Born in 1937 and graduated in 1964 from Tehran University\''s Faculty of Fine Arts, Iraj Kalantari has marked, since the very first decade of his professional activities, the modernization path of Iranian architecture through his chiefly residential works. The small size of these important marks prevented them from becoming outstanding in extensive and volumetric construction activities in Tehran. Even if Tehran had not witnessed those extensive and volumetric construction activities, the simple appearance of his architectural designs, free from any ostentation, would not have attracted the attention of superficial observers.
Some of those residences, which rank among the best experiment of modernizing Iranian architecture in 1960s, disappeared as a result of unbridled increases in land prices leaving no trace of his earlier works. The Soltanigari\''s residence apparently built one year prior to Dr. Shakibi\''s house (1964) is a three-storey house on a parking lot. While conforming to postmodernist tendencies, the building is an experiment in seeking Iranian architectural features and late Qajar architectural ambiance successfully reflected in early modern architectural approach towards housing in Tehran.
Except for the Amirshahi residence (1965), which has a free plan with four open sides, all other Kalantari\''s residential projects, which were built on small and narrow parcels in alleys, are closed from east and west, and also, frequently from north. The weakness of the functionalist architecture lies in the fact that never can we predict that, over time how users conceive what we have built and how they behave in relation to our constructions.
Architecture of Place
In the traditional house, courtyard or veranda is the centre of attention and of orientation of surrounding spaces. Among the rooms of a house there also exist a "multi-door room" (chanad dari) orienting adjacent rooms to itself. In the traditional house the interrelationships of rooms encourages stability, whereas in Kalantari\''s works spaces establish multi-directional and twisting. An optimal use was made of different levels to make different spaces accessible to one another. Sitting and dining rooms as well as the mezzanine were built on three different levels overlooking one another creating such interpenetrating and indefinite space that onlookers find it difficult to conceive its limits.
Contrary to those to whom everything is dependent on the sunlight\''s direct entry into all or most rooms, to Kalantari, the most important architectural feature is spatial intervention, that is, the tendency of spaces towards a focus (foyer) around which family members get together. He does not feel any need to present to passersby the architecture of the house. He even prefers windows to overlook a domestic ordinary, everyday perspective, a small garden or yard, rather than ever looking infinity.
Kalantari does not imprison the residential space in a cube closed to six directions. Through clustering, opening and interpenetrating the space of rooms and corridors, he manages to make it seem protracted and infinite. Rather than dividing a limited spatial potential into several closed and small spaces, he, through spatial borrowing and opening individual spaces to each other creating spaces that are always half-revealed and half-hidden, manages to arouse, in onlookers a feeling of infinity to be discovered.
Today, we have no idea whether or not he was aware of similar characteristics of traditional Iranian residential architecture when adopting the approach discussed. In traditional Iranian houses with open sides, a sharp contrast between internal dimensions and orientations on one hand, and external immovability and simplicity on the other. Additionally, there exists a hierarchy of foci to which spaces are opened. At the centre of the hierarchy, there is the central courtyard to which all spaces are ultimately opened. In Kalantari\''s architecture, however, geometry and structure are not traditional. This stems, in addition to academic teachings, from a gap existing between the conventional traditional life style and reshaping life style of those modern-minded ones who control of almost all of his clients.