Mayumi Miyawaki, Ten Questions for Eight Architects
Translated by Mohammadreza Joudat and colleagues; Khak Publishing; first edition: Autumn 1376; rahli format; 117 pages; 800 tomans.
In its June–July 1978 special issue, the Japan Architect (JA) magazine asked eight architects to describe the design process behind houses they had built. To compare their approaches, the same ten questions were put to each of them. The eight are Kazumasa Yamashita, Team Zoo, Monta Mozuna, Tadao Ando, Masako Hayashi, Kazunari Sakamoto, Toyo Ito, and Mayumi Miyawaki — who also edited the issue.
The introduction notes that in Japan two groups of architects build residential work: a younger generation that turns to house design for lack of other opportunities, and an older generation captivated by the craft of the house, who have attained an artist's mastery of its technology. The preface explains that the initial translation was prepared for use in a residential design studio course; demand from students and architects, combined with the depth of these architects' statements — many of whom now hold international stature — led to its publication. The book is accompanied by many images and plans of the architects' work.
Tom Turner, City as Landscape
Translated by Farshad Nourian; Urban Processing and Planning Company; first edition: 1376; vaziri format; 462 pages.
The book offers a "post-postmodernist" approach to urban design and planning. It speaks of a new era in urbanism — one inseparable from the surrounding world, that embraces pluralism, that sees the city not in two dimensions but as a landscape viewed from a spectator's eye, where foreground and background swap places according to the viewer's perspective. The author concludes that the city of the future will be full of physical, psychological, urban, rural, dispersed, and dense landscapes.
He sees Geographic Information Systems as a means of recording and storing the city's many designs, and characterizes the post-postmodernist outlook as a reaction against the postmodernists' wholesale acceptance of impermanence, fragmentation, and chaos. The book's six sections treat theory, planning, urbanism, landscape design, and the planning of open spaces and gardens, each in several chapters.
Ian Roland, The Urban Design Process
Translated by Mohammad Taghizadeh Motlagh; Sharmand Consulting Engineers; 1376; rahli format; 27 pages.
This pamphlet is the tenth in a series of translations produced by the Architecture, Planning and Urban-and-Regional Design Research Unit of Sharmand Consulting Engineers. Roland's article — he is a member of the English urban design group — was published in the October 1995 issue of Urban Design Quarterly and sets out his group's views on the rising importance of urban design and how this favorable situation should be exploited.
After offering definitions of urban design, the author calls it a process and a cross-disciplinary effort, and then describes the example of Portland, Oregon, which in his view realized urban design in six stages: goal-setting, urban design review, urban design framework, scope of work, guidelines, and finally the creation of the urban landscape.
Seven Publications on Architecture and Urbanism
Over roughly fourteen months, Pelshir Consulting Engineers has published seven pamphlets containing translations of articles on architecture and urbanism, briefly introduced below.
Juhani Pallasmaa, Social Commitment and the Autonomous Architect
Translated by Rasoul Mojtabipour; Esfand 1375 (Feb–Mar 1997).
The author critiques consumerism and the alienation from sensory experience and the spiritual quality of architecture. He argues that we have lost the modernists' sincere optimism and enthusiasm, yet there is still hope that hidden ideals and unconscious imaginings may find expression in art and architecture, and that attention to spiritual and elevated elements may open a path for the renewal and re-humanization of the discipline.
John A. Hancock, Between History and Tradition
Translated by Rasoul Mojtabipour; Spring 1376 (1997).
The article raises a number of points about a theory of architectural precedent that distinguishes between tradition and history. The theory of precedent seeks to combine the two: the appropriate selection of parts of the past according to present needs, using methods that best preserve existing values.
Jerry Adler and Anthony Smith, Three Discourses on New Urbanism and Intervention in Historic Areas
Mordad 1376 (July–Aug 1997).
This pamphlet collects three short articles: the first two on new theories of urbanism and the urban suburbs, and the third on intervention and construction in valuable historic precincts. The first, titled "Paved Paradise," criticizes modern cities and new towns as products of the modern era and urges urban managers and planners to avoid land waste, characterless uniformity, and the disorderly expansion of urban areas. The second proposes fifteen ways to bring order to urban suburbs, and the third recounts the intervention in the historic fabric of Magdalen College, Oxford as a case study.
"Affluent Choice" — Enrico Morteo's Interview with Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown
Translated by Rasoul Mojtabipour; Aban 1376 (Oct–Nov 1997).
The Venturi–Scott Brown partnership is well-known in architecture, urban design, and urbanism; they have taught at various schools, received numerous awards and honors, and in this interview discuss their methods and their views.
Patrick Nuttgens and Ben Farmer, The Nature of Architecture and Needs
Translated by Rasoul Mojtabipour; Azar 1376 (Nov–Dec 1997).
This pamphlet contains two articles. The first briefly examines the meaning of architecture and the rise, growth, and maturity of the discipline. The second argues that architecture can offer three fundamental responses: a response to people, a response to place, and a response to constraints.
Barry Greenbie and Jay Appleton, Response to Place
Translated by Rasoul Mojtabipour; Bahman 1376 (Jan–Feb 1998).
The two articles collected here, "Harmonizing the Human Habitat" and "Landscape and Architecture," treat the arrangement and architecture of the environment with particular attention to the building's surroundings, and emphasize the cultural and emotional content of place.
Architectural Poetry — An Introduction to Louis Kahn
Compiled and translated by Bahareh Arizi; Farvardin 1377 (Mar–Apr 1998).
An account of Louis Kahn's fifty-year life and twenty-five-year career as an architect — the experiences and renown he attained and his arrival at the modern language.
David Harvey, Social Justice and the City
Translated by Farrokh Hessamian, Mohammadreza Haeri, and Behrouz Monadi-zadeh; Urban Processing and Planning Company; first edition: Winter 1376; vaziri format; 371 pages; 1400 tomans.
Because urbanism is a composite of many sciences and disciplines, the book's author draws on political, economic, and social theories to critique purely physical-form theories, finding them inadequate for understanding the city. He likewise judges social theorizing that ignores spatial questions incapable of answering to the city's program. He therefore argues that the shaping and conditioning factors of the city must be identified and applied from both standpoints.
The book proposes no single solution for urbanism but raises issues from which urban solutions and programs may be developed. The first part chiefly poses the problems; the second offers specific responses to the theoretical questions raised in the first.
Mohammad-Hossein Majedi Ardakani, Behrouz Mohammad-Kari, Jamshid Riazi — Plastering with Composite Materials
Building and Housing Research Center; first edition: Winter 1376.
This book is the result of research aimed at selecting appropriate materials for the restoration of the former National Consultative Assembly building. With emphasis on preserving its historical and cultural values, three types of facade material were considered — composite plaster; composite plaster with lime; and fiber-reinforced cement — and tested. Composite plaster was ultimately selected and recommended to the contractors. In four chapters the book presents the condition of the building, the test methodology, and the results.
Alireza Sami Azar, A History of the Evolution of Schools in Iran
Organization for the Renovation, Development and Equipping of the Country's Schools; Tehran, 1376; vaziri format; 245 pages.
This book, the author's doctoral dissertation, traces the historical evolution of Iran's old schools through cultural and social analysis in order to arrive at the model of the school best suited to today's society and world. The author therefore commends it to architects and designers of educational and training spaces. The pre-Islamic era, the early and middle Islamic centuries, the Safavid era, and the contemporary era form the four historical periods chosen by the author.
Martin Korkez, Design and Construction of Precast and Prestressed Concrete Buildings
Translated by Mohammadreza Shahnazari and Mohammad Ghasem Sahab; Science and Industry Publications; 1374; rahli format; 215 pages; 950 tomans.
Prepared using the technical documentation of the Prestressed Concrete Institute (PCI), the book examines topics such as precast and prestressed concrete and lateral forces from earthquakes and wind. The growth of precast concrete construction in Iran — used in industrial halls, bridges, schools, and residential complexes — encouraged the translators to render the work into Persian, both for use in civil engineering courses and for the benefit of specialists and producers.
G. Andranovich and G. Riposa, Levels of Analysis in Strategic Urban Research
Translated by Seyyed Mahmoud Nejati Hosseini; Center for Urban Planning Studies, Ministry of the Interior; Tehran, 1376; roqi format; 101 pages.
Published in the methodology of urban research series, this book divides the levels of analysis into city, region, national system, and world system, presenting at each scale the manner in which urban services are delivered. Roughly half the book consists of a specialized glossary the translator compiled to compensate for the shortage of Persian texts in the field.
Philip Cooke, Theories of Planning and Spatial Development
Translated by the translation and research group of Shahr-o-Khaneh Consulting Engineers.
This pamphlet translates the preface and first chapter of a book of the same title, in which a theoretical framework for urban and regional planning is offered to students of urban development, human geography, urban planning, and sociology. The author's aim is to dismantle the artificial boundaries between the social sciences and to overcome the consequences of the fragmentation of specializations in urban and regional research.
Hossein Soltanzadeh, Iranian Architecture and Urbanism as Recounted in Ferdowsi's Shahnameh
Office of Cultural Research; 1377; album format; 169 pages; 850 tomans.
The author divides the information available in Ferdowsi's Shahnameh on architecture and urbanism into several categories: words and definitions still in use, such as abgir (reservoir), atashkadeh (fire temple), eyvan (porch), bazaar, bazargah, and so on; words that are no longer much used, such as payab, kharsan, and shahrestan; and words whose meaning has changed, such as aramgah, dakhmeh, khaneh, sara, and shabestan.
The author also explores the characteristics of Iranian architecture as treated in the Shahnameh — for example, the garden and the mausoleum (with its various types), as well as architectural and urban spaces and their formation. This thematic grouping shapes the book's chapters, to which two appendices have been added: first, information drawn from the Vendidad, the Zoroastrian sacred book; and second, the religious-social hierarchy of various types of space in ancient Iran. A list of illustrations, terms, place names, and personal names concludes the work.
Philosophy and Architecture (collected articles)
Authors: J. Lyotard, S. Agasinski, J. Bennington, K. Cook, P. Crowther, G. Vattimo. Edited by Seyyed Mousa Dibaj and Hossein Soltanzadeh; translated by a translators' group; Office of Cultural Research; 1377; album format; 133 pages; 750 tomans.
This book is a translation of seven articles intended to raise theoretical and philosophical questions in architecture and to introduce readers to new architectural movements. The introduction notes that "universal human architecture, despite its diversity, has a single language; architects of East and West can converse with one another while preserving their regional, national, and historical authenticity." The article titles are: "Distance and Spacing," "Matter and Time," "Place and the Work of Art," "Postmodern Relative Rationality," "Misa Ginzburg," "Art, Architecture, and Self-Awareness," and "Does the End of Modernity Mean the End of the Project?"
A preface by Hossein Soltanzadeh and an introduction by Seyyed Mousa Dibaj open the book as an entry to its theoretical and philosophical discussions; both pieces are also reproduced in English at the back of the volume.
