The fact that Tehran is a chaotic mix lacking integrity comprising mismanagements, bad tastes, self-interest, etc., is repeated so often that it has become a boring cliché rather than an alert. However, the changes in the political structure of the country made us think of it as a duty to repeat this story and hopefully don’t miss the chance of discussing this important topic in one-or several-issues of Memar. As such, in this issue we try to find and demonstrate certain influential factors in the housing construction market as an important element in shaping the urban façade of Tehran. However, considering our occupation and the type of the audience Memar magazine has, it was natural that we approach the subject mostly from an architectural and urban design viewpoint, yet, without aiming at a comprehensive survey, we tried to avoid restricting it to one specific viewpoint. The interview with Naser Fakoohi and his text on the subject approaches our theme from a sociological perspective and bravely studies the role of governmental urban management policies in the development of the current situation. With a short questionnaire we approached the people of sixth district of Tehran to evaluate the share of each of the groups complicit in this ‘market’ from their viewpoint. Of course, one of our questions was: ‘Do you know who the architect of your house is?’ And the answer was predictable: real architects are absent in the enormous amount of construction happening in Tehran which appears to an outsider as a heaven for architecture. This is a theme discussed in Bahram Kalantari’s text based on statistics and compari- sons drawn with other places in the world. Recognizing the fact that demand for housing is a real issue in our country and wherever there is construction it is not necessarily the result of greed, we thought of it as beneficial to translate articles on the subject of housing in other countries (which in times could be a massive and urgent demand) and the political management methods used for this purpose. Considering the role of aesthetics in the interaction of architects with builders and clients, ‘Pop Aesthetics’, a research essay by Alireza Taghaboni and Farbod Faravardeh, was
summarized and rewritten for this issue. Finally, we included relatively lengthy interviews with four architects, Bijan Zibayi, Farzad Daliri, Mohammad Reza Nikbakht and Mohammad Majidi. In the choice of the architects, we neglected the usual architectural presumptions and focused on the quantity and quality of their presence in the market to give an idea of the atmosphere of the market before and after the Revolution 1979. Through their successful experiences, we tried to study the dynamics of trust building in the professional architectural market in Iran and particularly Tehran. We hope this proves benefi- cial for us and other architects, particularly the younger graduates of architecture who find themselves at the threshold of entering this market and also hope that they can improve the status of architecture within this structure and heighten the quality of the city. Here we should thank Mrs. Soheila Beski and her colleagues in Memar magazine who played the main role in creating this chance and also thank all those who, despite their hectic schedules, cooper- ated sincerely in gathering the material for this issue. We should also underline the role of those whom we didn’t include in this issue: the estate agents, contractors, material providers, and most importantly, consulting engineers who work with governmental clients in big projects and have their own ways of doing it. We intentionally didn’t approach them so as to restrict ourselves to non-governmental hous- ing market, since a great part of the urban façade design is done by the private sector. We are sure that there are others who could have definitely contributed to this issue and we didn’t get the chance to approach them in the small chance that this issue provided. These include other successful agents in the market, such as Mr Abir and Mr Gholampoor, as well as pioneers such as Alizadeh, Shariatzadeh, Sharifi, Kalantari, Zeyneddin, Firooz , Bayat and others who have done successful architectural projects in the field of residential build- ing, and of course a large number of younger successful architects such as Daneshmir, Sherafati, Ilkhani, Mozaffari, Shokoohian and many others.
«عكس از ساسان ابري، از مجموعة »زرد خفتهPhoto by Sasan Abri, from “The Dormant Yellow” collection
Painting by Samila Amirebrahimi, from the book Night and Shadow, 90x60 cm, Tehran, 1995