Speech at the awards ceremony of the winners of the 2nd Grand Memar Award (1381 / 2002)
Greetings and welcome to the dear guests who, in respect of architecture and with the intention of honouring the architects who strive for the elevation of architecture, have come to this gathering — and especially to those architects who, with magnanimity, accepted the invitation of the Grand Award and, by submitting their works for the judgement of the jury, made it possible for another section of contemporary architecture to be evaluated and documented and for its lines of movement to be traced. I consider it my duty to thank the esteemed jurors, who carried out the difficult, careful, and responsible task of judgement with great patience and all-round attention.
This year's award has been held with the support of Superpipe International. I take this opportunity to thank, sincerely, Mr Mehrdad Yousefi, the esteemed CEO of the company, and his colleagues — particularly Mr Mehdi Yousefi, the company's commercial director, and Mr Dourandish, its public relations and advertising director — who provided the means for holding this year's award in every respect. I also thank the representatives of all the scientific, educational, professional, and cultural institutions of architecture, the esteemed government officials, and the representatives of the media, who, by being present in this gathering, have turned the awards ceremony into a great festival of architecture.
I likewise thank the esteemed officials of the Ābgineh Hall, who, as they did last year, placed this hall at our disposal, and all the staff of the club who helped this ceremony be held in such an excellent manner; and Mr Behrouz Gharibpour, the director of the Iranian Artists' House, who, as he did last year, with all kindness, placed the Artists' House at our disposal for the jury sessions; and finally, the colleagues of the Memar Publishing Institute, who for more than five months have, with seriousness and goodwill, stage by stage, assembled the conditions for the realisation of this great undertaking — according to the pre-arranged schedule, with full precision and without the slightest delay, displacement, or weakness.
This year's award was given to post-revolution residential architecture. Residential buildings constructed after the revolution, in whose design and execution the art of architecture, the knowledge of engineering, and building technology have been placed at the service of health, safety, comfort, the beauty of the living environment, family economy — and also the enrichment of urban architecture and the consolidation of bonds of belonging — were eligible to enter the competition. From the very founding of the Grand Award we defined its aim as: to support the pioneering, transcendent and exemplar-setting movements in the architecture of the country, and to document the developments of contemporary architecture.
One essential difference between today's architecture and the architecture of old is that its history is being written in its own time. By 'history' I mean the historical-critical study of art. Periodicals, magazines, exhibitions, competitions, and awards — with the help of architectural critics — continually broadcast news of the latest state of the world's architecture. The birth of every new work is at once entered into architectural history. Of course, the early evaluations and judgements are later subject to revision, and day by day judgements become more measured and accurate; just as the histories of the arts written at the end of the twentieth century make more mature judgements than those made at the time of the rise and shaping of modern architecture. In any case, what matters is that the movements of architecture be recorded.
But recording requires a strategy. In spite of the diverse tendencies, and even some contradictions, in the course of architectural movement, fortunately a common human ideal — or a historical destiny — draws all the events of architecture in its train. No piece of architecture can travel outside this ideal route, and along this route it must constantly keep its eye on what lies behind and what lies ahead. This is the very philosophy of the evaluation and documentation of today's architecture.
We feel that, in both the 1380 (2001) and 1381 (2002) awards, steps have been taken in this direction. In the 1380 (2001) award, which was devoted to non-governmental works of the second half of the 1370s decade, without any restriction of building type, 160 works from across the country took part, and from among them 29 works were chosen as good examples and 5 as the best. In the 1381 (2002) award, devoted to post-revolution residential architecture, close to 100 works took part — single-family, apartment, and large-complex types — and from among them 20 works were chosen as good examples and 5 as the best.
The detailed discussions of the jury of the 1381 award will also be published shortly. This is one of the best methods of evaluation and documentation, since the experience and judgement of at least 5 jurors is brought to bear on assessing the works and articulating their values. Across the two rounds we have so far gone through, we have drawn on the views of 9 jurors, each of whom has had a different experience in recognising and evaluating architecture, and all of whom have long practice in their own field of experience.
Evaluation and documentation call for their own criteria, measures, and arrangements. The aims of the award, the definition of what enters the award programme, the manner of presenting the work, the breadth of coverage of the award relative to the chosen subject, the competence and comprehensiveness of the jury, the criteria of judgement, the method of evaluation and ranking, and the articulation of values for architects and society — these are among the matters that must gradually be regulated and institutionalised. In most cases, the customary procedures have been clarified and finalised; in some cases — such as broader coverage of the award and a wider evaluation system — we still need more experience and experiment. We hope to be able to bring into being a network across all the provinces of the country, so that locally there will always be a watchful ear for new works, which will be regularly added to a list, the necessary information and documents collected, and even some preliminary evaluation undertaken. The architectural groups of the provincial Engineering Organisations or the active provincial architectural societies can help us in this. The Memar Award belongs to the country's architectural community, and our hope is that, with the architects' own help, it will become a lasting cultural institution. The 1380 and 1381 awards covered slices of post-revolution architecture and brought the efforts of the country's good architects out of the shadow into view and attention. The good faith of those running the award and the soundness and integrity of the work earned society's trust. The architects whose 29 designs were chosen by the jury in the 1380 award had achieved their professional standing through their own striving and effort; what the award did was to place that standing, in the light of a measured and trustworthy evaluation, before the eyes of society.
Less than a year had passed since the publication of the results of the 1380 award when the Pardis Technology Park Institute recommended the architects selected by the award to research companies seeking to build in the park. It is fitting that we thank, here, the esteemed Mr Engineer Kazerouni, the chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Physical Development Research Institute, who has used every opportunity to introduce the selected architects, and has also taken measures for their practical support.
For the evaluation and documentation of post-revolution architecture and, in the next stage, the whole of architecture from the 1330s decade onward, and for assistance in preparing the materials and means of the historical-critical study of this period of Iranian contemporary architecture, we need five years of work and several research activities, alongside the Grand Award, in order to be able to make several further cuts through post-revolution architecture and to evaluate and document its progress in different fields. A few research projects could also be devoted to evaluating the important works and outstanding architects of the three decades before the revolution; we hope sponsors will volunteer to provide the financial resources for these. Other research is also under way elsewhere, especially research on the beginnings of modern architecture, which we hope will be edited and published as soon as possible. If we join hands, the whole of Iranian contemporary architecture can be evaluated and documented within a five-year programme. After five years, one can expect that we will have a clear picture of the leading examples of Iranian contemporary architecture, the architects with their distinctive manners and what those manners are, the course of evolution of contemporary architecture, and the place of Iranian contemporary architecture in the world.
I thank you for your patience, and from God I wish you health, success in your work, and a happy outcome.
