It is more than a decade now that the architects of the younger generation have attracted on an unprecedented scale the attention of the global community. Many journals now discuss the contemporary architecture of Iran or the Iranian architects. The phenomenon seems to be a derivative of a much wider phenomenon of the coming-to- the-fore of the Iranian society and culture in the past two decades as well as of Iran’s attempts to start a conversation with other cultures. Of course, it is to be said that in the same period the pioneering global currents in architecture have freed themselves from being a monopoly of certain Western countries. Now countries such as China, Vietnam, Thailand, Lebanon or Turkey produce works that attracts the attention of the world. In today’s world, architecture does not move in such a direction that the term ‘progressive’ would have one single definition. Those in the field of art and culture in Europe and America look for new ideas coming from distant lands. One can say the opening up of the Iranian cultural space to the world has hap- pened at a fortunate time and the considerable success of the Iranian cinema is a proof for it. Not only other nations are curious to see what countries like Iran have to say about art, literature and architecture, but also in Iran technical and cultural achievements are valuable when they are presentable on the international scene. The challenges facing the pioneering architects of Iran is first of all to respond to the concrete demands of the society and then to the demands of international media (however on a small scale). Obviously, this will not happen through an unmediated copying of the architecture of advanced countries, rather through a simultaneous attention to the contempo- rary global architecture and Iranian culture as well as undertaking firsthand experiences. The current issue of Memar magazine is ed- ited by the author and dedicated to the discussion of contemporane- ity and presence of Iranian architecture and architects in international events and journals. If we consider the international success of Iranian arts, we realise that architecture has been the last wheel on the wagon. The story started from cinema, then Iranian theatre, literature, visual arts and music followed suit. Since interdisciplinary discussions are very interesting and useful for architects, we decided to include one text by my learned friend, Mohsen Shahrnazdar on general social developments of the past two decades, not least because Mohsen Shahrnazdar’s opinion is contrary to mine and provides a fair discourse with regard to the positive and negative aspects of post- revolution developments. Also Mr Javad Sha’ri has prepared a brief list of the works and awards by Iranian architects in the international media and is presented in this issue. I have briefly discussed the new wave of architecture in the past decade in one article. The texts presented may serve as an introduction to a dialogue which requires a much wider and more comprehensive space. This issue could have not been made possible without the consultation and interviews of contemporary influential architects. Therefore, within the scope of our limitations, we interviewed a number of them and a summary of their answers has been published in this issue. The section on introducing works has been entirely dedicated to Iran and some works by prominent contemporary architects. Of course, due to the limitation of space many valuable works are omit- ted. In the first years after the revolution and particularly after the
Iran Hostage Crisis, most international media (with the exception of some countries) presented the government and even the people of Iran as fundamentalist barbarians. Since the beginning of Khatami’s presidency, particularly in the past ten years, cinema, theatre, music, painting and finally architecture (in chronological order) attracted the attention of the international community. In recent years these condi- tions were intensified with the increase in probability of the develop- ment of commercial relations with Iran. Today, the Iranian society attracts much attention, and even in certain respects it seems being Iranian is a privilege in competing for access to international stages. Although in the first phase of the cultural revival after the revolution the new architects tried to connect to the international currents but after some years and particularly from the beginning of the 2010s they realised that benefitting from the local culture and independence of method is in itself a privilege in the competition for appearing on the Iranian and international scene. As such, new experimental works were undertaken using indigenous construction material and design methods based on local, historical, architectural examples. This type of return to Iranian culture and originality was different from the superficial or official interest in identity common in the early years of revolution. They rather progressed in a relatively creative, individual and deep path. These days one sees even modern architects create works that despite being modern have clear differences with common international styles. According to what was mentioned above, in this issue of Memar the ways in which the young generation of architects (based in Iran) gained success in national and international fields and the reasons behind them will be discussed and those designs and written works will be analysed that have found their way to international architectural competitions, awards and journals. Also the relation between this phenomenon and the rereading and reevalua- tion of the local culture and the original attempts of Iranian architects as well as the positive and negative aspects of this new phenomenon will also be studied.