مجله منظر
پیاپی 60 (پاییز 1401)

Landscape is a concept defined as the outcome of human interactions with the environment, society, and history. "Manifestation" (Nemood) is the explanation of this outcome, which emerges gradually as a result of a will for stability and continuity of establishment in a place. In return, ‘’Representation’ (Namad) is the outcome of the human will to express his/her desired concept; it can be a "conventional" or "natural" sign. Iran's cities, as well as small castles in rural areas in the past, used to be significantly defined by their enclosures known as "Hesar." It was separating the border of inside and outside space, interior home-space with its individual interactions from the exterior released space of Nature. The enclosure, while protecting the interior space from the invasion of outsiders, was the protector of the inhabitant’s space against the wild nature as well. The encounter of these two worlds on both sides of the enclosure was quite distinct, as was turned into the manifestation of life and reflected the possibility of living beyond its border. On two different sides of the wall, two distinct landscapes were perceived: on one side, there was an inhabited space where humans used to be attend, and on the other side, an environment away from any intervention. The gardens and settlements were all inside the enclosure, and the vacant deserts were outside. The street was in contrast to the desert. The enclosure was the distinct border between the two huge manifestations of the landscape; It was a kind of urban landscape against the natural one; the realm of human life in opposition to wild nature. The meeting of these two landscapes, brought about by the manifestation of the enclosure, provided a context for the development of the close concepts.  The enclosure was not merely a manifestation of the convenience of human life but also recognized as an indicator of supremacy and dignity. The farmlands and gardens were developed outside the enclosure, as the new migrants and the peasant dwellers gradually settled outside it. The neighborhood areas were formed outside the enclosure, which was then formally known as the outside districts. In social confrontations, the social ghettos of the same religion but different from the ruling class were located outside an enclosure. The Zarisef district in Kerman city, which is located behind the urban gate, was one of these patterns. This separation, which arose from the social classes of that time, was more evident before the advent of Islam. The cities during the Sassanid era were allocated to certain classes, in which the enclosure was the common symbol of their territory. Inside area, which was called Sharstan, and the outside area, known as Rabz, were separated by an enclosure in the middle. Basically, the outside was not even triggered as a city. The first urban intervention following the arrival of Islam in Iran was the act of destroying enclosures as a symbol of superiority, which was in opposition to implementing justice. Due to the symbolic aspect of enclosure and its power, its other functional features of it were ignored. The superiority of its symbolic aspect, meaning 'representation' to 'manifestation’ in perceiving the concept of the enclosure, led to the convention of destroying them. Following this occurrence, Rabz and Sharstan were merged, and thereby the inside and outside territories were connected. The security and natural functions of the enclosure were inevitably overlooked. Ignoring the necessity of its manifestation a few centuries later resulted in its emergence again. The cities and castles of their masters recovered their enclosures again. As a result, the process of emergence of those manifestations as the initial elements of the landscape and their transformation into representing them as a symbol and an elevated element of the landscape was restarted. According to an interpretation of the socio-economic classes in the western world, there is a focus on the originality of the enclosure in response to perceiving the social structure of "land" and "location" of living space. In terminology, ‘Bourgeois’ means a resident of a ‘Bourg’* or a castle, the upper class that lived over the enclosures and inside the Bourg. The enclosure was a required security element of the aristocracy and the representative of social superiority as the symbol of the bourgeois caste. The kinds of landscape elements, which are quite evident in the process of turning a manifestation element into a recognizable representative symbol, are the most significant characteristics protecting them is vital for the continuity of the identity of human communities. Therefore, in urban developments, where the destruction of enclosures is inevitable, the various aspects of them including their physical, functional (manifestation), and semantic (symbolic/representative) dimensions should also be respected.Paniz Soleimani Salar, the brilliant artist has explained the conflict of these two different worlds on both sides of the enclosures in Dameghan city by illustrating this astute image.*According to the idea of some linguists, "Bourg" is an altered version of the Arabic word "Borj", which is derived from the Persian root "Borz", meaning high and elevated.

One of the significant issues in the study of Persian gardens is the variations made in the shape patterns and physical structure depending on different conditions of the natural context, as seen in several gardens in northern Iran. The present study aims to investigate the relationship between physical changes in Abbas Abad garden and the landscape of its natural context to gain a deeper understanding of this garden and Persian gardens. To this end, the present study develops a specific “multiple analysis” framework to analyze the case study. First, Abbas Abad Garden is described by reviewing historical documents, and its reference design in the Safavid period was recovered in a three-dimensional model. Then, its physical and spatial structures are analyzed and the role of the landscape of the natural context in the physical changes in Abbas Abad garden is discussed. The research findings indicated that the garden orientation is a scenic orientation based on the characteristics of its natural context. In the studied garden, a powerful central axis, as a common geometric characteristic of Persian gardens, extends to the main mansion, passes through it, and can be traced to Chahartaqi in the middle of the lake. Moreover, in Abbas Abad Garden, the organization of the main mansion has been changed based on the landscape requirements and displaced from the middle of the highest platform to its northernmost point to visually overlook the lake and the Chahartaqi in its middle. The spatial structure of the main mansion includes an observation semi-open space, and the residential elements around the garden to preserve the continuity of the view of nature. This research also indicates that in the design of Abbas Abad garden, the landscape is an organizing factor in the location, geometric structure, and arrangement of the architectural elements of the garden, and in suitable areas, the landscape of the natural context, that can be perceived from the main observation deck, determines the observation deck direction, the spatial structure of the main mansion, the organization of the architectural elements, and the overall structure of the garden.

In recent years, the study of apartment buildings is important because of their growth in Iran. This issue has been neglected in contemporary architecture and landscape research. Previous studies show that one of the factors affecting the mood of apartment dwellers is aesthetic criteria. The purpose of this study is to redefine the aesthetic criteria in evaluating the residential facade of Tehran to improve the quality of experience of residents. To this end, in the first step, the aesthetics criteria of the facade were extracted from the literature on neuro-architectural research. In the second step, according to the mentioned criteria, the residents of the apartments were interviewed. This research is an applied study and its method is qualitative. Sixteen articles were content analyzed in a systematic review. Eleven physical criteria and 8 semantic criteria for the aesthetic of residential facades were extracted. Classification between criteria was done through open-ended interviews with 14 apartment residents in Tehran. Findings showed that among the physical and semantical criteria of the facade, “vegetation”, “color and materials”, and “surface of the openings” have a positive impact on the perception of the aesthetics of the facade. The results show that the residential facades of Tehran are at a low level in terms of semantic and symbolic aesthetic. At the same time, these facades are not acceptable in terms of emotional aesthetic and are only visually enhanced.

Sustainability is the knowledge that refers to the recovery of the relationship between man and nature and seeks to provide a set of concepts and methodologies to help humans and nature better interact. Ecological sustainability is a widely recognized branch of sustainability knowledge that draws upon the ecological interpretation of the components of the human and nature relationship to provide solutions for the enduring interaction of these two components. Thus, a review of the theoretical literature on ecology indicates that this interpretation is only based on the physical components of this relationship that does not provide a context for understanding their semantic aspects. This research aims to answer the question: “Which body of knowledge can produce the most effective man-nature relationship that is capable of making the two sides sustain it? “ Thus, this article uses the pathology of the relationship between human and nature in ecological knowledge and establishes an analogy over the explanation of this relationship in landscape knowledge to examine the two attitudes using a descriptive-analytical method which is based on a critique of content and structure of the two attitudes. The findings suggest that ecological sustainability fails to describe all aspects of sustainability comprehensively and cannot provide solutions for the objective aspects of it, owing to its theoretical foundations. One would say that the relationship between man and nature is not only noted in biological aspects but also in yet another respect, which is affected by the perceptual process between these two components. On the other hand, landscape knowledge is an attitude that both explains the physical and semantic dimensions of the relationship between humans and nature. Thus, the conceptual sustainability model, if based on an interpretation of landscape from the relationship between humans and nature, can clearly explain the physical and semantic dimensions of sustainability and result in more complete measures.

Natural disasters, economic and environmental crises, and pandemic diseases have highlighted the need to revise urban development models to anticipate new development strategies. Cities have been historically associated with production, trade, and consumption processes. However, the role of production has been eliminated in the contemporary world, and trade and consumption have dominated this cycle. This is one of the issues that has been fueling urban crises. Therefore, it is necessary to create an urban resilience matrix by integrating productivity and urban landscape as a planning tool and also the development of sustainable infrastructure. Given that continuous productive urban landscape (CPUL) is a novel concept in the theoretical field of urban landscape, this systematic review was conducted based on a four-stage model by formulating the study searching strategy using the following keywords: productive landscape, urban landscape, integrated productive urban landscape, dynamic landscape, and productive urban landscape in top citation databases. In the initial search, 377 papers published from 2000 to 2021 were found, 56 of which were selected as qualified papers for in-depth analysis and finding answers to research questions. Then, the screened papers were analyzed in terms of content and synthesis. The existing views and definitions were extracted and classified chronologically to redefine the concept of integrated productive urban landscapes by examining and comparing the definitions. Based on the analysis and classification of definitions, the integrated productive urban landscape strategy is a network of green and open multi-purpose structures. These structures connect the landscape and social centers through productive spaces, with the priority of walking while passing through the built environments. An integrated productive urban landscape, as a new typology of the landscape, considers the landscape as an integrated structure from a holistic and ecological perspective and integrates urban agriculture in green and open public spaces. It defines a new layer of the landscape in cities in addition to redefining open urban spaces. Also, this strategy proposes a new way of life and production-based spatial organization that is socially inclusive and environmentally sustainable by emphasizing local production as a forgotten opportunity. Implementing the integrated productive urban landscape strategy based on the identified structural and functional features can create an interaction between social, economic, and environmental environments. Moreover, this is considered a consistent and flexible strategy that contributes to the urban development and resilience of the urban ecosystem by providing a model for land use management and planning. Therefore, this approach provides an appropriate response to the challenges of contemporary urban development.

Julfa is one of the oldest neighborhoods in Isfahan, which was built to settle the Christians of Armenia on the south part of the Zayandehrood River during the Safavid period. Although its construction has undergone many changes, like the other parts of the city, it is one of the few neighborhoods that still carries the “neighborhood” prefix, and the citizens, as the city’s landscape audience, acknowledge it as “ a neighborhood.” The question is, what factor (s) has made this region withstand the anarchist pressures of the perceived concepts of the modern imported urbanism, while the similar neighborhood of Juibareh has failed in this regard? Undoubtedly, various factors contribute to an area’s identification and its transformation into a neighborhood, but in the present study, we encounter a special minority neighborhood that, contrary to the views of many reputable sociologists and anthropologists, still has its former prosperity. By examining library resources, documents, field visits and using a landscape holistic approach, and also with the help of sociology and historical anthropology, we found that in this region a threat like being a minority has changed into an opportunity that causes solidarity and a sense of belonging to the neighborhood. (Which is also confirmed by experts). Comparing Juibareh neighborhood (formerly Judea)  to another minority neighborhood of the same period in  Isfahan shows that minority solidarity is not enough for a neighborhood and when power, wealth, and freedom of action come together with cultural factors provided by the government (from outside the group) and reinforce the help of this solidarity (from within the group), the neighborhood will be full of dynamism and progress. The present study seeks to investigate and analyze some of the most important factors of success in Jolfa remaining a neighborhood compared to Juibareh and examines factors that may contribute to the prosperity and revitalization of the neighborhood concept.

Resilience is a response to the crisis in the face of environmental risks in today’s changing world. Seasonal urban rivers are one of the causes of environmental hazards in cities whose characters are subject to change during droughts and floods. They have often been turned into channels for flood control and have lost their ecological identity. Developing the best strategy for the resilience of seasonal urban rivers requires research on the contribution of the resilience approach to the preservation of seasonal urban river ecosystems against environmental hazards. Moreover, the way to implement such a strategy could be a response to the crisis. This resilience approach research examines and criticizes the field of ecology and is concerned with preserving urban rivers according to their ecological structure. Based on the literature review in the two fields of resilience and ecology, principles and components were identified and analyzed using a deductive-inferential method. As a result, the best macro strategy for seasonal urban river ecological resilience is process-based river restoration, driven by the ecological structure of the river ecosystem, which is made possible by micro-strategies such as understanding the main causes of ecosystem degradation or change, determining physical, chemical, and biological processes, sustainable watershed management, increasing the resilience of river ecosystems in the face of future environmental hazards, preventing human interference in natural processes, and creating a new balance between socio-economic needs. This research presents strategies to create diversity in plant and animal species in the riverbed, generate modularity in the ecological patches of the river ecosystem, improve the services of the river ecosystem, limit and control the effects of ecological variables that are associated with the river, adapt river restoration to slow key variables, develop regulations based on non-human interference in the structure of the river ecosystem, raise cultural awareness in this area using social capital, and ecological innovation in creating sustainable conditions after the crisis and disruption.