The End?

This issue about Tehran is a kind of an antique object brought out from excavations of Old Tehran, buried under new con- structions, new streets traced, and under all the changes that day after day, cover the past. Some of the articles are about places that exist no more, places whose presence is limited to reminders in books and articles. Some have been miraculous- ly saved and restored in the midst of the exematic surface, left alone. Maybe just as exceptions, in order to prove the nor- mality. Others are just little pieces of vaster ruins: a wooden door, a well-designed ferre-forge’ in front of a window, a beautiful balcony with brick work... Maybe this issue could serve only as a documentation for cases who are innocently waiting in the line of execution by the sacred right of Property, unquestionable as it is; the right that permits the owners to destroy and build as they please, as long as they do not touch the regulation that wants the buildings of Tehran being built on the northern 60% of the land lot; the same right that is the main cause for the ugly, high and short developments in our cities and even villages; and the same right that has given the Higher Administrative Court the permission to bring out the heritage buildings from the list of the buildings safeguarded by the Organization of Cultural Heritage.