سید یحیی اسلامی

Taking into account the decrease in public presence in religious places, it appears that one of the main reasons for the los t connection between audiences and sacred sites is the lack of sense of place. Creating a sense of place is the job of architects who utilize several factors to this end. The objective of the present s tudy is to show that in designing, an architect considers a set of the personal unconscious mind and collective unconscious mind to achieve the optimum design based on the needs and a sense of place. Hypotheses were formed based on this. The mos t complete among them was that the mos t solid and adequate unders tanding of place is composed in a space that encompasses a combination of the two groups of semantic and physical archetypes. A variety of phenomenological, environment psychology, and analytical approaches helped the s tudy to realize its objective. A combination of field and library s tudies provided qualitative and quantitative data to the researcher that were analyzed using the Delphi technique. The data obtained by a ques tionnaire were analyzed using analytical hierarchy process 1 (AHP). The findings showed that inducing a sense of place in the Iranian mosque depended on semantic archetypes, and creating, s trengthening, and ensuring the survival of these archetypes turned on more robus t use of physical archetypes.

More than eight hundred years ago, before the invention of digital tools, Muslim builders had achieved the creative vision and aes thetic complexity required for the production of Muqarnas: an architectural device that connects surface ornament to divine concepts. This research adopts a qualitative, comparative, and critical use of architectural source material to cons truct an alternative unders tanding of Muqarnas within a documented his tory of architectural allegories and theories. The paper follows the argument that in the absence of figurative depiction in Islamic art, geometry assumes greater symbolic power, which manifes ts itself in ornament, s tructure, and space. In this sys tem, Muqarnas uses complex geometry to connect wall surfaces to spacious volumes. In the metamorphosis of two-dimensional planes to three-dimensional space, Muqarnas occupies the in-between space that connects the two worlds in a smooth and parametric process of transition. Thus, Muqarnas operates similarly to the folds of Baroque architecture and expresses, in a manneris t, yet geometric manner, the connection between the two realms of body and soul. However, unlike the Deleuzian model of Baroque sacris ty, light does not enter from below; from the realm of the body and the senses, but rather it shines from above; from the realm of the soul and divine concepts. From this point of view, Muqarnas becomes a significant phenomenon in architecture being a symbolic, ornamental, and parametric architectural device that simultaneously alludes to the allegories of the Platonic tradition, the Deleuzian concept of fold/unfold, and to recent theories of Parametricism.

Different world views and philosophies in defining development problems and their solutions derive currently from different disciplines. They refer in many respects to the principle of cause-effect as a fundamental relationship between phenomena. The history of differing values and attitudes presented in management and design indicates the importance of this relationship. This sort of knowledge and some of the values and attitudes needed by built environment professionals can be explored by the Endogenous Development Model and its associated internal paradigms of production-process and supply-demand relationships. The first is responsible for the evolution of thought in a diachronous space-time dimension and the second causes the generation of typologies created in a synchronous three-dimensional space. Particular emphasis is placed on the meaning of development in the context of endogenous people-centred development. The paper addresses the fact that the means of production and the associated supply-demand mechanism are generated in the west. Indeed, for some today, what is seen as the historical process of “Westernization” may well be rejected outright as a goal for developing countries.

In this paper, an exchange of letters between the philosopher Jacques Derrida and architect Peter Eisenman is used as a catalyst to discuss the material qualities of glass and its relationship with the concept of transparency in architecture. In his criticism of an architecture devoid of human qualities, Derrida uses glass, defined through Walter Benjامین’s writings, as a hard and cold material that does not allow any human attachments and transparency as an absence of aura or a sense of awe. This paper attempts to elaborate that there can be different interpretations of transparency in architecture and that the material qualities of glass can be used to construct a different understanding of architecture in the current world of mass media and information. It is also argued that a particular approach to architecture has become possible in which textual constructs veil glassy buildings resulting in a translucent architecture that exploits different media to extend its influence beyond the limitations of a particular material, site or context.