Intellectual Movements in Iran - Modern and Contemporary Architecture Movement

Modern and Contemporary Architecture Movement

Although the new era in Iranian architecture began with the rise of Safavid dynasty, (1501 - 1736), in fact, it is in the early decades of the twentieth century that the first generation of modern Iranian architects, almost like every generation of modern architects in the world, appears as being influenced by the Modern Movement and rationalism in architecture. Architects such as Vartan Hovanesian, Ali Sadegh, Mohsen Foroughi, Paul Akbar, Gabriel Guevrekian, Heydar Ghiai, Abdolaziz Farmanfarmaian and Hooshang Seyhoun are examples of this movement. Later, in mid-1960s, Ali Sardar Afkhami, Kamran Diba and Nader Ardalan are among those Iranian architects who have opened their design approach to the history and traditions to represent a trend of Iranian Post-Modernism. Attention for the new trends in international architecture, is being carried out by Iranian architects, even after the Islamic Revolution. Like most architectural milieu of the world, in 1980s the experiments on the transition from post-modernism to new developments, such as Deconstructivism and especially the entries from Jacques Derrida and Gilles Deleuze has influenced many Iranians architects, in a large spectrum of young architects such as Reza Daneshmir, Kamran Afshar Naderi, Farhad Ahmadi, Darab Diba and as a senior designer Hadi Mirmiran. In this context, It is of interest the attempt by some architects like Abbas Gharib or Bahram Shirdel to go in deep within the most advanced theory and trends in contemporary and Post-contemporary architecture, such as the theory of Complex systems in architecture in the case of Gharib and folding Theory in the case of Shirdel. These experiments are valid methods and contribution to liberate architecture and design, from abstraction, flatness, stiffness, forced rectangular and Heterotopia of the modernist spaces for a more fluid, flexible, soft and dynamic architecture, open to the complexities of its environment and context