transformations and differences, and based on the secondary sources, this research investigates the history of architectural criticism from its emergence in the 18th century until now, which can be divided into three periods: the emergence of architectural criticism in the 18th century in Jacques- Francois Blondel’s publications and the first architectural magazines in Germany, France, and England; its development in the 19th when first architectural critics, as distinct from art critics, historians, or journalists, appeared gradually professionalising architectural criticism through; and its flourishing and decline in the 20th century in which architectural criticism was expanded and diversified and faced a crisis attributed to the gap between diverse types of architectural criticism, with its death being annpunced.It is clarified here that the function of architectural criticism has fundamentally changed over its history. Its primary function is descriptive, based on a single, personal and subjective critique that was influenced by art criticism in France referring to an edifice. By connecting journalism and criticism, public architectural criticism also grew and flourished and opened a dialogue between architecture and the public. So, the social function prevailed in criticism in this period. With the development of the idea of formalism and design critique in architecture, evaluation of form and design process based on objective criteria was suggested and discussed. Finally, the academic architectural criticism connected to the architectural theory and history departments of American universities has fundamentally changed criticism’s function. This new architectural criticism as a speculative discourse does not endeavour to comment on a singular work. But it is intent on separating architectural criticism from the profession and tends to cover theories of the humanities and social sciences, critical theory, and critical history of architecture.

Educational experts have long studied the effect of cognitive factors in education and learning and problem-solving performance levels. They believe that cognitive skills are the key to students’ success. With the right training, students can put the power of design learning in a specific direction. Concept mapping is one of the educational strategies used both for individuals and groups. The aim of this study is to assess the effectiveness of group architectural training based on conceptual mapping in improving drawing skills, creativity and problem-solving strategies of architecture students. The Method used is a quasi- experimental design with pre-/ post-tests based on action research. The sample population was chosen from Islamic Azad University Hamadan. Torrance Creativity (1999) and Cassidy & Long Problem-Solving Style (2013) questionnaires were used and from drawing test. Students were randomly (15 person in each group) assigned to the experimental and control groups. Used experimental methods After Group of Eight meeting them and also used from Kolmogorov- Smirnoff test and Leven test for presumption calculation and for Hypothesis analysis from MANOVA. Results showed that teaching via group concept mapping method meaningfully and significantly increased the creativity and solving problem of students.

Designers use a variety of tools to express their ideas. The traditional tools including hand drawing, sketching and physical modelling, have gradually been replaced by computer tools. Formal education emphasises on hand drawing skills, but design graduates inevitably move away from hand-drawing in the profession. Design students usually learn both manual and digital tools during their education, only to find hand drawing skills useless in profession. The aim of this research is to identify the role of computer aided design tools in the ideation stage of design and the varied aspects of its substitution to find practical solutions for education. Besides, we investigated which tool is preferred by the graduates who have commanded both tools.Sketching has a crucial role in design ideation. Designers use sketching to express their idea and to communicate. The designer’s unconscious explorations of sketches are rich sources to create new design ideas. But replacing hand sketching with digital sketching is a challenging subject. Lawson, a thinker of design theories, stated that the computer makes the idea look unrealistically good and leads to a false instead of real creativity. But some other theorists find computer simulation vital in creating complex forms, and essential in ideation and concept creation, and not just presentation stage.This research includes two stages. At the first stage, we investigated 23 new empirical studies that have compared traditional and computational tools in ideation phase. The fields of these studies are architectural, industrial, product, and graphical design. At the second stage, we asked 50 architecture graduate participants which type of tools they prefer for ideation and why. Their reasons can be categorised into the digital tools’ capabilities, college education, professional environment requirements and limitations, personal choice based on individual interests and abilities, and being up to speed with contemporary technologies. The advantage of sketching is seen as the fluency and flexibility of ideation and the advantage of computer the ease of modification. One strong reason for their preference was the emphasis on good presentation in sketching instead of the expression of ideas. Besides, they just use sketching for 2D drawings and computers for 3D illustrations of ideas. The latter renders the amount of time spent learning perspective unnecessary. In conclusion it is shown that adjustments are needed in design and architecture teaching in connection with hand skills drawings and teaching digital tools’ usage.

Today, climate change has become one of the most serious challenges for cities around the world, especially in developing countries where urbanisation is rapidly growing. Urban centres must be prepared with the right tools to deal with the effects of climate change. Also, some of the methods used to manage cities so far must change, because cities emit more than 70% of the greenhouse gases in cities. The city of Tehran is also facing some of the devastating effects of climate change such as land subsidence, rising air pollutants, severe storms, dust, and shortage of water resources, with their associated problems exacerbated over the past two decades. Urban development plans play an important role in mitigating or adapting to the effects of climate change. In this research, using the content analysis method, 6 criteria and 31 indicators have been used to evaluate 8 development plans of Tehran in terms of climate change effects. Three-point coding was used to score each of the indicators. The results show that the development plans of Tehran during the last two decades have made relative progress in terms of reflecting the effects of climate change and strategies to deal with them. Findings indicate that among the studied plans, the second and third five-year development plans of Tehran with 58.06% and 56.45% respectively have the highest rates, and the plan of reducing air pollution in Tehran and the comprehensive plan of Tehran with 17.74% and 19.35%, have the least attention to the effects of climate change.

Among qualitative research methods, interpretive language-based methods can widely be used for understanding and explaining urban social dynamics and facilitate in-depth, critical looks into urban environments. Yet, planning scholars’ applications of these types of qualitative methods has not been as widespread as those of quantitative methods. Despite the fundamental role of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as a qualitative method in urban studies, there is a dearth of literature using this method. In response, the present study tries to demonstrate potential applications of the critical discourse analysis in urban studies by describing its process through an analysis of a case: the petition by Yazd Bazaar business people against Qiam Street reorganisation plans. To do this, and following a review of theories and main concepts of this method, Fairclough’s analytic framework is recognised suitable for analysing phenomena and social orders, particularly the ways in which power is manifested in the use of language. The introduction of Fairclough’s three-tier model in this paper is accompanied by the analysis of the production, distribution and consumption of the petition’s text by shop owners, the description of the text itself, and the explanation of the social context of this communicative event. The results show that CDA can be beneficial in analysing a) power relations in urban planning and development processes, b) recognizing their structural ideologies and its socio-political consequences in cities and urban planning, c) understanding dominant, competing discourses in development processes, and d) understanding the transformation or reproduction of social and cultural structures.

Among post-disaster necessities is time and cost savings in reconstruction programmes. However, proposed solutions by reconstruction planners and specialists often fail to address these necessities. They tend to achieve their goals through standardisation, uniformity and mass production of housing, whilst a study of affordable housing in low-income urban neighbourhoods (including informal and spontaneous construction) can provide important information on how to meet housing needs with limited resources.The present research studies five cases in the District 3 city of Sari searching solutions for improving the affordability of post-disaster housing reconstruction. Data collection  is performed through participatory observations, with purpose-oriented sample selections, and the data analysed using thematic methods. The results are interpreted and structured, and then validated and prioritised during two stages of receiving expert opinions. The findings are then used in developing patterns for providing affordable housing.The results show that despite social differences in the five neighbourhoods studied, there are common features in housing provision processes which are different from the formal construction processes. 13 common patterns have been extracted from surveys, many of which ignored in post-disaster housing reconstructions. Whilst housing reconstruction generally follows a formal process seeking to reduce costs through standardisation and mass production, it can help affordability of housing reconstruction by using patterns such as residents’ participation, incremental evolution, and use of recycled and salvaged materials.