Our Observations from the Congress — Soheila Beski
When, in 1376 SH (1997), the First National Congress of Architecture and Urban-Planning Students was held in Isfahan with 960 attendees, by the efforts of Isfahan's students, no one perhaps believed that the programme would seriously continue. But the second congress, in 1378 SH at Shiraz, drew 1,200 attendees, and the third, in Aban of the present year, was held with some delay in Tabriz with 2,600 attendees.
The continuity of these national congresses, and the rising number of participants — apart from any qualitative judgement — speak to one fact: that students of architecture and urbanism, whose numbers continue to climb each year with the expansion of public and private universities, are seriously interested in attending such gatherings, and continue to attend with enthusiasm in spite of the criticisms they have offered of the conduct, planning and content of past congresses. The clearest expression of this enthusiasm can be seen in the design and building-out of the booths displaying selected student work from each university, and in the number of papers submitted to each congress.
The assessment of the achievements of these three congresses, and the lessons drawn from the experience gathered, fall to the students who organise them; we hope this will be carried out before the next congress is held, and that the results will appear in Memar.
The Tabriz congress secretariat, like its predecessors, kindly invited the editors of Memar as well, and asked our colleagues' opinion of these congresses, especially the Tabriz one. In response, we put forward two matters that may be discussed by the central council of student congresses, and considered by the Qazvin students who will host the next congress.
An assessment of the booths, the papers, the round-tables and other programmes of the congresses held shows that the model chosen for these congresses is that of scientific-specialist congresses. Perhaps the only point of distinction between this congress and others is the presence of booths displaying selected student work from each university, which appear in all three congresses to draw the most attention from participants. The remaining programmes — chiefly papers and the formation of working groups and round-tables — have been borrowed from the customary models of specialist congresses, and, as in their non-student counterparts in architecture and urbanism, have not been particularly successful. The other programmes more in keeping with the academic and student spirit — such as side competitions in freehand sketch and rapid drawing — also do not appear to have been taken seriously.
Perhaps a festival format, for a congress whose main aim is to bring students together and to display their activities and what they have learned, would be more fitting than that of a specialist congress, from which fresh discoveries and fresh new statements are expected. In a festival format, naturally more weight is given to the booths displaying student work in all kinds — architecture, design, even painting and industrial design — and to side competitions, film programmes (for instance, of the work of students in other countries, or of architects of student interest), discussion sessions on selected work, exhibitions of painting, industrial design and sculpture (which share the matter of design with architecture), wholly distinctive and engaging lectures, and finally suitable recreational programmes (music and theatre, say, for the evening hours).
Holding the congress in a festival format also raises the possibility of public participation in architectural congresses, especially if the venue is not, as in the past, in places far from the city (Isfahan — Azad University; Shiraz — Persepolis; Tabriz — the International Fair Ground). Given that architecture is unfamiliar to the general public, such a programme can introduce the place of architecture in the building craft to the people.
The festival format, at the same time, eases the organisation of the congress. A great part of organising the exhibitions and the side programmes falls to the student bodies of the various universities, while the directors and secretaries of the congress can confine themselves to providing the venue and overseeing the general flow of work.
Another important point is the difficulty of receiving, lodging and organising thousands of students, which was clear in both previous congresses and reached its peak in Tabriz. This calls for serious attention from the organisers of the next congress; any major shortcoming in this matter, as appeared in Tabriz, can entirely throw off the general course of the work. Without knowledge of the details and difficulties of the matter, comment is not really fair. But it is not amiss to point to a phenomenon that has been visible in all three previous congresses, and showed up more clearly in Tabriz on account of the larger number of participants and the related lodging and reception problems: friction among the student groups of various Iranian universities under such conditions is not without precedent and has nothing to do with ethnic or local matters. Such matters are certainly not in keeping with the name “National Congress of Architecture and Urban-Planning Students.”
Resemblance to Disputes — Faramarz Parsi
In 1376 SH the architecture department of Tabriz Azad University was in the grip of a serious crisis. The students complained of the teaching at the university, and of what they took to be the slightness of what they were learning, and the university for its part was unable to grasp the students' protest, while the students were increasingly accused of a love of disorder. A kind of despair fused with anger had taken hold of the students. It was in this climate that an invitation reached the Tabriz students from the students of Khorasgan Azad University to take part in a student congress. The protesters — who happened to be among the best of their group — perhaps to show good will, and perhaps because of the short time left until the congress, prepared themselves with the most basic resources and went.
On the day they returned, the atmosphere of the university had changed entirely. The students of Tabriz Azad University had won the first-place prize in the student-booth competition, and, more importantly, had built close ties with students from other universities. They had realised that the trouble they thought peculiar to their own university was a trouble shared by every university, and they had begun to understand the importance of the student and the student's part in the educational process. From the other side, too, the university authorities' view of the students changed; they came to see that these protests were aimed only at improvement, and so the university showed some flexibilities. After these changes the best decision possible was taken on the students' side, and a body called the “Student Scientific Committee” took shape.
By now everyone could see that, if they wished to know more and to be better, they should not confine themselves to the university and its teachers, but should set themselves to independent efforts. I watched this movement up close, and the spirit and the effort of these students struck me as beautiful and astonishing: a series of exhibitions, journals, participation in congresses connected in some way with architecture, and finally the great success of these students at the second congress, were the fruit of this movement and this conviction. At the second congress, the Tabriz students not only repeated their earlier success, but also took first and third place in the design competition. The second congress was wider than the first; more architectural authorities took part, and the presence of an international guest from Uzbekistan, who confirmed and expressed astonishment at this wide student movement, added to the importance of the second congress in the students' eyes, and naturally made the success in it sweeter.
The scale of the impression that such a congress made on the students perhaps merits a separate piece of writing. It was on the spot, on the back of the successes they had achieved, that the Tabriz students volunteered to host the third congress. From then on the climate of the university was shaped by the activity of the children who had become known as “those at the congress.” The Scientific Committee was passing through the steps of formal registration, and a new body, the “Young Architects' Society,” also declared itself into existence. The lower-year students gathered around a publication and joined this circle of efforts. These activities went far beyond the classes. Painting and graphic students were also part of the movement. There was hardly a day on which an exhibition did not take shape on the corridor walls. Many lectures were held at the invitation of the Scientific Committee and the Young Architects' Society. The students did not let the teachers off either; they obliged them, beyond their classes, to come to face-to-face conversations with students at the university.
Street exhibitions were the high point of the movement. To my mind the climate of those days is the best one can imagine for a school of architecture, and the reason is the serious, active presence of the students — and the giving of true meaning to the word “student.” These children really were after knowing, and had passed beyond the stage of merely fighting their education. The boldest ideas occurred to them: holding the congress in the bazaar of Tabriz; holding classes in the street; the marking of teachers in one of the timchehs of the bazaar. Although the congress in the bazaar did not happen, on account of the opposition of some of the bazaaris, many of these ideas, which seemed unworkable, were carried out and were welcomed by both students and the people of the city.
But the most important step before the congress was the publication of the journal Faza (“Space”). This journal was charged with collecting the activities described above and bringing them to the attention of those volunteering to take part in the congress. Its first issue, while above the level of a student publication, had notable shortcomings; in its second issue, with a striking leap, it raised itself to the level of a professional journal. Now everything was ready for the great gathering of the students: student papers had come in, students' designs for the competition were ready, and architecture authorities and teachers had been invited. All these activities had been planned at a scale far beyond that of the previous two congresses. Nearly 2,600 students from across Iran, plus more than 100 guests — including several from England and from Azerbaijan — had been invited. The Tabriz International Fair Ground had been chosen for holding the congress, and the students worked until the last minute setting up the halls.
The congress began on the appointed day. From the start it was clear that there were many difficulties ahead in receiving and running the event: the cold weather and 2,600 students worn from a long journey, and many unwanted incidents on the first day, took everything to the brink of breaking the congress. But the will of the students and the extraordinary effort and unity of mind of most of the participants brought the proceedings back to balance. On the second day, the student groups were each able to fasten on the subject they cared for. Some went off to see the sights of the city, and the favourable weather of the second day meant that everywhere on the grounds one saw student gatherings and discussions. The booths were busy, and not for a moment empty of crowds.
The congress closed at the end of the second day. The closing ceremony was held, and the student representatives admitted that, with all the shortcomings, the academic level of the congress had advanced markedly over the previous two. What deserves attention here is the impression that such a movement has made on the architectural student community of Iran. They have lifted the meaning of architectural education from the dead climate of the classroom and the conventional teacher-student relation into a climate of search, debate and exchange. In such a climate students see themselves in a university the size of every Iranian university, and it would not be unexpected for them to take up the study of architecture in a university the size of every university in the world. Perhaps the redemption of the backwardness of Iranian architectural education will go, not by way of the mere passing through of the academic boards and academic facilities, but through the will and self-driven movements of students — who are no longer passive creatures awaiting a fixed term and a degree.
Congress Report — Mojtaba Zargarzadeh-Dezfuli
From 8 to 10 Aban, Tabriz played host to the Third National Congress of Architecture and Urban-Planning Students of the country. This time, the two years' work of the students of the architecture school chosen by the Shiraz congress, and the diligent organisers of Tabriz, brought together more than 2,000 teachers and students to take a step forward in the ordering of the architecture of this land and in the advancing and presentation of views on the topics of the congress.
The papers submitted to the congress secretariat had as their subject “space,” with sub-themes “the creation of space” and “the effect of, and being affected by, space.” Of the 32 papers received by the secretariat, 20 were on “the creation of space” and 12 on “the effect and being-affected of space”; of these, 12 papers were given as panels during the days of the congress.
Throughout the congress, 12 panels on various subjects ran in four halls; after teachers had opened each panel, the relevant matters were taken up for criticism and discussion with the students' participation. The subjects of some of the panels held were: “Specialist Journals,” “Architectural Bodies,” “The Becoming-Trans-Disciplinary of Human Knowledge: From Cyber to Super,” “The Forming of the Social Spaces of the City,” “The Unit of Space (Climology),” “The Republic of Azerbaijan Panel,” “Suspended Space” (Sand Radnik, Touraj Khansari), “From Subjectivity to Reality,” “The Syntax of the Occupation of Space,” “The Creation of Architectural Space by the Non-Architect,” “On Planning.”
The exhibitions of the congress were of two parts: one was the booths of books, journals and several construction firms displaying their latest work in various fields of architecture; and the other, in the manner of the two previous congresses, the presentation of the achievements and capacities of the architecture schools — among the schools of architecture of universities across the country, the Azad Universities of Tabriz, Khorasgan-Isfahan, Qazvin, Hamadan and Kerman, Shahid Beheshti University, the Tabriz Islamic Art University, the University of Art and Architecture, and the University of Art at Isfahan presented work in the exhibition. In addition, the Azad University Central Tehran branch had a booth, but for various reasons could not finish it.
At this year's congress exhibition, a booth was also given over to the research and architectural office of the late Mohammad Beheshti. Another part of the exhibition that drew attention was the presentation of the schools' internal journals and magazines, in the form of periodicals and special issues; among them one may name Memari from Qazvin Azad University, Faza (special issue for the Third National Congress of Architecture and Urban-Planning Students, Tabriz, autumn 1380), the periodical Rouh-e Now from Hamadan Azad University, the special issue Kongreh from Khorasgan-Isfahan Azad University, and several one-off magazines from the universities of Tabriz, Kashan and Shiraz.
The competition section of the congress had two themes: “Design of the Allameh Mohammad-Taqi Ja'fari Philosophy Research Centre” and “The Plan for the Revival of a Historic Caravanserai”; both were postponed for announcement on another occasion because of the absence of the jury. The closing ceremony was held on Saturday with the speech of Dr Sarkhani, head of Tabriz Azad University, and the reading of the closing statement by Mr Nima Jahanbin, representative of Kerman Azad University, on behalf of the participants, and the awarding of the prizes.
The certificate of merit in the paper section was awarded to Mr Ali Hamidi-Moqaddam for his paper “The Manner of the Occupation of Space” (Hamadan Azad University); the certificate of merit for the best booth went to Hamadan Azad University; Kerman Azad University and Khorasgan-Isfahan Azad University were placed second and third, respectively. Finally, certificates of appreciation were given to the organisers and a number of architecture teachers.
Like the earlier congresses, the Tabriz one too had weaknesses worth pondering, which we hope to see corrected in future congresses by being raised in this discussion. The first matter the guests faced on the first day was the trouble of lodging, which for some students continued into the early hours of the second day, and which affected the second-day programme too — leading to the dropping of some panels, including the “Conversation Between Philosopher and Architect” panel that was to be run by Hamadan Azad University.
Inadequate dinner service was another matter the guests faced on the first day. The lack of heaters, given the great extent of the halls, was another felt shortage. The crowded planning of the panels was another problem that meant that most of them ended for lack of time before the matter under discussion reached any general conclusion, with participants leaving the hall holding questions to which they had not even received the briefest answer.
In the writer's view, the basic remedy for these troubles is the matter that has been emphasised, time and again — at least in the closing statements of all three congresses — by the representatives, namely the establishment of a “permanent secretariat” for the careful supervision of all the affairs of the congress, from the manner of judging through the course of the work and the programmes of the congress to the supplying of its needs. Perhaps the establishment of a permanent secretariat would have another merit too: that of finding a way for this gathering into the universities which, as their students say, regard the congress as a waste of money, a frivolity and an entertainment — and which have, in some cases, gone so far as to forbid their students' participation. We hope to see, at the fourth congress, the carrying-out of this matter and the realisation of higher aims.
