After seeing the schemes of the competition for the design of the Oil Industry headquarters in the pages of Memar 18, several points came to mind, which I record here in summary:
1 — In terms of volume, extent and height of the building complex, and likewise of cost, the Oil Industry headquarters is, without doubt, the most significant event in our contemporary architecture. Given the historical and symbolic importance of the oil industry in our country, the brief should have been put before the architectural community in advance, and examined comprehensively in its urban, urban-architectural, social and economic dimensions, before the competition was planned and organised.
2 — One of the important questions that should have been addressed in such an examination is this: how necessary and useful, in principle, is concentrating the company's central organisation in a single location in this manner? How often, in a week, do meetings actually take place between the various sections of the National Iranian Oil Company, the National Iranian Gas Company, and Exploration and Distribution? And, leaving aside the many urban problems (including traffic) that the office concentration of 8 000 staff at various levels — not counting daily visitors — produces in a small area, does placing every section of the oil industry in a single area not, besides making this national industry into a fortress, also expose it to serious risks? The memory of the ballistic missiles which threatened Tehran for several years, and the image of the collapse of the World Trade Center towers in New York, is still fresh — let us recall that the United States Department of Defense, the Pentagon, by virtue of its horizontal arrangement, suffered far less physical damage. Attention to this is especially important because Iran is in a sensitive strategic region, on the location of valuable oil reserves, and has gone through hostilities, tensions and wars with its southern neighbours, its eastern neighbour, and Iraq in these recent years. Quite apart from the security aspects of such concentration.
3 — Setting aside these general questions, on which there is much to discuss, several remarks on the manner of organising the competition and the brief for the design are in order:
— Mr Yahyavi, in justifying the invitation of foreign consultants to collaborate on the design, has said: 'We hold that Iranian experts are no less in intelligence and acuteness than foreigners, since God has divided everything justly among human beings. On the other hand, in Iran, by virtue of certain doctrinal principles, what wears down and weakens the intellect — such as recourse to alcohol or the customary night-vigils of other countries — does not exist. Consequently the Iranian expert's mind is healthier and possesses greater talent.'
We all know that, in the oil industry, hiring foreign consultants and concluding contracts with them is customary and routine; if this organisation wishes to follow the same policy in its building section, no such justification is needed for the requirement of a foreign partner in the design. All architects agree that contemporary Iranian building technology has Western roots, and that drawing on the latest world architectural methods and achievements is positive.
On the principle of the brief itself as conveyed by the client to the design consultants, the important point, in my view, is that the result of the initial planning and the decision to concentrate functions so heavily is a disproportionate monster — for which even the best architectural talents of the country and the world cannot offer a meaningful, proportionate, humane and urban proposal. A complex built within the limits of a great city must, of necessity, be in keeping with the city and the life of its citizens. Solo, single-melody architecture is merely a symbol or a sculpture. To prove this, it is enough to look back at the unsuccessful examples of the history of architecture and urbanism:
Brasilia, the new capital of Brazil, was an unsuccessful city from the very start, since over the past half-century, in the views of the artist-architect Oscar Niemeyer — whose works have many interesting facets — symbolic considerations were given priority over the life and activity of the people. Le Corbusier's futuristic proposal for the demolition of Paris — one of the most beautiful and successful cities of the world — was likewise an urban catastrophe. Twenty years ago, the then-president of France, under pressure from the experts of the architectural profession and the friends of Paris, annulled the unwise plan to demolish the Les Halles market in the centre of Paris and replace it with a tower.
Another example of administrative concentration in the case of the oil industry of Iran also exists, beginning with the 'Naft City' (Oil City) plan in the time of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Its first plan was prepared in those years in the office of the great independent and self-sufficient consulting engineers, including the palace and the Ministry of Court, in the form of proposed drawings as a separate area from the city.
Perhaps it is fitting here to recall the original plan for the centre of Abbas Abad, which was archived after the revolution. The detailed plan and urban design of Abbas Abad was prepared, at great expense and through the continuous follow-up of the then mayor, under Mr Jaquelin Robertson. Robertson, the senior consultant and chief of New York City's planning office, resigned after the mayor stepped down. He was later employed by the Tehran municipality, and after preparing the Abbas Abad plan and returning to America he founded a joint office with the well-known Eisenman, and was then chosen as the dean of the Virginia School of Architecture. Robertson, while preparing the Abbas Abad plan, collaborated with the office of Sir Llewelyn Davis in Tehran.
The architectural community of that day did not approve of the municipality hiring a foreign architect; I myself viewed it with reservations and was personally always one of the critics of the architectural and urban-planning policies and the hiring of foreigners. At the same time, the design of a park on the Abbas Abad lands was assigned to our office, DAZ, and we needed to acquaint ourselves with the Abbas Abad plan. For this, I had a meeting with Robertson and, contrary to expectation, was surprised by his method of working and of preparing the plan, and left the meeting with a favourable view. Robertson had in fact carried out a careful urban design and had designed the best urban spaces of the world of that day, with regard to the importance of such spaces and the necessity of the mixing and variety of activities, as well as creating a fitting fabric for public activities and programmes. I, who held very much that creating such a centre in the heart of Tehran was important, was ashamed of my own critical conduct and words about the municipality, since in my view this was the auspicious beginning of a new era of urbanism in Iran which could raise Tehran to the level of world cities.
Unfortunately, this plan was archived after the revolution and was replaced by a new plan that divides — and is dividing — the lands of Abbas Abad among the state and government bodies; that is, a kind of feudal allocation suited to the suburbs of cities in America, where great companies build their own staff centres independent of the city and their employees go back and forth in private cars; or to Brasilia, where, in pursuit of symbolic power, an urban feudalism has been built.
Perhaps neither the National Iranian Oil Company nor the participating architects can be blamed. The absence of points and lines indicating the building's surrounding area in the schemes published in Memar magazine is probably due to the absence of an urban complex around this building; in fact, this scheme is an island, with no connection to the surroundings or even to the regional communications network — it could be built in any other location, on any plot of land, even in the middle of an agricultural field.
Apparently the planners did not think that the staff of one of the buildings might wish to leave the complex and chat with a friend in the nearby street, or to buy a book; in practice, they have prepared a kind of luxury ghetto or prison for the senior staff of the National Iranian Oil Company. Could one not raise the question here: to which of our cultural traits and national necessities does placing staff on the forty-first floor of a tower correspond? And is this brief not the embodiment of one kind of twentieth-century American capitalist ambition?
It is even worth noting that the jury statement contains a reference to the cultural context: '... on the other hand, some participants, without sufficient attention to the cultural context, ... had borrowed alien tastes.'
At the close of this piece I should like to address two further points briefly:
The first concerns the general state of the oil industry in Iran and the projections made for its future. Many know that, in the years of the 1350s decade, Iran's oil production — which in the years before the revolution had decreased to 5 million barrels a day — reached around 6 million barrels a day. At that time, the total number of staff and workers of the oil industry was 54 000. Today's oil industry has 150 000 staff and workers, but its production capacity is 2.8 million barrels a day, reduced to 2.4 million barrels a day under the OPEC quotas. Reports indicate that the life of our oil reserves is no more than 40 years and that, in perhaps 15 years, their export value will fall close to zero, with use only for the domestic market. This is, unfortunately, not a pleasant picture for us, and I hope that, if there is any error in these approximate figures, the company's officials will themselves correct it. The question then arises: why, with such figures and such a dim outlook, did I refer to the necessity of a great building complex for the oil company?
The second point, which I am obliged to add as an architect, is a very brief comment on the schemes published in Memar. Given that I have been compelled to look at these schemes as isolated buildings detached from the urban environment:
In my view the Kalantari–Zeinaldin scheme certainly has architectural delicacy and contemporary design sensitivity, and from an aesthetic point of view its evident features — the very ones that led to its selection — are clear. But the tall tower has no relation to the rest of the design and seems designed to satisfy the urge to break records in tower-building in Tehran — while all our architect-friends know well the safety weakness and the history of tower-building in America (a product of land prices and the competition of speculative builders and rich, prestigious capitalists for wealth and standing). Beyond this, one of the important features of Iranian architecture is its modesty and humility, not heroic solos.
The second-place scheme, although it does not have the elegance and the strong rhythm of the first-place scheme, shows greater coherence, and would surely have come out as good work in execution.
At the same time it is necessary to congratulate Engineer Mirmiran and his colleagues, who have kept their architectural conduct and avoided symbolic display in favour of tower-building. The street-section drawing of this scheme reflects the designers' attention to urban questions and to the regulation of the relation of the complex with the pavement and the outside. The relation of street and pavement, and attention to passers-by, is one of the important factors in urban architectural design. Imagine if some of these schemes were to be built next to Chahar Bagh of Isfahan or the Champs-Élysées of Paris — what then. Glory be.
In any case, I hold that heavy investments — especially state investments — should be considered multi-functional and connected with the social and cultural needs of the city. Although it is now no longer clear whether it is still possible to create an urban area with world standards in Abbas Abad. A look at the proposed schemes shows that, even within this multi-functional complex, interesting spaces could be provided for Tehran's residents as well as for the staff of the oil company. Why not take the world's successful urban centres, or our own Isfahan, as the model? Imitating fleeting architectural fashions and an anti-urban architecture is a waste of financial and human resources. Iranians, centuries ago in the Safavid period, succeeded in building the urban complex of Isfahan. Are we today without that capacity and talent? Is feudalism and chiefdom permitted in today's urban architecture?
It would be well to think of the day when Iran's oil is gone, and this heavy-weight building turns into a witness to a period in which balance, cooperation, modesty, and comprehensive thinking were rare.