نشریه نامه معماری و شهرسازی
سال چهارم شماره 7 (پاییز و زمستان 1390)

Iranian rural Architecture with regard to its thousands year history makes a homogeneous and appropriate form in which the functions and role of communication and multi-functional spaces in the house were always so clear that included the social as well as the economic and cultural systems of rural housing in accordance with geographic requirements. The rural housings are obvious examples of this feature. The nature and its potentials along with knowledge of many generations, along with the attitude and approach of villagers to the nature have made another feature in rural architecture which created the most desirable and efficient relationship between environmental components while observing all the simplicity of components and its generalities and well impact of the use of environment beside economics, traditions and norms which govern the rural community is evident in its spatial organization. While present situation of rural housing encountered its particular problems, studies of housing in the country have been mainly focused on urban housing or specific villages. Lacking precise and useful studies in the field and differences between urban and rural housing, have transformed the research in the field of housing characteristics in rural architecture to a very important one. Answering to numerous needs in rural housing and the need for its compatibility with the demands of rural community requires the participation and attention of all the experts in rural issues. In this paper the typology of rural housing in one of the relatively untouched rural areas – Taleghan valley - in nine selected villages of the area were investigated. Taleghan is located in southern Alborz in Savojbolagh, Tehran. The area is located along the linear path of Shahrood river. It consists of three rural districts, called Down-Taleghan (the district center is Shahrasar), Middle-Taleghan (the district center is Shahrak) and Up-Taleghan ()the district center is Jovestan)(and there are totally 77 villages in this area. In this study, selected villages have been studied in general and micro-scale system deployment, geography effect held, perspective, texture and housing. The formation of Taleghan Valley habitats, according to geography and climate factors, consists of two different types: (1) Formation based on the river path (most villages are formed by this type), and (2) Formation regardless to the river path, for security reasons. The housing typology of rural areas has been analyzed from two perspectives: (A) Evaluation of spatial- functional patterns; and (B) Assessment of climate patterns. The most important features of indigenous architecture in this region can be summarized as follows: the harmony between the texture and the earth, and formation of the texture based upon the earth shape, the various spaces of rural housing according to the livelihoods of the households, climatic factors, and sociocultural status. Prospects resulting from this study can be summarized in cases such as: 1. Documenting these habitats may result in creating useful documents for protecting these villages in future. 2. Rural architectural details and their generalities which have been considered in this study can address the future constructions in a sustainable as well as harmonious architecture.

Mankind has always tried to find, manipulate and use the surrounding environment potentials to prepare a relatively comfortable place for his/her dwelling. In contemporary world, with respect to the existing hazards in relation to industries and development of the cities, and consequently overuse of energy, the architecture related to surroundings ()vernacular architecture)(for the sake of saving energy has gained a specific importance and has become the concern of various specialists and experts in architectural fields. Classificating and studying of various architecture at types can help us to better understanding its protection and accessibility to a variety of modern design that would be suitable for our global needs today. Troglodytic architecture is a kind of architecture which has drawn few attentions in professional organizations and academies. The mentioned architectural type has been used by our ancestors due to its thermal comfort, economical efficiency, safety against enemies and unsuitable climatic conditions. Troglodytic architecture for its diversity in various geomorphologies, natural settings and the possibility of different usage in various historical eras can be found in many shapes. It exists in a wide geographical spectrum. Based on the mentioned facts, for better understanding the differences and similarities of the type, classificating of different architecture-kinds is necessary. This article, which is a result of studying and analyzing many troglodytic architectural sites, is based on scientific methods. The objective of studying the available documents and many fieldworks is classifying this type of architecture and analyzing the various types and explaining their uniqueness. It became evident that in the recent years certain terminologies and classification had been created. In English language the term “man made cave” or troglodytic architecture, having root in French term “troglodytique” refers to a profound concept and meaning. Another existing term is “Rock architecture” which has been used in Iran (nowadays the “man made cave” term is more prevailing). Hand-carved architecture consists of all architectural creations that had been carved in mountains, rocks, hills or the earth. In conclusion, in relation to studying the architectural types, the results of this research show that in this type, the primary form of architecture is accessibility to a specific geomorphology (vertical or horizontal) and its functions are fundamental elements in creating such building and the specifications to their classification. Moreover, with reference to the existing classifications, their databases and diversities, the importance of troglodytic architecture had become a point of interest in many schools of thoughts. Evidently Iran holds many of this architectural type. At last, saving energy is an important element and has become the concern of various architects and experts in related fields. Researches showed that troglodytic architecture can widely be used as an alternative in buildings and structures, especially in accordance with saving energy, as well as protecting the natural landscapes.

Like other artifacts of traditional communities, Iranian Bridges, in addition to their function, are places for manifesting and transferring the underlying notions and worldview of their creators. Iranian art has formed the external shape of Latent transcendental elements in Islamic -Iranian beliefs and has created the Terrestrial/Visual form for percept it. Since Iranian art assumes the entire world is a place for divine presence and manifestation of God, this expression has not been limited to the religious buildings. Iranian architecture, with its symbolic forms, always has been visualizing their beliefs. Islamic architecture, among other Iranian arts, has a special place. In contact with these buildings, despite the centuries of historical distance, men feel a deep continuity and familiar sense with these places because of their underlying meanings. Architecture of Isfahan is the most excellent sample for this style of architecture. This article is done with descriptive method and indicates that Khajoo Bridge, as peak of Iranian-Islamic architectural history, as a symbol of passing to heaven and judgment. In Islamic architecture, each building with any function, in its traditional position, has an absolutely sacred character. So the bridges are not only a functional structure from this point of view and like other buildings of Iranian architecture especially religious buildings are the position of expression of Iranian viewpoint about the existence and the world. Each building is a link between form and conceptual thoughts resulted from beliefs and philosophical views. Among these beliefs, we can cite to belief in resurrection to heaven that has deep link with transition and crossing from the bridge. In the Iranian beliefs, the world is like bridge that emphasis temporally life of human kind during life against his whole spiritual life, a passage to heaven and paradise, right manner of life and a place to exam the humanity values of mankind like last judgment that being done on a bridge shape space in ancient Iranian mythical beliefs. In a result of this conceptual link, crossing the bridge as a metaphor of life time can be compare with Sadra theosophical teachings that we can see the evidence of them in Safavid era buildings specially Khaju Bridge on Zayandeh-rud river. Triple structure of Khaju bridge, the entrance part stands after Safavid era southern city gateway, the middle section of the bridge, with its octagonal building (called Biglarbeigi), and third part that links gateway to Isfahan city structure and a main route to city center, Naghsh-e-jahan square and especially, Imam mosque as a world center for Shia Islam, can be offered an interpretation of Sadra manner of from The hierarchy of human presence in an allegorical context that represent a human behavior in architectural expression and different experiences of various sections of bridges is comparable with evolutional part of his manner of life. This article shows this symbolic structure of Safavid era architecture, through this case study as an evident to philosophical context of Iranian architecture to create a whole world with religious meanings and its puberty during Safavid era.

Knowing different kinds of structural systems is among the necessities and prime needs for students, architects and civil engineers. The variety of structural designs and construction methods, and access to the new technologies could help architects to create modern as wall as beneficial buildings. One of the most special types of structures, which is suitable for constructing temporary buildings (that must be built as fast as possible), is pneumatic structures. After designing and building such structures, they could be easily transferred to different places and immediately aired. Therefore, they can be used many times in several cases. The most familiar inflated membrane structures are airships, from non-rigid blimps to giant vessels such as the proposed 1,300-foot-long (307-meter) ATC SkyCat cargo lifter with a payload of 2,200 tons. The new technology had consequences in the building industry. The English aeronautical engineer, Frederick W. Lanchester, first proposed an air-supported structure in 1917. Immediately after the World War II, Walter Bird designed and built prototypes of pneumatic domes to house large radar antennaefor the U.S. Air Force, known as radomes. They included many civilian commercial applications and paved the way for a new kind of architecture. Pneumatic or air-supported structures have their form sustained by creating, with the aid of fans, an air pressure differential between the interior of the building and outside atmospheric conditions. The increased air pressure-about the difference between the lobby of high-rise building and the top floor-is as slight as to be virtually undetectable and the causes are no discomfort. The structural system enables achieving large spans without columns and beams, providing totally flexible interior spaces. Made from laminated membranes such as fiber glass, nylon, or polyester, coated with polyvinyl chloride (PVC) for weather protection, the electronically welded components are tailored to define the building shapes. The durability and heat -and light- filtering properties of the membraneare determined by careful choice of surface finishes and inner lining. Because of its lightness, the air-supported structure in among the most efficient structural forms, combining high-tensile strength materialswith the shell form. In this article, the authors intend to discuss the different capabilities and forms of the two categories Compact Air Structures: Air-supported structures; and Air-Inflated ones. The loads which affect these structures are: dead live and air pressure loads, which will be discussed thoroughly, and the construction methods of these structures have been stated. In other parts, “entrances”, “pressure drop control “, “expenses through operation period” and “designing relying points and supports” have been explained. Air-inflated structures are devised into major groups of inflated panel structures and inflated frame structures. In the structural-seismic part of the article, the different types of air structures in terms of forces and geometric shapes, their strong point against earthquake and lateral forces have been discussed. At the end some real examples of these structure systems have been illustrated. The conclusion of the article includes advantages and disadvantages and usage of the air structures compare to other types of structures. All effort has been made to use different sources such as books and articles (published in this field since 70s) and the data from different companies (Iranian and non-Iranian), the professional ones in the mentioned field.

Disharmonic growth of Cities and urban sprawl are among the most problematic issues of current cities which have led to destruction of farm lands around them and other destructive consequences. Therefore, it has doubled the importance of conscious leading and controlling expansions of cities. Urban sprawl, which was initiated in the second half of the 20th century, is propounded as one of the main issues in most of the countries. Urban sprawl is accompanied by several positive and negative consequences and is caused by various reasons in different cities with different geographical, economical, political and social characteristics. The Iranian cities are no exceptions to this norm; although they have had slow expansions over the last centuries. However, as the time goes by, most of them are faced with sprawl phenomenon. Moreover, specific formal characteristics of the cities act as effective factors in urban expansion, and lacking specific forms and structural patterns. Meanwhile, structural tools, which have formed the city and caused the integration of spatial organization of it, are kinds of instruments that through them the urban planners, as well as the decision makers, can help the urban management to control the expansion of the city. Urmia is one of the cities that has confronted with rapid growth in recent years. In order to measure the sprawl in this city, after reviewing the related theoretical as well as empirical literature, based on the findings of Ewing et al (2002), Torrens (2008), Frenkel and Ashkenazi (2007) on sprawl, 19 variables were selected to study the sprawl phenomenon in this city. A factor analysis in 30 districts of the city was run to identify the underlying dimensions of sprawl in the city. Six factors were extracted, named: mix land use; density; irregularity of the built up area; centrality; access; and activity spaces. The combination of these 6 factors in a GIS map illustrates that the central areas of the city are the least affected areas by sprawl, and the further it goes from the center, the more intensive the sprawl becomes, whereas the most sprawl could be seen in the northwestern, southern, eastern and western parts of the city. Moreover, comparing sprawl and expansion process of the city in different periods of time shows that the earlier formed districts have the lowest sprawl and as a person reaches to the newly built areas, the city expansion process tends to have more sprawled. Also the investigation of the Radial-Concentric form of Uroumieh and the characteristics of development in location and time aspects and comparison of them with the sprawl in various parts of the city indicates that the rupture created in the city form have led to a high sprawl at the out-of-form areas. Consequently, in order to control the sprawl, some proposals were presented by making use of structural tools and creation of integration in the spatial organization of the city.

By appearing different crisises in various aspects of social, cultural, economic, physical and environmental issues in large cities around the world in the second half of the 20th century due to inappropriate plans and speed growth of urbanism, the environmental quality in urban neighbourhoods has been decreased. For this reason, various related theories, about improving the quality of neighbourhoods - such as the Sustainable Development Theory- have been defined during the recent decades. The main goal of this theory, at level of neighbourhoods, is about creating a desirable and sustainable environment to live for their present and future residents. There is a large diversity among the defined measures for sustainable neighborhoods Therefore, this study- by quantitive and qualitive methods- based on analyzing, studying and surveys shows, and the characteristics of a sustainable neighbourhood in the fields of environmental, social- cultural, economic and physical issues. At the first step, the authors described the concepts of environmental quality, sustainable development, the neighbourhood (and the sustainable one too), and then they investigated various perspectives about sustainable development and sustainable neighbourhood such as the measures defined in Canada(2001) and the UK(2005), as initial countries, about sustainability at neighbourhood level, as well as the others, such as the principles of sustainable neighbourhood for European countries and so on. Based upon the mentioned measures, the authors defined 34 measures for a sustainable neighbourhood in these aspects: socio-cultural, economical, physical and environmental ones. Then they investigated the sustainability of Chizar neighbourbood in Tehran, as a case study in field of the quality of housing, neighbours and neighbourhood by random sample. Duo to analyzing the quality of Chizar by Satisfaction- Importance Rate, the residents determined their satisfaction and defined the importance of each index, from 1 to 5 (1= very much, and 5= very less). The results for this analysis show that all of the measures at the given three levels ()housing, neighbours and neighbourhood)(need to be improved, because all of the IS rates are more than 0.1. The most sustainability issues in Chizar Neighbourhood are: low crime and current security, responsibility of residents for their neighbourhood, emphasis on cultural and historical heritage, and the existence of residents with different outcomes, local land uses, high quality of services, providing daily needs of residents in neighbourhood and housing for deferent people. The less quality issues are as follows: dimension of roads, green spaces and space for parking. Sustainability of the others is comparative. Furthermore, the Importance- Satisfaction Rate shows the priority of roads, spaces for parking and local parks for reforming as well as evolution at neighbourhood level and also for housing, dimensions of kitchen, number and dimension of rooms, and insects in building are priorities for reforming. On the whole, the results show that Chizar is comparatively a sustainable neighbourhood, despite its low quality in many measures.

The studies in the field of spatial cognition and legibility have grown steadily since the 1960s. Architects, urban planners, urban designer, psychologists and so on, have attempted from their different points of view, to characterize those attributes of spatial environments that constitute for them a great source of experience. These are highly multidisciplinary experiences dealing with the interaction between humans and their environments at many levels. The term as well as the concept of “landmark” have been first introduced by Lynch in his primitive work, named Image of the City. Landmarks are among of the components that Lynch hypothesized as contributing to imageability of cities. Landmarks support for structuring the environmental informations of cognitive conceptual units. They can potentially to identify uniquely pertinent intersections for route following, and they also disambiguate spatial situations at urban spaces. They are significant in one’s formation of a cognitive map of physical environment. Landmarks are defined in urban spaces as key characteristics, and this make them recognizable and memorable in the environment. This paper focuses on the use of landmarks in human navigation. Landmarks not only indicate position and orientation, but also contribute to the development of spatial knowledge. Therefore, an urban environment containing distinctive landmarks supports navigation by facilitating the acquisition and application of spatial knowledge. In order to create a clear image of urban environment in the residents’ minds, it is necessary to enable them to easily identify its components as well as its whole entity. Nowadays, the urban environment faces with major problems in providing various urban design qualities, especially legibility. The cause is rooted in imitative constructions of foreign patterns and forgetting native principles resulted in spaces with low legibility. So, using appropriate principles and improving urban environment to enrich legibility and facilitating integrated cognitive map formation for residents understanding can be helpful. Over the last few decades some new spread areas of Yazd City have faced with major problems in providing legibility. For solving them and enriching the legibility of new areas, the appropriate principles that have been extracted from inhabitants’ cognition and their expectations, should be used This study attempts to identify and evaluate different kinds of urban landmarks (as one of the most important elements that provides legibility) by using descriptive – analytical method and based on factors such as the reason of being distinctive, land use and function, exclusive form, the value of heritage, location in city and facade materials that residents of the City of Yazd use them in shaping their cognitive maps. The findings show that those landmarks in urban cognitive map of the City of Yazd have been more important were those which have had – at least – one of the following items:- Having distinctive form in their surrounding;- Locating along urban main streets or near their junctions;- Being established in a historical fabric or having heritage value;- Having land use such as religious, cultural, commercial and municipal functions such as urban elements or serving an important urban magnets.

Although nearly a century ago, for emphasizing on interaction between people and nature over time, the term ‘’Cultural Landscape’’ was used for the first time. The first appearance of this term in conservation context was about 18 years ago. In 1992, by adding cultural landscapes representing the “combined works of nature and of man”, the World Heritage Convention became the first international legal institution to recognize and protect cultural landscapes of outstanding universal value. Their inscriptions, on the World Heritage List were important steps toward revealing and sustaining the great diversity of interactions between humans and their environment, protecting living traditional cultures and preserving the traces of those which have disappeared. This paper, following presentation the historical background of cultural landscape concept and its definitions, looks in particular at cultural landscape in UNESCO World Heritage Center between 1992 to 2010. It includes the definitions, the changes that cultural landscape concept brought into the application of the Convention, the strengths and weaknesses, as well as the meetings of experts, where the most important issues were raised and suggested. During the last eighteen years, UNESCO World Heritage Center has attracted many critical issues on cultural landscape. Making attempts to resolve them has load to some positive effects on revising the process of recognition, assessment, and management of world heritage cultural landscape, and consequently a clearer concept for cultural landscape, in World Heritage Convention, came to agreement. However, with a closer look at cultural landscape in the Center some fundamental criticisms could be raise which if the the Convention wants to remain as the most important international legal institution to recognize and protect cultural landscape, it should find worldwide acceptable answers for them. In this paper, the three main challenges are discussed as follows: (a) imbalances in World Heritage List; (b) inefficiency of strict division between the cultural landscapes and the natural ones; and (c) adopting elitist approaches. Investigating the first challenge, imbalance in world heritage list, discovered the weakness of current definitions and categories of cultural landscape as one of the agents of this imbalance. Analyzing the second raised challenge discovered that the strict division between cultural and natural landscape was not applicable to recognition and conservation of heritage. Therefore, the necessity of reviewing the definitions and categories of cultural landscape for purpose of overcoming this challenge was appeared. The final focus of this paper was on elitist and site-oriented approaches of UNESCO World Heritage Center, providing an artificial distinction between such landscapes and the ordinary ones. Analyzing the consequences of this approach discovered a paradox between the definitions and categories of cultural landscapes and World Heritage operational guidelines. Hence, reviewing the definitions and guidelines is required. Therefore, the paper brings three fundamental challenges of cultural landscape concept to light by focusing on analysis of eighteen-year experience of this concept in UNESCO World Heritage Center. In addition to these challenges it explores issues associated with the necessity of reviewing cultural landscape definition, categories, and Operational Guidelines for Implementation of the World Heritage Convention toward answering these challenges as well as ones will be risen in future.

Designing and planning for residential development are among significant components of any planning or urban design efforts. In many countries, residential types vary greatly between regional markets, and they vary within a single municipal jurisdiction too. Housing types acceptable in a locale may not be culturally, economically or environmentally viable even a short distance away. Among the main issues in housing practice are the housing block types. Block types refer to the arrangement of the relationships between mass and space in an individual plot and then in a whole block shape. This also depends on many various factors such as building types (e.g. single family, multifamily, detached or attached, etc.), street patterns (e.g. in case of total width), open space patterns (e.g. courtyard, back yard, etc.), environmental condition (e.g. macro and micro climatic zone, slope, scope, etc.), in which every single factor adjudicates to bring about some diverse block patterns. Therefore, the more variety of conditions needs to meet the more variety of massing patterns. In the recent half century, there has been emerged a massing pattern through the spatial transformation of house, in which the mass is placed in north side of plot and then courtyard in the south side of it. Because of prevalence of this pattern throughout the whole country and also within several decades, it can be taken as a part of planning tradition of contemporary, rural and detached urban fabrics of Iran. This article aims to survey the mentioned pattern and answer the questions which are the insufficiencies of this pattern at first. Then it studies how some changes in massing pattern could cause wide spread microclimate variations. In this case, two massing patterns have been compared. The first pattern is a current one that has been addressed before. The second is a proposed pattern which is similar to the current pattern, except in pitching, on parcel. Indeed, in the proposed massing pattern, the north plots are covered from line of plot in street proximity. Therefore the microclimatic variants which influence on thermal comfort have been compared. The microclimatic variants include mean radiant temperature, relative humidity, air temperature and wind flow (direction and speed). Envi-met model has been used to evaluate the variants. The paper is going to apply Leonardo and Xtract software’s in order to extract required outputs in terms of graphics and numeric. The findings indicate some prominent differences between the two compared patterns pro of the proposed one. Indeed, based on precise mathematical calculation, the proposed pattern has 4 levels higher than the existing one within the thermal comfort variants. Especially, in relation to the mean radiant temperature variant that is known as a critical scale to determining the comfort in exterior condition. It proves that only replacing the mass in a given plot can make great improvement on saving energy and is mainly suitable for microclimate condition. Also it poses a question for not renewing the regulatory context to bring about the better block patterns and the existing conditions have been left on its own.