نشریه مطالعات معماری ایران
سال دوازدهم شماره 24 (پاییز و زمستان 1402)

The city of Yazd, previously known as “Kasse,” prospered under the Kakuyid rule in the region which led to a revival in the development of the city and its subordinate villages. Historians of that period have mentioned that the madrasa (religious school) was among the significant types of buildings that were erected during this period. The Atabakans continued the activities of the Kakuyids; they built many buildings including madrasas and also developed urban infrastructure. The questions in this research are: what were the number of madrasas built by the Kakuyids and the Atabakans and where were they constructed?; what were the physical and functional characteristics of the madrasas? The purpose of the research is to trace the function of these madrasas and their architectural features. The historical-analytical research method was employed. The data was collected based on historical reports and architectural evidence. The research showed that nine madrasas were established in Yazd during the fifth to eighth centuries SH by the patronage of the Kakuyid and Atabak rulers or their relatives. They were built inside the hisār (fortification; currently the neighborhood of Šahrestan), while others were built outside of it or connected to the gates. The current function of these madrasas is mainly funerary and there is no clear evidence left of their educational legacy. These types of buildings were so important that they were built with high domes and high portals, sometimes flanked by two minarets, making them significant elements in the townscape. Although most of the mentioned madrasas are now destroyed, we can still speculate about the remnants, such as the Qutb-al-Din Madrasa. They can be regarded as precursors to the madrasas of later centuries, especially those of the Muzaffarid and Timurid periods.

The Dar-ul-Ihsan Mosque and Madrasa, which is among the most significant monuments in Sanandaj, was built between 1226 and 1232 SH by order of Amanullah Khan Ardalan who was then the governor of Kurdistan. Some evidence in the building indicates that it was altered over time, differing from the original design. Despite some scholarly work, no study has been conducted about its original design and architectural alterations. The present research focuses on the identification, analysis, and interpretation of the building’s original design and its transformations over time, employing a combination of a historical and a case study strategy. For this purpose, after surveying the building's existing condition, all evidence regarding interventions in the building were collected by referring to historical sources including conservation reports, historical photographs, architectural and urban drawings, historical textual references, inscriptions, and the building itself. Data collation and analysis indicate that the building transformations and related historical events can be divided into three stages.In the first phase (1226-1232 SH), after completed construction, the structure underwent changes, the most significant being its conversion into the Jami‘ Mosque of Sanandaj, which led to the expansion of the prayer hall. In the next phase (1232-1351 SH), the building remained largely unchanged. However, due to some problems with its administration, the building suffered deterioration, after which the minarets were reconstructed in 1343 SH. In the recent phase (1311-1401 SH), a small section on the southern side of the building was demolished during a street construction project in 1311 SH. By 1314 SH, the building was restored and repositioned along the new street. Since then, the structure has remained unchanged, and almost all restoration works have been aimed at preservation, especially after the building's registration on Iran’s National Heritage List in 1327 SH. Finally, these findings enable the evaluation of hypotheses proposed by previous scholars, such as the building originally being a Jami‘ mosque, the possibility of the incomplete construction, and the similarity of its spatial organization with local mosques of Kurdistan.

Although the research process in many architectural topics involves approaches and methods used in the social sciences and humanities, advancing through the architectural research process by the application of these approaches and methods has been poorly studied. This article aims to define question-based research in architecture and introduce its scope, types, and processes. It is an interdisciplinary research in which the research strategies of the social sciences and humanities are applied. This article employs the classification strategy to study and analyze a selection of doctoral dissertations in architecture from worldwide top-ranked universities. The results demonstrate that question-based research advances by developing a question rather than hypothesizing, i.e., asking about a contemporary or historical phenomenon or a relatively unknown or disorganized body of knowledge that is obscure to the researcher. There are three types of question-based research topics in terms of the researcher’s relation to the questioned phenomenon: a topic relating to the past requiring examining historical data; a contemporary problem requiring data analysis from field research; or an architectural topic requiring investigation of both historical and modern conditions. The results of question-based research are mostly in the form of an extensive description or a coherent narrative.

Homes are the physical expression of the “way of life.” Family dynamics, the role of women, and social relationships are among the most significant social attributes that influence house layouts. The “women’s way of life” is especially remarkable, defining privacy and areas of the private and social life of women. Societies describe their private and social living areas depending on socio-cultural factors and values. This research aims to study the relationship between the way of life of women and the design of private and social domains in the houses of Khorram-abad during the Qajar period. The qualitative research approach and historical ethnography method were employed. Documentary methods, field studies, and interviews were used for data collection. The results show that the way of life of Lur women has influenced the layout of private and social domains of houses, highlighting the social domain in the architectural design of the historic houses of Khorram-abad during the Qajar period. Some areas of private life were less intimate and thus can be categorized as semi-private areas. Furthermore, some semi-private areas can be categorized as social living areas. In other words, women had created extended areas of private, semi-private, and social life by sharing some of their private and semi-private spaces with neighbors. In some cases, private areas served not only as female seclusion spaces but also as a setting for establishing family and social relationships.

Although more than a hundred years have passed since the introduction of “modernity” in Iranian urban planning, research on the relationship between modernity and urban planning in contemporary Iran dates back all but thirty years. The research work comprises the field of “Contemporary Architecture and Urban Planning in Iran,” although there are some limitations. The majority of studies are specific to Tehran and the evolution during the Qajar era is mostly underestimated in this field, leading to the oversight or underestimating of a part of Iran’s contemporary architectural and urban planning heritage. One of the ways to address these limitations is to focus on the urban modernization in places far from the center, also called “peripheral areas” in contemporary Iran. For this, the present article investigates the city of Ahvaz as one of the lesser-known legacies of contemporary urbanism in Iran. After the destruction of the ancient town of Ahvaz during the fourth-fifth centuries SH, its rebirth and redevelopment took place in the Qajar era. At that time, with the revival of shipping on the Karun River, the Qajars planned to establish a port near the ancient town, which became the core of modern Ahvaz. This article examines the experience of this renaissance and its connection with the phenomenon of modernity. The descriptive-historical research method was employed, exploring a collection of text documents and drawings from the early years of the city’s establishment, which were used to provide a first-hand account of the process of the emergence and early development of modern Ahvaz. The present narrative shows that Ahvaz should be considered a symbol of urban modernity in contemporary Iran. In addition, this study shows that while urban modernization in Iran during the Qajar era is mainly considered imitative or exogenous, in Ahvaz it was closer to a kind of spontaneous or endogenous process.

It is necessary to study the landscape from various perspectives in order to perceive it aesthetically. Most previous studies about landscape aesthetics are either based upon non-Iranian references (therefore, they are irrelevant to the primary sources) or follow approaches used in the mid- to late centuries. This fact undermines our perception of the beauty of the landscape. For instance, restricting landscape aesthetics to its celestial aspects and focusing on divine aesthetics might limit the understanding of its more tangible dimensions. Therefore, the study of landscape aesthetics via its tangible elements can lead to a deeper understanding of it. The Persian descriptive poems dating from 990 to 1042 AD (380 to 433 AH), which explore the landscape and its aesthetic aspects, can be assumed as references to the question of the Persian viewpoint of landscape aesthetics during that period. In this research, we have chosen the poems of Unsuri-i Balkhi, Farrukhi-i Sistani, and Manuchehri-i Damghani (three poets in the Ghaznavid court) as case studies. Then, interpretations of the poems are provided as well as depictions of the subjective landscape as described by the three poets. Comparison between the reconstructed images beside the cognitive descriptions of the poets reveals the aesthetic approaches in that period. This subjective study of landscape aesthetics during the above-mentioned period presents an aesthetic framework focused on mundane aspects. Despite the resemblances in all three poets’ points of view, one could not deny the obvious differences in their approaches toward landscape aesthetics. The differences include the structural and hierarchical approach of Unsuri, the dynamic and hedonistic approach of Farrukhi, and the natural and time-oriented approach of Manuchehri.

Fars Province has always been known as one of the important political, social, and religious centers in Iran with many buildings with different uses constructed in it. In the Islamic era, the construction of mosques as religious foundations proliferated in the region. This even caused the conversion of some fire temples into mosques or the construction of mosques with simple to complicated layouts. With the passage of time and the lack of care for these buildings, some of them were either destroyed or lost their original formation due to inappropriate restoration, while some others are still preserved and registered. The purpose of the following article is to introduce and formulate a typology for the historical mosques registered in the province. Therefore, by using the descriptive-analytical method and logical reasoning, 63 registered mosques were examined. The samples were classified based on their constituent spatial elements and their type in terms of enclosure (closed, open, and semi-open). The findings of this research show that there are three main types of mosques in Fars, including mosques without open or semi-open spaces or “single shabestan,” mosques with closed and open spaces or “shabestan and courtyard,” and mosques with closed, open and semi-open spaces or “shabestan, courtyard and ravaq-iwan.” In addition to these three types, six of the studied mosques are considered exceptions due to their unique features, among them the Īj Mosque, Sangi Mosque in Darab, Jami‘ Mosque of Darab, Izad-khast, Sheedan Bowanat, and Khan Jahrom.

Natural ventilation is one of the most important passive strategies to reduce building energy use, provide thermal comfort, and improve indoor air quality. It is one of the key solutions for sustainability in the building industry. On the other hand, natural ventilation is potentially dependent on climatic conditions and varies considerably from one region to another. This is while currently there is no information about this possibility in the country. Therefore, the current research assessed the potential for ventilation for maximum use in different climate zones of Iran in two parts and on two scales. First, the ventilation potential at the climate scale was evaluated based on weather data, and the maximum natural ventilation potential in 31 province centers was estimated by calculating the number of efficient hours for ventilation. In the second part, the effect of ventilation on improving thermal comfort and indoor air quality at the building scale was investigated. For this purpose, a module of an office building was modeled in Rhino software, then some limitations were applied to the weather data (temperature, wind, and humidity) using the Climate Studio plugin. Finally, the results were reported in the form of a map and by categorization. According to the results, the number of natural ventilation hours ranged from 1095 to 6158 hours, the percentage of comfort hours ranged from 33.15% to 50.32%, the percentage of hours with standard carbon dioxide concentration ranged from 10.89% to 50.16%, and the percentage of hours with a suitable air change rate also varied from 11.55% to 48.85%. Based on this, the atlas of natural ventilation potential for indoor spaces in different climate zones of the country (limited to province centers) was prepared, which can be used in the design process, highlighting natural potentials without the need for computational technical knowledge.

The traditional architecture of Kashan poses unique features in various aspects, one of which is the use of local materials. Due to the increasing importance of the debate on sustainability and the significant impact of materials on building sustainability, the role of local materials in the environmental sustainability of traditional buildings was investigated in this research. In this regard, first, by studying available references, the indicators showing the environmental impact of materials in different stages of their life cycle, including extraction and production, transportation and storage, construction, operation, demolition, and recycling were collected. Then, through field studies in the historical context of Kashan and library studies, the local building materials were identified and evaluated by the above indicators. Evaluation of each indicator was done with a different method such as collecting numerical data, qualitative analysis, or developing a questionnaire. Finally, based on data analysis using the Likert scale, materials were rated on a 1-5 scale for each indicator in order to perform a qualitative comparison between materials from the point of view of compliance with environmental sustainability indicators. The results of this research show that among the studied materials, including mud, stone, gypsum, lime, plant materials, and metals, mud is the most sustainable material with a score of 83 out of 85, and metals are the least sustainable with a score of 37 out of 85. Examination of existing analyses and the scores obtained shows that the most important factor contributing to the low score of metals is its complex manufacturing process and the need to go through processing stages in the factory, unlike soil, which requires the simplest production method without complex processes for preparation.

The concept of "integrity" was introduced as one of the conditions for registering cultural sites in the UNESCO World Heritage List. In historic living cities which are dynamic and subject to change, the application of such selective concepts is very complex, and the ambiguity of its related dimensions requires further research. In other words, the dimensions and factors of integrity can be used as important tools in urban heritage planning and policy-making. The extent and diversity of indicators for integrity and their different values require that they be used based on their role and function. Therefore, this research was conducted with the assumption of the non-equal weight of the criteria, sub-criteria, and urban heritage integration indicators, to comprehend and evaluate them. To achieve this aim, first, urban heritage integrity factors were categorized based on theoretical studies. Then, the Analytic Network Process (ANP) model was used with the assumption of interrelationships between the research sub-criteria, and the Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) technique was employed to reflect the mutual relationships between the sub-criteria. The type of research is exploratory, using the descriptive-analytical method. The results of the evaluation of indicators using the network analysis model indicate that, "preserving valid evidence and examples from one or more specific periods", "the relationship between the current situation and past function", "the relationship between the current situation and the original design", "economic use of heritage assets and heritage function", "considering the needs and participation of the local community in preserving the area" had the highest weight and, consequently, the greatest impact on the indicators for urban heritage integrity.

Mid-rise apartments are currently the most common type of residential buildings in Tehran. In the last two decades, brick facades with unconventional designs and modern patterns can be seen in residential apartments. This paper claims that this trend is a response to the prevailing residential facades and is thus a Regionalist endeavor. Therefore, this study aims to identify key examples of this trend in modern brickwork facades of residential apartments and to examine their responses to factors such as local climate and nature, sustainable architecture, architectural heritage, and regional conditions and limitations. The institutional factor, i.e., approved city ordinances, was also studied to clarify the position of Regionalism. In this descriptive-analytical study, four examples of the urban fabric of different areas of Tehran from the south to the north of the city were selected and analyzed. Qeytariyeh Residential  Building from the 2000s, 40 Knots House, Villa Apartments, and Kahrizak Apartments from the 2010s were described and analyzed with respect to their position in Iranian contemporary architecture and the aesthetic quality of their facade designs. During the last two decades, aesthetic changes can be observed in the expanding trend of modern brickwork facades, which aside from alignment with the three-dimensional modern brickwork in Tehran, bear a critical response to typical residential apartment facades regarding design and execution. In addition to its aesthetic function, the brick in these residential buildings also fulfills climatic and cultural functions. In the construction of these apartments, advanced structural technology and hand-made and machine-made bricks are used to create Regional architectural works conforming to the aesthetics of modern world architecture. From an institutional point of view, the approval of a small exemption from city taxes for brick facades and the attempt to influence facade designs have had some impact on the growth of modern brickwork facades in Tehran.