Memar has turned four. Memar is a magazine and an activity; an activity within the broader field of architecture in this country. Memar is a centre for safeguarding what is at stake in that activity. Memar is an activity inside the country's architecture aimed at reinforcing and bringing to the fore whatever is more faithful to the truth of architecture.
How is such an activity possible? How can the disordered current of architecture, from inside its own disorder, open a way for rejecting vulgarity and supporting authenticity? We believe Memar has opened such a way because it has been able to reflect the rising and elevating efforts in architecture — and not only to reflect them, but to be a means by which they find one another and move together.
The skeleton of the plan laid out for the magazine from the first issue was as follows:- Introduction and critique of contemporary Iranian architecture
- Introduction of contemporary world architecture
- Theoretical discussions
- On the distant and the near past of Iranian architecture
- Construction and industry
- Design (interior and visual arts)
The most important, useful and most-read section of the magazine — the pivot and the column of the magazine — is the introduction and critique of contemporary Iranian architecture. In the past three years, over twelve issues, the works of twenty-five architects and of several architectural groups were introduced in this section. The largest share went to younger, less-known or barely-known architects. More prolific architects were able to present newer work across more than one issue. For five senior and more famous architects, a curated selection of their body of work was published together with critique and assessment. More than 250 pages of material in the field of introducing and critiquing contemporary Iranian architecture appeared across these twelve issues — an authoritative and valuable source for acquainting readers with a corner of Iranian architecture over the last three years.
The introduction and critique of architecture in Iran has little precedent. Not only a full account, but even a curated introduction of contemporary Iranian architecture has not been published before. Assessing and critiquing works only a short time after their construction is not easy, and introducing and critiquing architecture through a monthly or quarterly magazine is harder still — a task both extremely difficult and inevitably incomplete. The small share of critique in the twelve issues of introductions, despite the editorial team's effort to train fresh critic-writers in architecture, is the result of this very difficulty.
In the world-architecture section, our sources are up-to-date collections of architecture books and magazines from Europe, America and Japan, from which the editorial team selects material for each issue. The volume of material gathered in each three-month interval is very large, but on average no more than twenty pages per issue have been devoted to this section. We have tried to publish images of selected projects together with the best and most reliable studies, reviews or interviews about those projects or about important events in contemporary world architecture.
Another step in the introduction and critique of world architecture is the magazine's direct relationship with architects' offices — receiving documentation of their projects firsthand and having them introduced and critiqued by an Iranian writer, published bilingually in Farsi and English. So far the works of Mario Botta, Renzo Piano and Rem Koolhaas have been presented in this form in the magazine.
The main audience of the world-architecture section is students and architects who do not have easy or affordable access to foreign magazines and books. Expanding this section is the easier task; keeping it within limits makes the job of selecting from the hundreds of pages of new world-architecture documents that pile up in three months harder — but the magazine's policy, which has been supported by different groups of readers, is to give priority to domestic matters.
The treatment of theoretical topics has received far more attention than was first anticipated, and wins more followers day by day, especially among students and young architects. Beyond Kamran Afshar Naderi's series on the fundamental categories of architecture — space, idea, form and place — and discussions such as creativity and imagination, and beyond the further pieces by him and other writers on schools, manners and periods, philosophical viewpoints and readings of architecture have also been put up for debate across separate articles. In addition, several pieces have been published on the very concept of theory in architecture, on its relation to architectural practice and the different views on that relation, on its principles in twentieth-century architecture, and on its situation in Iran.
The explosive expansion of post-modern debate around the world, willy-nilly, reached Iran too, and a considerable volume of translated books and articles has entered the market over the past three or four years. Architecture's conspicuous share in stirring these debates has led philosophers and workers in the humanities to pay special attention to architecture; in turn, translators outside the field of architecture have also taken to translating material about architecture. We expect that, as these newly-caught debates are digested by the intellectual metabolism of our society, a more intelligible language and a more fruitful dialogue between architects and philosophers will emerge over the next two or three years.
The discussion of the old and the new history of Iranian architecture took a somewhat unexpected shape. Our initial intention was that fresher readings and interpretations of Iran's traditional architecture should be offered from a contemporary architectural viewpoint. That intention was not much fulfilled. New scholarly articles were written on pre- and post-Islamic Iranian architecture; but then, suddenly and unexpectedly, writings on Iran's transition from traditional to modern architecture — and on the works of the earliest architects of that period — began to arrive, pieces which, besides their historical appeal and story-like tone, carry information useful for nurturing a theory of the transition period.
The construction-and-industry topic holds an important place in the magazine for a number of reasons. From the Second World War onwards, alongside construction acquiring a fully scientific base and building materials being produced industrially, new and inventive materials gradually entered the market. The execution of buildings itself took on an industrial form, and — most importantly — the economy of construction shifted from a client-and-contractor economy to an industrial economy. It is the architect's task to familiarise themselves with these industrial developments and to follow the issues of execution, quality and executive standards in that space.
In the advanced industrial countries architects are not much worried about the quality of the execution of their projects, because construction firms, producers of materials and products, and the system of supervisory work, without any difficulty, bring to life what the architect wants. But in Iran the poor quality of construction and execution is itself one of the great obstacles to the realisation of good architecture. It is the duty of architects and architectural institutions to recognise the pioneering, elevating movements in construction and production, to support them, and to help the flow of information in this area develop.
Examples of advanced and successful executive practice, the quality and worth of new building products, new installation systems and procedures, construction management, information, and innovation are treated in this section.
The design section is traditionally devoted a portion of most architecture magazines, but the volume of such activity at present is not large, and its subjects — for ordinary consumers and even for major clients — remain largely unfamiliar. Fortunately the variety of design work presented across three years in Memar raises the hope that this activity will come to occupy its own proper place alongside architecture.
A few words about the magazine's layout and design: reaching the present quality of design and page-layout took us, in these three years, through fairly difficult experiments. The difference between the graphic design and page-layout of an architecture magazine and other picture-based publications — a difference that stems from the precise technical nature of architectural imagery — together with the limits of Persian-language software (made for ordinary newspapers) and the dispersal of services across design and printing institutions with uneven standards, drew the maturing of this experience out over a long time. We have tried to use the best available four-colour printing and the best paper on the market, and by the constant testimony of readers the quality of the magazine's design, printing and paper has been in steady ascent. Typesetting is done with much care and strictness, so that the magazine may be without error, or — failing that — with as few errors as possible.
Thanks be to God, who on the walking of this path has always cleared the difficulties from before our feet; and thanks to our earliest supporters, to our long-standing friends and well-wishers, to our eager and encouraging readers, and to our editorial, production, printing and distribution colleagues — whose good-will, assistance, cooperation and hard work have earned Memar its place.