The magazine, and by extension the Memar Award, have always been subject to the criticism—and occasionally the accusation—that they follow no particular theoretical framework. In the words of some critics, Memar is a "tabloid" magazine. Personally, I disagree. I believe that throughout all the years this magazine was launched and guided under Soheila Beski's directorship, continuing its social life within the architectural profession, it was governed and steered by a simple yet robust theoretical proposition: that architecture is a discipline grounded in practice, and consequently, the scope and boundaries of its impact can be assessed through the lens of its final products—namely, built works. Among the tangible outcomes of nearly two decades of activity by the "Memar duo" is a generation of Iranian architects who have gained standing within the professional community by virtue of the credibility of "having built." Now, if we consider this focus on pragmatism and the built reality of the Memar duo as tantamount to a kind of professional "tabloid" existence, what is the theory of this "tabloidism" upon which the "Memar duo" generation conducts its professionalism? Those who have read Edward Albee's play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and seen the film adaptation of the same name starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton know that the text bears no relation whatsoever to Virginia Woolf, the twentieth-century feminist writer. Originally, the play was to be staged under the title Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf? In the legal dispute between the producing theater company and the intellectual property holder of the children's song by that name, the company was legally prohibited from using the title. Consequently, the name Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was the producers' witty response to losing that lawsuit, owing to the phonetic resemblance between the two phrases in English. The work is a bitter satire of a damaged, crisis-ridden marital relationship between a man and woman of the upper-middle class—intellectual and in the throes of midlife crisis. At first, the audience perceives this marriage as an "ordinary" one that has, as the saying goes, grown stale over time, and that the tensions among the parties to this "social contract" are not entrenched challenges but the reasonable, logical consequence of time's passage in a marriage. Yet before long, the audience becomes aware of the severity of the crisis afflicting the depicted relationship. Ultimately, by the story's end, the challenges of staying in or leaving this diseased relationship appear so profound for both parties that any acknowledgment of or attempt to confront these challenges imposes such exorbitant social and psychological costs that, naturally, in an effort to protect the deepest layers of the psyche, both parties to this social contract have unconsciously adopted a posture of denial and disregard. The "big bad wolf" lurks in the half-dark room of this dead-end marriage, and its inhabitants go about their daily routines in complete denial of its presence.
The "big bad wolf" of contemporary Iranian architecture is theorization. Our theoretical resources are, for various reasons, extremely limited and incapable of articulating a comprehensible and credible system of cause and effect for the architectural actions of contemporary Iranian architects. This issue of Memar, mindful of these limitations, endeavors to challenge an arena of professional discourse that has systematically carried on in a state of denial regarding this deficiency. By documenting a cross-section of contemporary Iranian architecture through the compilation of individual exercises by architects in theorizing their own professional practice—viewed through the lens of the discipline's products—the ultimate aim of this exercise is to launch a project for the production and articulation of a theory specific to this generation of contemporary Iranian architects, authored by the architects themselves. Throughout history, architectural theories have been produced in various ways: — In some cases, the research output of educational institutions and schools of architecture, along with the discourse within these establishments, has been the source of architectural theory. — At times, the manifestos of practicing architects have found their way into the prevailing architectural discourse as theory. — Under particular circumstances, the collective exercises of members of a generation of architects—who have practiced within a shared spatial and temporal arena—have been codified as the theory of a specific generation of architects in a given land, provided that the activities of this generation possess meaningful continuity in terms of chronology and historiography, and provided that a historian maintaining critical distance from this body of practice has undertaken the codification. Given the absence of a research-based educational system grounded in architectural discourse on the one hand, and the limited theoretical and discursive capacity of architecture in present-day Iran on the other, perhaps the most probable and feasible scenario for generating a robust architectural theory for the generation of contemporary architects is to expand the individual theorization exercises of this generation's members. The first step in launching the project of codifying the theory of contemporary Iranian architecture is therefore to begin the exercise of theorizing the architectural actions of contemporary Iranian architects. Now, what do we mean by theory? Within a view that regards architecture as a discipline grounded in practice and in the production of outcomes resulting from architectural decisions, theory comprises a set of tools for thinking, generating discourse, and producing text about architecture: — Sometimes these tools are employed in the architect's monologue with oneself, to articulate one's own architectural action. — At other times, a subset of these tools is employed when the architect-author of a work subjects the product of their architectural action to the criticism and assessment of architectural critics or fellow practitioners. — Finally, a limited portion of these tools is deployed by the architect to publicize discourse around the work, sharing it broadly with the general public.
These tools serve as the medium through which the author of an architectural work responds to the five-fold explication of the work: 1- What is the context in which the work was formed? 2- What is the subject and the problem to which the work seeks to respond? 3- What is the articulated architectural response to the problem and the context of the design's formation? 4- What was the process through which the response took shape? 5- In applying the response within the architectural action, what "significant" impact has the work had on its political, economic, social, cultural, psychological, and physical context? In the exercise of theorizing architectural action, the architect endeavors to explain what they have done, how they did it, what their reasons were, and ultimately, what influences their work has absorbed from the work of others and what influences it will exert upon them—and consequently, within the system of cause and effect of the stated influences, why the architect's action is of significance. There is no doubt that in the present era, numerous exercises in reading and producing theory have been undertaken by Iranian architects. Personally, I see this body of exercises as afflicted by two types of shortcoming: — At times, our exercises in theorization take shape entirely devoid of any reasoned relationship with an understanding of the principal currents of global architectural discourse. — At other times, in contrast to the above, we witness a body of exercises that are merely limited to imprecise translations, lacking analysis, of international literature—without these re-readings creating a foundation for the authoring of an updated theory, one that is self-appropriated and specific to the context of contemporary Iranian architecture. In my conversations with the esteemed colleagues who accepted the challenge of this issue and participated in this exercise of theorizing architectural actions, emphasis was placed on synthesizing references from the mainstream international discourse with texts produced within the context of contemporary Iranian architecture. In this request, my use of "text" referred not only to architectural literature but also to the physical products—the "built" architectural solutions—of the architect.
Furthermore, in the conventional intra-disciplinary negotiations of architecture, this combined discipline is introduced as comprising four domains: architectural education, the profession of architecture, physical research, and architectural discourse—which encompasses historiography, theorization, and criticism along with critical thinking. Real action within the discipline of architecture occurs not in the areas of divergence but in the shared terrains of these domains. I therefore believe that any exercise in theorizing architectural actions is simultaneously an exercise in establishing meaningful relationships among these domains. Based on this view, in the preliminary negotiations with participants in this exercise, it was emphatically stressed that the authors of works should attempt to articulate a personalized relationship among these domains. The volume before you is divided into four chapters. The first chapter, in an effort to maximally delineate the framework of this exercise, includes essays on architectural education, the profession of architecture, physical research, historiography, and theorization. I have excluded architectural criticism from this issue, as I believe the subject of architectural criticism is so vast that it warrants a separate, dedicated issue. The second chapter is a collection of exercises by Iranian architects in theorizing their own architectural practice. The third chapter presents an example of theorizing architectural action by a practicing architect in the international context, alongside an example of theorization by a theorist and historian within that same context. The fourth chapter documents the exercise of discourse within the framework of a dialogue between two architects. Finally, the collection reaches a tentative conclusion in one architect's rereading of the components of this exercise while maintaining a critical distance from it. There is no doubt that, as an exercise, the collection before you has many shortcomings and will consequently offer potential for critical engagement within the discursive arena of the architectural discipline.