Iran was introduced to the ideas shaping the west through photography at the end of the 19th century.

Local architects began to introduce new ideas demanded by clients who wanted to use and imitate features seen in postcards and photographs from Europe.

A kind of ‘postcard architecture’.

Architecture and fashion were not the only things subjected to western influence. Democracy as an idea if not in actuality had also arrived.

This intensified expectations for change.

Piecemeal reforms began around 1925.

Oil explorations, mainly carried out by British Petroleum were bringing new wealth to Iran.

This intensified modernization in Iran.

However the changes were superficial and had left the old social structures intact.

Tehran’s architecture is a post-war architecture influenced by what took place after the Allies’ invasion of Iran in 1941.

After the war the process of modernization began in earnest.

Thus the population of Tehran began to increase with the arrival of people from the country side looking for work and a better standard of living.

The urgent need for housing resulted in ramshackle building practices, fraudulent business practices and the creation of slums.

According to Ali Madanipour “the Islamic revolution in Iran was a result of this improper development.” 1

There are deeply rooted social reasons for this improper development.

A kind of self regarding, self preserving individualism which is a direct result of living under cruel and despotic dictatorship for generations has become a characteristic of Iranian society.

One manifestation of this fact can be seen in the absence of participation and citizenship, the lack of occupation of public domains, a lack of respect for the law, and the proliferation of independent and individualistic ie selfish behavior by the population.

Under such conditions urban development remains questionable if not impossible.

Should we expect anything other than violation of urban development standards, environmental codes, and traffic laws in such circumstances?

These conditions are in fact the key to the forming of independent and self-made architecture by a society whose members have separately sought their own ways.

Popular Architecture

Tehran architecture can be called popular in the sense that it has been devised by the people of that city.

Impressed by social and political trends of the upper classes and professional architects, the people of Tehran created a ‘material-based architecture’.

A phenomenon that has persisted to date.

Due to the need for housing and the ever-increasing cost of land and property, as well as the high cost of construction, quality began to diminish.

Buildings were made using simpler plans and cheaper materials.

With maximum use of materials and prevalence of weak forms for building cheaper houses, the formal proportionality of the buildings changed.

That was a sign of lack of social participation in civil institutions and individual actions that the government has not had the possibility or the required resolve to encounter to date. Thus, here we witness a kind of architecture that is ‘popular’ or ‘people-made’, ‘independent and refractory’ and shaped with the kind of materials, i.e., it is ‘material-based.’

Material-based Architecture

Material-based architecture in Tehran can be identified for 40 years; yet the radical type has been seen for 30 years.

While the rising middle and upper classes in the 1970’s were building out of stone produced by imported technology, the poorer classes were using off-cuts ( 10 cm width at variable lengths ) from factories or left-overs from explosions from stone quarries to build facades in the south of the city resulting in what became known as ‘10 cm horizontal white marmarite architecture’.

At the same time in order to present a native alternative, Iranian architects were attempting to associate modern architecture with the motifs of tradition. They used the color and appearance of brick, which was the prevalent texture of existing traditional buildings, in their new projects. Available new technologies made it possible to produce bricks with a thickness of 3 centimeters, which were cheaper but gave the building a fresher look. Many people began to cover their existing facades with a layer of these new bricks.

All this coincided with the last years of Pahlavi rule. The years that according to Bernard Orchard were the years of emerging young citizens who were to play an important role in the revolution.2 Orchard suggests that Iran’s revolution occurs as a reaction against Pahlavis’ modernization plans. Excessive growth of population had caused irregular development of Tehran. The Shah, having departed from the tradition, that is, the governmental citadel, the mosque, and the bazaar, and migrating to the north of the city, had actually given the clergy and the traditional inhabitants of bazaar, the merchants the chance to reconstruct and reshape those neighborhoods. Ideologues influenced by leftist thoughts became the theoreticians who directed the revolution, a revolution that had a regressive look towards religious principles.

And so there occurred the biggest “‘post-modern’ movement” of history. Jahanbagloo quoting from Dariush Shayegan says that it was a point at which “tradition changed into ideology,”3 traditional prototypes were used as standards, therefore, traditional architecture was interpreted as Islamic architecture and formal structure and traditional motifs were used. Here, there was another event that Orchard calls the emergence of “revolutionary habitat.”4 The poor who triumphed in the revolution concentrated in the center of the city instead of their ramshackle neighborhoods. Orchard considers this phenomenon as a symbol of the invasion of Tehran by its inhabitants: “The city is ours and we determine the law, therefore we can build in the lands that we have (illegally) bought or confiscated. Tehran is our home.”5

According to Islamic rules, anyone who improves a land can claim its ownership. Thus, there were new areas and confiscated lands in which ill considered construction began to prevail. Brick facades were a symbol of ‘Islamic Architecture’. This meant the excessive production of 3 centimeter bricks, which were used in the construction of a large number of buildings, resulting in the previously mentioned ‘3 centimeter brick architecture’ of Tehran.

With the occurrence of the Iran Iraq war and the deterioration of economic conditions due to the costs and damages of the war estimated at 1,000 billion US dollars, construction work diminished significantly or was done in the poorest possible conditions. As a result, one could see a lot of unfinished or inferior quality buildings at different sites. After the war and with the beginning of a new development and reconstruction period, once again a lot of middle class provincials began to immigrate to Tehran. With the government’s policies for improvement of economical conditions in this period, there emerged new capitalist classes and neo-bourgeois that were idiomatically called ‘post revolution haves’.

This period coincided with the emergence of ‘Post Modern’ architecture in Europe and the United States which featured techniques like exaggeration and abstraction of traditional motifs in architecture. In Iran a vacuum was created by the lack of identity and confusion of architects due to the closing of universities (paradoxically for the ‘good’ of The Cultural Revolution). This was re-inforced by revolutionary ideological thought and civil conflicts and war. It seemed a good opportunity for architects to seek similar patterns in traditional and Islamic architecture revered by the government. Here again, there appeared odd combinations of prevalent cubic forms with motifs of traditional architecture used by the poor and the middle-class, as they wished. Iranian architects resorted to a post-modern that had not comprehended the modern.

That is to say, the resulting departure from modernism was without consideration for modernity’s critical wisdom. And thus, there appeared a new trend that was the result of the misconceptions inherent in post-modernism. In fact the line of people-made architecture in this period (1980’s) was spread all over the city and was not confined to the poorer neighborhoods. In combination with such motifs, the 3 cm brick architecture eventually developed into what became known as ‘white cement architecture’ with Classical western decorations such as carved capitals and pediments. Different combinations of every taste were applied and, to some extent, are being applied even today. Construction was flourishing in Tehran but since there was no coherent program, and the comprehensive plan of Tehran, which was prepared 5 decades ago was not efficient any more, the desirable facades hiding a severe qualitative decline; . Due to the increase of the prices of land and apartments in Tehran, balconies that used to have a calculation ratio of 1/3 to 2/3 of the area of the internal space were omitted or became too narrow, sometimes shrinking to only 60 centimeters. Maximal use of land and building in a given plot was, and still is particularly considered as the most important point, therefore, apartment houses of affordable small units with closed plans and limited skylights appeared everywhere. Non-standard decorative fireplaces and open kitchens that were in no way compatible with the traditional structure of Iranian society became fashionable. Newspapers were, and still are, full of ads for open kitchens fireplace and arc makers. Municipal rules regarding the provision of enough parking space for the buildings (on the basis of one apartment/one car) dictated the form of the structures and thus the plans were limited and similar, leaving no possibility of innovation. Violations of building codes, which can be seen in many buildings, were dealt with as a trivial nuisance by simply paying the related fines – another sign of lack of feeling for citizenship. Building codes such as the possibility of using 60% of the length of a lot plus 2 meters of projection with a bevel of 45 degrees (so that it could not overlook the neighboring homes, which is considered sinful according to the Islamic codes) imposed similarity and monotony on the form of the buildings. Interestingly, the bevel could be omitted with formal permission from neighbors and thus about 1 or 2 meters would be added to the area of the building -- an advantage regarding the high prices of the apartments. Allowing unconsidered accumulations and overlooking the standards and citizenship rights as well as the lack of a comprehensive 3 dimensional plan of the city for construction of high buildings caused infra structural, traffic, and environmental problems for Tehran. The problems still persist but are more controlled. All these problems were due to investment in construction which directly and indirectly involved 70% of businesses. Growth of capitalism and the new found wealth of neo-bourgeois who craved for noble architecture changed some neighborhoods. One could witness the demolition of a building everyday to transform eventually into alleys of uniform apartments with an amalgam of classical and ‘Iranian post-modern’ facades (as is called in Tehran). With the possibility of cutting and producing granite stones, which were quite expensive at about 50 US dollars per square meter, there appeared facades of granite at the lower parts of buildings and white cement compounds with decorative carvings at the higher parts. Due to the high cost of black and dark green granite and limited possibilities of production, they were produced in a width of 40 cm and unlimited length to minimize the remains. That created the ‘40 cm granite architecture’.

With the increase of people’s wealth and the simultaneous crisis the country was facing, there began a flow of Iranian investments in the United Arab Emirates. People who had traveled to Dubai for recreation (because of the lack of similar spaces in Iran) and shopping (because of the absence of foreign brands of clothes and household appliances) were impressed by the construction work in the young country that had attracted foreign investments. This architecture soon influenced the work in Tehran and in a decade has managed to transform the look of the city. Glass facades have appeared in Tehran without observance of the building codes and standards. A lot of both worthy and unworthy old facades have been combined with layers of glass. Recently other types of false facades intended to look modern have changed the appearance of the city. New coverings of different types of aluminum composites are also being used to give the buildings a more modern look.

Tehran can be called an architecture museum, since one might find everything in it though not much could be considered valuable, identity possessing, or even architectural. Recently, with the provision of more exacting codes, the town council is trying to control the construction work. But at present, the regulations are only applied to the internal areas of buildings and to reinforcement against earthquake which if happens, it is expected to claim the lives of more than a million citizens. This is because the people, and not the experts, have built the city. Tehran is a city with vast active fault lines.

With all its contradictions and inconsistencies, contemporary Tehran is a city built by its inhabitants, but not in a great social participation. They have built self-centeredly and as a kind of avoidance of social participation and urgency.

New globalization is affecting Iran and its capital Tehran. This is an opportunity for change which will occur with or without consideration for the structure of the city. If the present trends continue the changes will be superficial as they have been in the past. Tehran is in need of urgent and new city planning strategies which must happen with the consent and participation of its inhabitants.

1- Ali Madanipour, Tehran, The Making of a Metropolis (West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 1998)

2-Bernar Hourcade, Interview Ramin Jahanbeglou with Bernar Hourcade, Iran and Modernism ( Tehran, Goftar, 2000)

3- Ramin Jahanbeglou, Iran and Modernism ( Tehran, Goftar, 2000)

4-5- Bernar Hourcade, Interview Ramin Jahanbeglou with Bernar Hourcade, Iran and Modernism ( Tehran, Goftar, 2000)

Arash Mazafari