With greetings and welcome to all dear guests, ladies and gentlemen,
Tonight, in this place, architects and lovers of architecture have gathered to pay respect to architecture. They have also gathered so that, through their presence, they may record the date on which the results of an evaluation of recent developments in contemporary architecture of our country were announced. The systematic and methodical evaluation of a society's culture is among the important means of its formation, which in each era is carried out in a specific manner and by specific institutions.
After the Revolution, architectural forces were afflicted both by dispersion and by inactivity. Society had no specific demand from architects. Architects, too, had no specific proposal for society. As this situation continued, the feeling gradually arose that architecture could perhaps no longer play a cultural role—that it could no longer serve as a factor in the maturation and growth of society, and that architects could transform their work into an elevating social function.
Architecture is the most social of all professions and is connected to all aspects of society. This connection is established by various institutions both within and outside the profession. Even before the Revolution, we did not have sufficiently competent institutions that could fully establish the link between society and architects. But even those weak institutions, precisely because of their weakness, could not withstand the waves of the Revolution and crumbled. Or they were hollowed out from within. The relationship of architects with society does not reduce to the relationship of architect and client alone. Architecture is a human function, and the human foundation of a human being does not change. It is not life that this or that client defines. Life is the totality of human relationships. It is no coincidence that "omr" [life/age] and "emarat" [architecture/building] share the same root in Arabic: the first denotes the temporal mode of human existence and the second the spatial. This is not a coincidental verbal similarity. Rather, it arises from the inseparability of the temporal and spatial aspects of human existence.
The architect must be in contact with its related institutions—with those thousands of institutions of life. The institution gives meaning to the individual. But the individual creates the connection. Until there is individual work, no connection comes into being, and until there is connection, the individual gains no identity.
How then can a collapsed or hollowed-out institution be rebuilt, or another institution take its place? Is it not the case that sometimes individuals feel that no one hears their voice? We do not know how voices reach each other and how people find one another. But we have seen with our own eyes that the developments of recent years, especially the second half of the past decade, have slowly proven that the feeling of having no role, which had been the experience of architectural forces in the culture of society, was not right. Architectural forces, after passing through a period of dispersion, inactivity, and stagnation, are now finding their way—despite their different individual approaches—toward creating a social force and playing a cultural role.
We do not count this as a victory, because what we have lost is greater than what we have gained. But we can count it as an opportunity. For by correctly evaluating achievements, by applauding the hands that have brought these achievements, by separating the genuine from the counterfeit, and by entrusting assaying to the assayers, we can help the severed bonds between ourselves and the ascending course of architectural culture be tied again.
Growth, or natural flourishing, is the nature of life. Consciously and unconsciously, everyone seeks to reach the highest heights. Even in the simplest daily tasks, a desire for greatness is with us. But greatness and height are rare things. Just as a summit and peak are rare. Yet it is that single peak that gives meaning to the entire expanse of slopes. One should not reproach the slope either, for it ultimately elevates the spirit to the heights. The slope deserves reproach only when it turns its back to the summit and becomes a path for descent into the abyss.
Ladies and gentlemen,
Our collective joy tonight is that we feel our architecture has set upon a path of elevation and flourishing. Although today the share of good and valuable architecture in the totality of activity carried out under the name of architecture is very small, the very fact that good architecture, even in its scarcity, can, in addition to its professional function—that is, responding to a client's commission—also play a cultural role, meaning that it can define itself, is a great advancement for the elevation of architecture.
We should be grateful to all the individuals and institutions that over the past decade have helped architectural competitions and prizes gain currency. The Grand Memar Award is the natural outcome of this ten-year trend. Every competition and award that was held was an experience in the work of evaluation and judging. The expectation of architecture lovers is that the continuation of these evaluations and judgments will lead to the formulation of architectural principles and values. This is a legitimate expectation, and indeed one of the achievements of competitions and prizes is the development and consolidation of the theoretical foundations of architecture.
Is it not more befitting that we attend to values through the valued, and that we be aware that values depend on the valued, not the valued on values? Values are constructs of our minds and have no real existence. Because we have forgotten the origin of values, we can, without any hesitation, place the works of architecture of the past and today under the heading of architecture.
What is important is work, maturation, and entry into the domain of architectural creation. The conspicuous difference of the works that attracted the jury's attention at the Grand Memar Award 80, which you will see tonight at the exhibition, compared to works that could not compete with them, was that before any value, they had learned principles and techniques—and proper execution, which is in no way separable from architecture, must be learned—and these works had to be carried out with skill and correctness.
The fundamental difference between the Grand Memar Award and the competitions and prizes before it was that, firstly, it coincided with the liveliest and most vibrant period of architecture after the Revolution—namely, the second half of the past decade; secondly, by excluding government construction projects and dedicating the award to private-sector works; and thirdly, with the support of a private company for hosting the award, it presented the first collaboration and complete organization of private institutions belonging entirely to the profession.
If private institutions, which are more capable than government agencies and all political authorities in creating a living connection between architects and society, have the generous support of the private sector at their disposal—we of course also need government support and welcome it, and the greatest support the government can offer is to help us become a strong non-governmental professional community.
I am compelled, although Mr. Engineer Karimzadeh, the esteemed Managing Director of Behrizan Company, together with Memar Nashr Institute has organized the Grand Memar Award ceremony and tonight is your host, dear guests, to express my utmost gratitude and that of all colleagues at Memar Nashr Institute in acknowledgment of this great and unprecedented cultural initiative that he pioneered. Likewise, I thank all their colleagues who collaborated with us during the period of the competition.