The years of the seventies decade (1370s SH) were good years for architecture — even if the people of this field, more often than not, do not feel that to be so and continue to look on it as a hardship.
After the victory of the Islamic Revolution, with the priorities the imposed war placed before it, putting architecture on the agenda — when the previous custodians of its professional and educational institutions had left the scene — was very difficult for the young, inexperienced inheritors of those institutions, and it was natural that they could not bring the ship of architecture safely through the storm of revolutionary conditions. Architecture in those years had nothing important to say, in either practice or theory.
The end of the war and the announcement of the reconstruction programme were, for engineers, like the end of winter and the start of spring rain — a moment to find one another. The seventies began. Debate and dialogue about architecture began: a glance at architecture in Iran and the world today (Saremi, '70), the rooting of recent architectural movements (E'tessam, '71), a philosophical reading of the post-modern (Babak Ahmadi, '72), the search for a third space (Shirdel, '73), and the link between tradition and modernity in contemporary architecture (Nader Ardalan, '74).
The atmosphere of the schools no longer carried the pull of hard work and serious debate. Architectural education came under question. Those who had seen the buzzing ateliers of the past pined for that bustle. The conversation with senior graduates and the heads of the three principal architecture schools about the past and present of architectural education ran on for two years ('70 and '71). In those same years the Islamic Azad University was rapidly busy founding architecture faculties in every corner of the country — to such an extent that the unsupported expansion of architecture schools came under protest ('75). Despite the not-very-favourable state of the master's programmes, the University of Tehran founded its own doctoral programme in architecture ('79).
Professional bodies were no better off. Conditions after the Revolution had stirred many hopes about non-governmental bodies, but the way was not very smooth. The display of head-counts and crowds, and so-called cultural-social work, prevailed over the consolidation of professional discipline and ethics. The Engineering System organisations, freshly set up across the provinces, did not take long, under the dominance of this same temperament, to be drawn into the whirlpool of permit quotas and signature rights.
Consulting engineers had other demands. The low fee for architecture and the government's inattention had worn them down, but development and change must not stop. The first stone of the Society of Consultants' new building was laid ('72) so that they could move from a rented house to one of their own. In '74, alongside the old syndicate of construction companies — which had renamed itself an industry guild — the Industry Guild of Architect and Urbanist Consulting Engineers was formed. In the same year the University of Tehran's Architects Forum, and two years later the Society of Urbanist Engineers, were founded. The other architecture schools, one after another, formed their own forums, and last year the Society of Architects of Iran came into being. It may be that all these rivers will not converge before they reach the sea — but does anyone have a better solution?
Alongside developments in education and the profession, the appetite for research and writing was no less. Writing about architecture was difficult, especially under conditions where architecture itself was silent. More was being written about urbanism and urban design. Several consulting engineers turned to research and translation and put out a not insignificant number of pamphlets. Various institutions — most of them governmental — also published many books. Manouchehr Mozayeni's Of Time and Architecture ('74) and the translation of Edmund Bacon's Design of Cities ('76) are among the authoritative books of this period.
The architecture magazines played a more important role. Abadi, whose publication began in '70 and continued without break for six and a half years before becoming irregular, took shape as the most comprehensive register of debates and activity, and the largest centre for collecting and propagating opinions and views on Iranian urbanism and architecture. In its earliest years its inclination was urbanistic, but as architecture relatively gained strength — especially with the spread of competitions — its slant towards architecture grew. The magazines Memari va Shahrsazi, Soffeh, and later Roolaq, each in their own way and to their own measure, took part in this current. Following the interruption in Abadi's publication, Abadi's collaborators brought out Memar from '77 and a little later Shahr. Mohammad-Reza Jowdat — with the record he had in publishing architecture books and in cooperating with Memari va Shahrsazi — has, for two years now, been bringing out Memari-ye Iran (Architecture of Iran). The Office for Cultural Studies, by Sultanzadeh's effort, had earlier launched the quarterly Memari va Farhang. One can say that the periodical press of architecture has prepared a good capacity to keep pace with the production of architecture.
The conversation about education was carried from teachers and elders down to the students. The extraordinary appetite for entering the architecture field — which had driven the expansion of the schools and the rise in numbers of architecture students — slowly gave shape to student currents. Of course, just as in the formation of the industry guild and graduates' forum architects started much later than the civil engineers, the architecture students' congresses too were formed several years later than those of civil-engineering students. The first congress was held in '76 in Isfahan, the second in '78 in Shiraz, and the third — this year — in Tabriz. At this year's congress some 2,600 students took part. What force resides in the name of architecture, that draws to itself so many of the top high-school graduates from across the country?
The event that astonishingly concentrated and activated the forces of architecture and made architecture known to society — despite the damages it suffered and the protests against the way it was conducted, managed, and the failure to abide by its results — was the architectural competition. The Building Award for projects executed after the Islamic Revolution was held in '70, and its later rounds in subsequent years. The tradition of holding competitions spread quickly, and projects small and large, one after another, were put up for competition by various bodies in various cities. But the most important and most influential competition was the Design Competition for the Complex of the Academies of the Islamic Republic of Iran in '72 — with many participants, large prizes, a carefully selected jury, and, of course, with the disregard for the jury's results in executing the fifth-placed scheme rather than the first. After the Revolution, this competition has had the greatest effect of all in lending credibility to architecture and in making architects' names known. About no competition's projects were more debates than about the projects of this one. The design competitions for the National Library, the Bank of Export Development, the Central Mosque of Chabahar, and the Cinema Azadi Complex were among the great and noisy competitions of the seventies. According to the survey by Memar Quarterly (no. 2, '77), in the first six years alone of the seventies decade, 35 competitions were held against only 7 in the entire sixties decade. In '74 the call for the first Building Engineering Festival was announced by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development, and in '76 the festival was held; with its regular formation in subsequent years it became a permanent institution. After accumulating experience from holding many competitions, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development drew up a draft regulation for competitions which was published in Memar 2. The competition market is still warm.
Parallel to these currents, the discussion of execution quality, construction management, the building industry, and the industrialisation of construction was also on the table. After the Revolution, poor execution and the use of new materials and methods spread with speed and audacity. Many round-tables and seminars were held to examine the disordered state of building activity and to take measures for setting it in order. The construction industries — with municipalities placing the gathering of revenue, instead of their grave supervisory responsibility, at the front of their attention, even at the cost of the decay of building practice and the wreckage of urban systems — are still in decline. Examples of correct and sound engineering work are very few, and there is no listening ear for the experts' repeated warnings.
Codes, institutions, and regulations are among the most important issues for setting building and architecture affairs in order, and have been debated in many of this decade's articles, round-tables, and seminars. More than twenty articles and reports on this subject alone have appeared in Abadi and Memar. Alongside codes, institutions, and regulations, the importance of professional ethics must also be mentioned. The Industry Guild of Architect and Urbanist Consulting Engineers in '74 published its charter of professional ethics. Other organisations also paid attention to the importance of this matter — but the question of distributing quotas and pre-selling full capacity gives no room to ethics.
The effort to advance theoretical discussion has not been without success either: from study of the art-historical record of contemporary Iranian architecture — chiefly through introducing the role of the early and senior architects of this period — to soliciting opinions from leading architects on the basic questions of architecture in Iran today; to writing articles and giving lectures on important subjects close to the interests of students and young architects; to the question of critique, the theory of critique, and the start of a relatively new critical writing; to the re-evaluation of Iran's architectural heritage and how to revive an Iranian vision in architecture; and to the survey and analysis of fresh events and currents in world architecture.
Memar, for its own part and within its means, has tried to introduce the work of the country's architects today — the seniors, the more recent, and even the young — in a manner as precise, informative, and instructive as possible, in cases accompanied by critique, study and assessment, and in this way, beyond the timely reflection of architectural developments, to document their historical course.
The body of effort of the seventies decade's architects — which, through much exhausting work, has today come to fruition — has succeeded in drawing the attention of government and society to the importance and worth of architecture. Architecture, alongside the other arts and in its very lofty cultural place, is gradually winning the respect proper to it. The various festivals, the honouring of seniors, and the dedication of a special day to architecture are signs of attention to that high station of architecture in society.
The emergence of patrons of architecture from every corner of the country is another sign: the late Ali-Akbar Khorramshahi gifted his great personal library to the Faculty of Architecture in Kerman. The Rasoulian family donated their personal house to the Faculty of Architecture in Yazd. Mr. Reza Kazemi gifted his newly-built, spacious and well-equipped building to the Faculty of Art and Architecture in Shiraz. And Mr. Karimzadeh, owner of the Behrizan firm, with his complete support has made the holding of the Grand Memar Award '80 possible. The tradition of culture-fostering by Iranian benefactor families has been revived once more.
But the most important and most concrete sign of the realisation of the country's leading architects' projects is buildings such as the Heads of State Summit Building, the Hafezieh Guesthouse, the Exhibition and Conference Hall of the Export Development Centre, the National Library, the Rafsanjan Cultural-Sports Complex, the Filmmakers' Centre, and other buildings of this kind. And likewise the seriousness with which the government takes architecture — of which the assigning of design and construction supervision for Iran's embassies in many countries to selected architects is the conspicuous example.
The dawn of a new era of vigorous, influential Iranian architecture has appeared. But the bitterness and great losses of these ten years can never be forgotten either: Pirnia, Shariat-zadeh, Abulqassemi and Nasrin were lost to us in these very years.
* For a fuller account of the events and debates of the seventies decade, and the documentation of years referred to in the article, see the issues of Abadi and Memar.
