Life Narrated by Iranians
Seyed-Amir
Mansouri
استادیار دانشکده معماری، پردیس هنرهای زیبا، دانشگاه تهران
author
text
article
2015
per
According to archeological excavations, temples are the earliest outcomes of human architecture that have affected the formation of other human-constructed buildings such as houses and palaces. Ancient people, with their particular perception of the world, embodied their beliefs in order to "relate" to the world. They chose exceptional objects and elements as symbols of sanctity, the supreme world and the absolute blessing to be used in their life scenes. And so beauty creation came to life. Beauty is the embodiment of a better existence and beautification is signification of the environment to influence the surrounding elements in whole and detail. Man rearranges what he chooses from nature to create a space that implies his intended meaning. Thereby he spends time living in space and generation by generation; the "space" gradually becomes a "place". "Space" is the desirable and necessary form for human life and "place" is the product of space combined with life. Yard, meaning there that is around, is the prominent type of Iranian space; an area with an open blue sky in the middle, and surrounded by trees where life happens all around it. Elements of life are human-made creations produced in the same process; meaningful forms that have reshaped in the course of history with the human requirements and demands. Iranian yard is a place and a landscape1 that is shaped gradually over the millennia. It has appeared as the essence of space in various types of architecture is Iran. The central courtyard architecture, which is used to describe the dominant type of Iranian architecture, is the description of space formation pivoted by the yard; a yard that is a symbol of meaning and beautifier of space in order to transform it into a place. Therefore, in the process, the yard as the element of cresting meaning, offers spirit and “life” to the "body" of architecture through essence of yard. Eid greeting ceremony of Qajar era in Arg square of Tehran narrates the life giving flow in Iranian space of living. A large pool of water in the middle of the space arranges the elements and the order of events as the center of a compass. Thereby the palace porches that seems to have locked their views to the scene, and the cannon which is a symbol of power, have been built on both sides. The street as a social space from the edge of the palace approaches to his redemptive focus of yard and and another building as the secondary sign of power in side of the yard, benefits from its virtue. Reading the Iranian yard which is of the same nature despite the difference in the peripheral elements is the key to reveals its desire to seek perfection from yard to life. Eid greeting ceremony, as a traditional celebration that created Persepolis, is a unique behavior of adaptation to Iranian landscape. Despite inadequate space to room a large crowd, the behavior in the space depicts its real status. The crowd gathered at a specific time and place with mentioned features is the manifestation of a scene narrated by Iranians.
MANZAR, the Scientific Journal of landscape
پژوهشکدۀ هنر، معماری و شهرسازی نظر
2008-7446
7
v.
30
no.
2015
3
3
http://www.manzar-sj.com/article_10529_2fc5c0b4c70bd0a5f85561ce18d7042b.pdf
Chahar-Bagh or Charbagh?
Azadeh
Shahcherghi
Assistant Professor, Department of Art, and Architecture, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University
author
text
article
2015
per
Most of the researchers noted that CHARBAGH is the most important pattern of Persian garden and it is an "Archetype". In other side we have CHAHARBAGH which is formed by two perpendicular axes in garden and divide it into four square shape parts. This paper aims to challenge "Chahar-Bagh" Or "Charbagh" ,which is correct? So, that is the main question. In order to find the answer, with a deductive approach, the paper tries to recognize all the documents about "Chahar-Bagh" and "Charbagh", among historical documents such as, the first documents of PASARGAD garden, available historic books: IRSHAD-OL-ZERA-E, ROZAT-OL-SEFAT, BABURNAMEH and we search it in Achaemenian inscription, and also in Persian miniature and Persian garden-carpet. In most of the historic books we can find, description of un-axial pattern for creating Persian garden. We could not find any words which means CHAHAR (Four) in available Achaemenian inscriptions. In Persian Garden –carpets and Persian miniature we can observe both patterns of CHAHAR-BAGH archetype which includes: two perpendicular axes pattern and uni-axial pattern as we see the same in Persian Miniatures. In conclusion we can form a hypothesis which tells us, shaping four square shape parts or CHAHAR-BAGH garden is related to the Safavid period. Iranian built un-axial garden before that period and call it CHARBAGH.
MANZAR, the Scientific Journal of landscape
پژوهشکدۀ هنر، معماری و شهرسازی نظر
2008-7446
7
v.
30
no.
2015
6
13
http://www.manzar-sj.com/article_10530_08295f00c69bea5ba5bb7cd5f4262574.pdf
Aesthetics of Dams and Landscape Enhancement
Mina
Tamannaee
مدرس گروه معماری، دانشگاه آزاد اسلامی تهران (واحد جنوب تهران)
author
Maryam
Tabatabaian
Ph.D in Art teaching, Assistant Professor of the University of Art
author
text
article
2015
per
Safety and functionality of dams during the long operating life usually provides a dominant controlling role for the criteria raised by nature and economy such as geology, hydrology, and material availability. Having met these fundamental demands, the question of achieving elegance and harmony with the surrounding environment brings up another probably never less important. Dams as giant elements interfering the nature have to be designed not to reduce the beauty of nature, even to improve it as well. Main factors creating beauty in dams’ architecture and the harmony with its natural surroundings, is the main subject of this article. The hypothesis states that although the mentioned dominant controlling roles of economy, structural stability and functionality provide some constraints in designing dams aesthetically, the enhancement of the aesthetics of dams and consequently the aesthetics of its natural environment are definitely achievable by considering principles such as order, proportionality, appropriate interaction with environment, and also functionality. The research method of this study is based on the content analysis of theoretical research and examination of the new findings in the context of aesthetic, architectural design and landscape design. Data collection has been through library studies and a literature review. Order is one important aesthetic prerequisite. Formal principals of architecture serve to define the order inherent in the structure and its relationship with the environment. The attempt in dam engineering to enhance aesthetic through order involves three elements: repetition, parallelism and orthogonality. First, order manifests itself by repetition and parallelism of simple, formally similar elements. Second, orthogonality constitutes another element of architectural order. In most dams, the appurtenant structures are incorporated in the dam body. Whether such structures are or are not arrange orthogonally influences the overall aesthetic impression of the dam. In curved dams, orthogonality as an element of order is replaced by the structures being oriented towards on central focal point. A structure which is unable to tell us if it is perpendicular or not, if it is symmetric or not, if it is straight or curved, may strain our sense of order. Another formal principal in architecture is proportionality. Highly tensioned and slender structures are perceived as elegant and aesthetically pleasing. Slenderness manifests itself to the extent of the allowed stress level; the higher the tensile level, the thinner the element becomes and the more elegant the structure appears. Environment considerations are particularly relevant for dams, as their enormous dimensions affect nature. For some, stark contras may be undesirable, because it clashes with nature’s own inherent beauty. For others, contrast is the honest and only possible expression of technical creativity. Besides a dam’s physical structure, the consequences of construction and damming also have aesthetic implication. The relics of construction and empty reservoirs with their muddy shore lines are unappealing. By contrast, there is the dam’s full reservoir with all its ecological and aesthetic merits.
MANZAR, the Scientific Journal of landscape
پژوهشکدۀ هنر، معماری و شهرسازی نظر
2008-7446
7
v.
30
no.
2015
14
21
http://www.manzar-sj.com/article_10531_a576ae687e4f9e9fc81e9f268478e2ad.pdf
The Philosophy of Landscape
Ayda
Alehashemi
author
text
article
2015
per
On innumerable occasions we will have walked in open nature and taken note, with varying degrees of attentiveness, of trees and water-courses, meadows and cornfields, hills and houses, and of the myriad changes in light and clouds. But just because we pay closer attention to one particular item or bring together in one glance a variety of differing ones, this does not amount to our being conscious of perceiving a ‘landscape’. For that to occur, our attention may not be captured by just one item within our field of vision. For there to be a landscape, our conscious- ness has to acquire a wholeness, a unity, over and above its component elements, without being tied to their specificity or mechanistically composed of them. If I am not mistaken, we are rarely aware that a landscape is not formed out of an ensemble of all kinds of things spread out side-by-side over a piece of ground and which are viewed in their immediacy. The peculiar mental process that generates a landscape out of all this, I will here try to analyse in reference to its preconditions and forms.
To begin with, that the visual objects on a spot of earth are part of ‘nature’, and they may even include human creations (which, however, would need to integrate themselves into it, as opposed to city streets with their department stores and automobiles), this in itself is not sufficient to turn this spot into a landscape. By nature we mean the infinite inter- connectedness of objects, the uninterrupted creation and destruction of forms, the flowing unity of an event that finds expression in the continuity of temporal and spatial existence. When we designate a part of reality as nature, we mean one of two things. It can mean an inner quality marking it off from art and artifice, from something intellectual or historical. Or we intend it as a representation and symbol of that wholeness of Being whose flux is audible within them. To talk of ‘a piece of nature’ is in fact a self- contradiction. Nature is not composed of pieces. It is the unity of a whole. The instant anything is parceled out from this wholeness, it is no longer nature pure and simple since this whole can be ‘nature’ only within that unbounded unity, only as a wave within that total flux.
We relate to a landscape, whether in nature or in art, as whole beings. The act that generates it for us is immediately one of perception and feeling, and it only gets split into these separated constituents through subsequent reflection. An artist is someone who carries out the formative act of contemplative perception and feeling in such a pure form and with such vigour, that the given material gets completely absorbed and then, seemingly out of its own, comes to be created anew. While the rest of us remain more tied to this material, and still tend to note only this or that separate part, only the artist really sees and creates ‘landscape’.
MANZAR, the Scientific Journal of landscape
پژوهشکدۀ هنر، معماری و شهرسازی نظر
2008-7446
7
v.
30
no.
2015
22
25
http://www.manzar-sj.com/article_10534_e7d00363f68e65a86f6ca389ebb9d31e.pdf
Decoding Bishapour Rock Relief
Ali
Nikoei
author
text
article
2015
per
In archaeological excavations of the doctor Sarafraz, in "Bishapour" in 2003, a new rock relief was discovered in which the identity of the person carved on the stone was unknown. Doctor "Fereydoon Avarzmani" in the workshop of new theories held in December 2014 disclosed his research results on this rock relief
MANZAR, the Scientific Journal of landscape
پژوهشکدۀ هنر، معماری و شهرسازی نظر
2008-7446
7
v.
30
no.
2015
26
29
http://www.manzar-sj.com/article_10535_a45ab2342464f187f2c6b0bf8dc690f8.pdf
Aestheticization of Public Space
Martine
Bouchier
author
text
article
2015
per
Today, the output of the arts outside of the aesthetics has become widespread and even globalized. The art “serves” in one way or another to make visible the urban and territorial development projects, and by involving artists in cultural features, it helps to mobilize attractor crowds and investors. But in return, the territory, the city, the public space are transformed by the arts, aestheticized in contact with public art, in situ art, contextual art, and through them, the user’s relation to public space is transformed and enriched with dimensions other than functional. The exchange between art and other domains may have an impact on the art, the one that Adorno was the first to identify as a possible "un-aestheticization of arts" phenomenon that occurs when they submit to the influence of an externality. They would lose their aesthetic dimension by losing their autonomy. Taking the first definition of aesthetics as a field devoted to the art and its theories, understanding the aestheticization of public space means focusing to the qualitative addition that art brings to public space through the careful treatment of the space, but also to consider the symbolic practices, including moves that reveal other dimensions of space more poetic, critical, ethical or political. Just as art can transform and produce new forms or new spatiality, reversibility transfers suggests that any area invested in the arts can be aestheticized from them. Lying to the public space, this principle of interaction generates new representations of the city and leads to more sensitive or emotional practices. It is difficult to separate today the temporary aestheticization of the city of a dual process affecting the urban space: the industrialization and commodification. Urban cultural events mobilizing the crowd fall indeed a cultural industrialization process of the visual arts that combines itself to the urban marketing process. The visual arts are now the subject of a lucrative market and artists are used to convey a message, to build a story which identifies itself as a public increasingly many. Whether urban or territorial, the aestheticization process of public space (whatever their temporality and scale) shows the stakes of what is at the heart of the overall aesthetic phenomenon: a political economy making use of the democratization culture, the show-up of the crowd and the public space. The passage of art of an essentially aesthetic role towards economic and political role makes visible and audible that Manfredo Tafuri described in 1979: "The city is regarded as a superstructure, and art is now responsible for giving a superstructural image of it. Pop Art, Op Art, analyzes on urban imageability, prospective aesthetics, towards the same goal: hide the contradictions of the contemporary city by their versatile resolution images; the exaltation of a figurative formal complexity (...) the recovery of the concept of art plays a specific function in the hedge".
MANZAR, the Scientific Journal of landscape
پژوهشکدۀ هنر، معماری و شهرسازی نظر
2008-7446
7
v.
30
no.
2015
31
41
http://www.manzar-sj.com/article_10536_daab23faf3bb18d5364f56eca0e34d41.pdf
Reading the Street in the City
Stéphane
Douady
author
text
article
2015
per
Reading the City may seem an endless task, a too large book. However, we all need a simple vision of the city to provide effectively fulfill our tasks, and for the City to continue to live and develop. So there must be a simple way of perceiving its structure and localization quickly, so as intuitively. In our work we develop the urban structure analysis by considering only the reversal reduced to a skeleton, the wired network of its streets. But the reconstruction of roads, and the measurement of a few simple indicators such as connectivity and accessibility, allows reading a structure and even a history of the city. Tehran Visits show over that the local treatment of buildings and roads is in agreement with the respective values of these indicators. This allows us to think that these indicators are essential, and that the processing corresponding to buildings and local roads allows us to read them intuitively and quickly. As the street is the most stable element in the city, it is therefore hoped that in its spatial geometry, there remains a trace of writing its development over time. This experience and the confrontation of the indicators calculated on maps and history and city, very positively, show that these calculations are carrying a real sense of the city, occupation, use, and history. The question is then how is it possible that automatic calculations on information as reduced as the skeleton of the city streets, may contain much information that seem relevant. The simplest explanation is precisely that the natural development of the city leads to the old ways better connected, and that the piercings and modern ways were able to obtain the same status of effectiveness. And the connectivity and accessibility indicators base a substantial part of the value of a street. As these simple criteria seem the most important, they guide people's perception, their use, and finally the local treatment of the way. Of course these first observations need to be reinforced by new ones. And especially the variety of local tissues, their uses and their construction according to local traditions (residential areas, commerce, production, not structure the same way at different places and different times) should be deepened. This is already visible in the old bazaar around the habitats compared to recent areas of northern Tehran.
MANZAR, the Scientific Journal of landscape
پژوهشکدۀ هنر، معماری و شهرسازی نظر
2008-7446
7
v.
30
no.
2015
42
53
http://www.manzar-sj.com/article_10537_a102f68edbd9ce71b05e7c871d8a843f.pdf
Impacts of Piercing Streets on Paris Urban Landscape
Mohammad
Atashinbar
author
text
article
2015
per
The piercing street is the result of transforming the street from a simple element to a complex one in the primary aim to provide access in an intense neighborhood; but before being a business -way, this is a special infrastructural business bounded to certain factor including allotments. The piercing street is the most efficient space in the urban perception of the city by users and therefore, has a role in the qualitative improvement or reduction of urban landscape.
It seems that the existential philosophy of piercing streets is to control social relations by the government, which is realized by reconnecting urban principal points. Constructing a piercing street is considerate as a huge landscape achievement capable of transforming the city’s spatial quality.
The present article constitute a practical research in analyzing the street landscape and follows a creative method which is “the street landscape analyzing matrix”, derived from the author’s Ph.D. thesis. It studies the qualitative impact of piercing streets on urban landscape. The quantitative evaluation of this impact results from the sum of the mentioned matrix which will be completed in MORPHOCITY multidisciplinary research group.
This article attempts to present a qualitative assessment of the impacts of piercing on the urban landscape through an innovative model by explaining the aspects and interpretive analysis of its landscape values in studying the case of Paris.
The evaluation of piercing street indicates the quality and quantity of the desire to attempt utopia or to stay in the existing fact. In the middle of nineteenth century, modernism appeared in the French society through a governmental decision and by an authoritarian approach, cut everything in its way for leaving behind the traditional urban structure with a renovation slogan which was ruled by the municipality: piercing streets as the symbol of a modern government appearance. These streets, whether single or multiple, had a deep influence on Paris’s persistence urban landscape. The actual Opera Avenue is one of this piercings that has succeeded in promoting the urban spatial quality in adapting with user’s subjectivity of Paris.
MANZAR, the Scientific Journal of landscape
پژوهشکدۀ هنر، معماری و شهرسازی نظر
2008-7446
7
v.
30
no.
2015
54
61
http://www.manzar-sj.com/article_10538_2eb79003a96b7bc4a32e9bd313cc732f.pdf
Social Space Aesthetics; Aesthetic Evaluation of Three Cases in Tehran
Maryam
Mansouri
author
text
article
2015
per
Social space and aesthetics are the two concepts occupying nowadays a vast position in urban literature. The link for this "dual" stays in the sense of space for human and his role in founding this notion. Aestheticization actions through human intervention in social space guide us to the emergence of a sense in the tangible experience of the audience. These actions determine the compliance between the mind of the audience and the sense. More harmonized is the aestheticization action with the society’s mind; deeper will be the sense of the space for the users. In contrast, aestheticization actions that are far from the society’s mind- usually for ideological, economical or missing program reasons; turn clearly meaninglessness and confused in their product.
Idealistic perspectives in aestheticization actions on social space are [often] unsuccessful and meaningless due tobeing far from the real society’s life and the user’s mind,.
When the aestheticization action isn’t harmonized with the method of intervention in the social space, the level of compliance between its aim and the product tends to decrease and the social space may fail. Since the aestheticization action is somehow a human’s intervention for giving a sense to the space, it includes its activities in space and its subjective importance for the user. Those aestheticization actions that follow only an ideological aim and to realize, track one-dimensional tools, cannot achieve their aim and turn meaningless.
MANZAR, the Scientific Journal of landscape
پژوهشکدۀ هنر، معماری و شهرسازی نظر
2008-7446
7
v.
30
no.
2015
62
69
http://www.manzar-sj.com/article_10539_711b84759edf793c78bdc25693db17c2.pdf
Reading the City via Its Streets; Analysis of City Complexity via Its Streets
Claire
Lagesse
author
text
article
2015
per
The city is a complex object whose exhaustive description is impossible. It is combined of diversity of interactive entities, which are impossible to be included all in the same formalization. The street network is one of the most permanent elements of the city; it is also one of those with the most information about the space structure. In contrast to the buildings and parcels, network’s time transformation scale is more important. Thus, this element is capable to keep a record of construction history of the space and its use. Therefore, we decide to attach ourselves only to the geometric information provided by a network of streets. Represented in the form a graph, it will support to the understanding of space structure.
Allowing further analysis of this network, a complex object - the way – is made from its own geometric properties. Here, four indicators developed in reading cities are explained through defining the way: connectivity, accessibility, spacing and meshing. These allow us to bring out a hierarchy of ways and revealing subsets of morphogenesis and a case study will as a part of the Tehran will be supplemented in this article.
From simple rules applied locally, it is possible to develop a multi-scale complex object, the street, to analyze and characterize the way network. This object appears to be robust in space. Moreover, it enables the development through the indicators and makes a global reading of the space and highlighting its dynamic possible.
The alignment that we seize through the selection of the minimum angle between arcs at each vertex is a criterion at the origin of line construction. It is also carries accessibility calculation which combines the cost of the turning (i.e. lane change) instead of the way in the network. This study demonstrates that it is possible to highlight a network structure, trace its dynamic construction, and use them from their continuously aligned lines.
Observing the public transport lines drawn within cities (existing or proposed), it can be noted that following the superstructure lines is put forward by the meshing, or the most accessible ways. Some other diagonal or transverse ones play a very special role in the second place. This supports the fact that the cost of running is not negligible. The urban planner’s decisions are in agreement with places providing rapid transfer to the rest of the network identified by our indicators.
In addition, in guiding the planners, this work is capable to combine geographical and historical dimensions for interpretation of the dynamic model of space expansion at different scales.
MANZAR, the Scientific Journal of landscape
پژوهشکدۀ هنر، معماری و شهرسازی نظر
2008-7446
7
v.
30
no.
2015
70
81
http://www.manzar-sj.com/article_10540_0e9ad5a65c0f9dd1a5d3577617503fef.pdf
Tehranian Beauty
Parichehr
Saboonchi
author
Atefeh
Mahdavi
author
text
article
2015
per
The special Workshop of research on Tehran was held in the second conference of the phenomenology of the urban landscape as “Public Space Aesthetic “at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tehran. Visit of Dr. “Martine Bouchier” from Tehran and her interpretations on some parts of the city can be considered a chance for evaluating the approaches and intervening methods of beautification in Tehran. Although citizens are the primary users of landscape, hearing expert opinions with a distinctive approach can offer a new definition from the city: recalling the existing capacities of the city, which is not detectable by daily observations and reminds us to recognize our mistakes that have occurred due to misunderstandings of aesthetics.
This program was an opportunity to criticize aesthetic actions in Tehran from a different viewpoint rather than saying “everything is good” or “no positive action is achieved”. Tehran aesthetic actions in comparison with global aesthetic experience provided a more open position to be reviewed in Tehran beautification.
MANZAR, the Scientific Journal of landscape
پژوهشکدۀ هنر، معماری و شهرسازی نظر
2008-7446
7
v.
30
no.
2015
82
92
http://www.manzar-sj.com/article_10541_9ffd8ab548348354adba2269cdc6594c.pdf
Analysis of Street Landscape Structure
Farzaneh Alsadat
Dehghan
author
Zeinab
Hanzakian
author
text
article
2015
per
“A city can be read through its streets”. Stéphane Douady, Professor of Dynamics of Out-of-Equilibrium Systems in Paris Diderot University began his speech with these words. He continued by explaining the significance of the street structure: “When we think of a city, we first think of the houses. While they can be replaced when destroyed or abandoned, the streets remain stable”. Dr. Douady’s multidisciplinary team, consisting of physicists, architect, landscape architect, sociologist, urban planner and geographer aim design a plug-in called (Morpheo) for GIS Software in order to define indicators for the reading of city as a complex phenomenon. Adding this plug-in can can result in understanding city changes and meaning. The main idea of this plug-in is to use topological indices (indices that do not change with changing geometry, other than cutting off) in order to analyze Simplified map on the basis of streets.
Stephen Douady in the workshop of “process of urban landscape” relying on his visit to Tehran neighborhoods, raised questions about the evaluation of structured indices.
He tried to test the accuracy of Morpheo plug-in by verifying the results of Tehran map analysis and his field observations. He explained the reasons for structures by showing different images of the street and asking about their structure and their adaptation with the analyzed plan.
MANZAR, the Scientific Journal of landscape
پژوهشکدۀ هنر، معماری و شهرسازی نظر
2008-7446
7
v.
30
no.
2015
93
98
http://www.manzar-sj.com/article_10542_166db909dd23a265b86e410dd45008c9.pdf