The coformation of the two so-called traditional and modern or contemporary trends in architecture, once again, appeared in the competition for designing an extension to Hazrat Masoumeh (peace be upon her) Shrine in Qom.
According to what the entry designs themselves present, two "traditional" and "contemporary" trends and an intermediary one are perceptible, with their particular characteristics and the extent of the attention and energy spent in each. But, could we find these categorization and confrontation in the general practice of architecture in the society and through appropriate analysis of the trends within it?
In our country, making reference to the past was not the result of a practical experience, rather it was a political agenda which began in the time of Pahlavis the First and influenced all the cultural and literary products as well as historical accounts of the next decades. This policy that was nurtured by the orientalists, changed the political and intellectual life of the society into a reflective and dependent one. Eastern and muslim intellectuals, by copying the methods and forms of "subjectivism" or "subject making for research" as the outcomes of popularity of orientalism and western school of Islamic studies, neglected the practice and fell into the whirlpool of reactionarism.
An experience in the sixties, with examples in other eastern countries, being called traditionalism and quest for identity, was imported with the works of Nader Ardalan and his theories which based, as he called, on Sufi tradition and backed up by prominent professor of philosophy Dr. Seyed Hossein Nasr. It seemed to have succeeded in reconciliation between new building materials and construction methods, on one hand, and the formal or spatial system of the past, on the other.
The continuation of this experience proved that the strength of Ardalan's works lied in his professional potential and his will for practice, rather than in his references to mysticism. In other words, reference to methods and principles of the past would be useful if architecture was previously in the midway. Through this experience an attempt was made to draw the attention to spatial organization rather than the formal system of the historical architecture, and then by examining it with today's construction technology. The practical result of such process was actually a step forward, and in certain cases made new and up-to-date versions of traditional spatial organization. But, as it was seen, when the practitioners left the scene, the theories also became short of evolving and the new experience did not generalize in the sphere of country's architecture, and the dominant trend was still under the influence of international events and, right or wrong, relied on those practical and theoretical experiences which justified the outcome.
The lesson we can learn by this experience is that architectural intentions are only definable and determinable through practice and not out of it. Architecture is after all what is being built. If most of what is built might be considered outrageous and rejected, that narrow street deserving care and support also must be explored among the numerous built examples, not through verbalism.
No architectural course could prove its competence prior to its realization.