International Journal of

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Technology has had many influences on the Iranian society in different eras. Today, information and telecommunication technologies have revolutionized the basic structures of society and a new network society has been propagated inside the traditional and semi-modern context. In countries like Iran, which are in the process of modernization, a chaos deriving from the transition period is observed that leads to a certain peculiarity. In this transition era the norms of traditional societies, which offer discipline for these societies, have been eliminated in favor of new norms that are not codified yet. The transformation to the new situation and also the confrontation with the electronic world has instigated many disorders and anomalies in the society, with its physical expression becoming visible in contemporary architecture. Today, Iranian architecture is affected by Kitsch Art and has become superficial. Using attractive visual capsules and exploiting the human habit of imitation, information viruses have spread everywhere and have changed the physical world dramatically. The propagation of networks has made this process even faster. This paper reviews the confrontation of Iranian architecture with the electronic realm and investigates the role of visual viruses in the formation of the physical fabric of Tehran. It is argued that in the future, emphasis on design supported by collective intelligence [1] and individual creativity can decrease physical anomalies in the built environment.

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House is considered not only as one of the main needs of human beings but also as one of the best determining characteristics of living standard. Housing shortages is one of the most acute problems next to the rapid growth of the large cities and their suburbs in developing countries. These cities take all the opportunities, services and the funds Which a country has to offer,, Despite this fact,, These cities are still dealing and struggling with a variety of urban problems such as : housing shortages, high unemployment rate, urban transportation problems and failure to supply other services, as well as environmental destruction. As the direct result of the allocation of all the resources to the large cities, the other regions of the country, including small cities and the rural areas have become stagnant and underdeveloped. The efforts to speed up the development of the small cities have been intensified to deal with the lack of equilibrium and harmony created by the unbalanced growth and development of the cities. To guide and monitor these developments, the Urban Regional Development and Planning was found to ensure and emphasize dynamism of the small cities. Small cities development can have an effect on the region only if these cities' development is sustainable and Takes place properly therefore, sustainable urban development is one of the requirements for the regional development approach. Housing and its appropriate development is one of the affecting and important factors in achieving urban development and realization of sustainable development in small cities. This article discusses housing's place and its role in the process of achieving sustainable urban development in small cities based on its characteristics and indicators and refers these cities' function in the regional development planning.

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Considering the acceptance of culture as the principle predictorof understanding housing elements, including religious and behavioral patterns, is becoming increasingly important. This understanding can be clearly visualized in a city such as Kerman. Kerman is located in South-East of Iran andhas a diverse culture witha residential district in which Muslims, Zoroastrians, and Jews liveside by side in harmony. In this paper, the impact of religious and behavioral patterns on the interactive structure of houses, which belong to the followers of the above mentioned religions, will be explained.The results of this study could be used as a practical guideline and framework by the planners who are organizing approachesfor designing and renovating buildings in these districts. The paper implements a combinationalresearch method using documentation, field study, interviews, observation and logical reasoning in order to discuss the matter of privacy and hospitality and its impacts on formation of the houses. Furthermore, apart from the study of ethnography, the paper demonstratesthe fact that there are at least two impressive layers affecting the traditional architectural housing in Kerman. The first layer is derived from the dominant cultural patterns of privacy respecting the rights of neighbors and hospitality that are acceptable by all religions.Adhering to these two principles is practical even today. Moreover, the second layer affecting the architectural housing of the Jews and Zoroastrians is derived from their traditions and religious beliefs.

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Abstract: Creativity and innovation are major drivers for developments of societies and nations. In this way, research activities have an extremely significant role whose promotion is strongly dependent on the creativity and innovation. There are several factors such as the built environment, which affect the creativity and innovation. This paper extracts a set of design rules for researchers' offices in an "architecture and urban design research center", which lead to the growth of researchers' creativity and innovation. The type of plan, namely open or closed plans, and spatial aspects of researchers’ offices are investigated from the perspective of factors influencing the creativity and innovation. The spatial aspects, chosen based on the available literature, are privacy, beauty, spatial diversity/flexibility, and proximity/visibility. Additionally, four factors affecting the creativity and innovation consist of tranquility/physical comfort, motivation, creative thinking, and communication. The survey methodology, with a 26-question four-choice questionnaire, was adopted here for the sake of numerical studies. The sample group covered 91 faculty members and Ph.D. students associated with Architecture and Urban Design Departments of several universities in Tehran. The collected data has been analyzed through a statistical method, named repeated measure analysis of variance (RM-ANOVA), and the most affected creativity and innovation factors by spatial aspects are specified.

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In the developing world, skills in innovation and creative design have emerged as key attributes for graduating designers. Creativity is essential if we want to generate new solutions to the considerable and complex problems in architecture. Metaphor is frequently expressed as a key tool for enhancing creative design, yet little empirical research has been performed on how novice designers can use it within their design. The goal of this study is to empirically research the use of metaphor in the design studio, with a focus on its effects on design creativity and quality. A three-stage method is presented, which allows novice designers to use meanings and metaphors in the early stages of design and idea generation. This method was tested in an architectural studio with two groups as experiment and control groups. The results were evaluated using a qualitative research methodology and a questionnaire was prepared in which the students were requested to assess the use of this method in their design process. Also expert designers evaluated the design outcomes in both control and experiment groups. The results highlight that metaphor is a helpful tool for young designers to stimulate design creativity and has a noticeable effect on design quality factors such as novelty, value, flexibility, usefulness and detail. These research findings have different implication for novice architects and help them enhance creativity and quality in their design endeavors.

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Housing is the second need after food for human beings. Since the housing crisis began with the increase in population, respective governments were forced to construct houses for a large number of families. Ignoring the qualitative aspects of these houses has caused social and cultural harm. Therefore, designers need to pay more attention to the quality of housing and living environments. The main objective of this study is to find the most important factors that affect the quality of low- income housing. In order to achieve this goal, the first stage of the research was to undertake a systematic review of the literature and interview the residents. The housing environment factors were classified in four categories: environmental, functional, formal and semantic factors. In order to give priority to the factors, a questionnaire was distributed among 15 experts (according to the Delphi technique, two rounds of surveys were taken). In the first round, some factors were removed and a new category was added. In the second round, experts gave priority to the factors. Once the data was collected, the next stage was to analyze it. The statistical analysis was performed using SPSS software (version 18 SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA). The results obtained - based on the weighting of each factor - showed that some factors, such as interior space function, volume, relationship with nature, safety and social security are the most effective factors of low-income housing quality.

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When thinking about traditional Iranian architecture, one imagines extensive ornamental patterns that adorn almost every surface of mosques and other prominent buildings. Yet, many theories of architecture since the beginning of twentieth century have considered ornamentation a superficial and superfluous layer. But, are these ornamental surfaces superficial and can they be removed so easily? This paper uses a qualitative research methodology based on theoretical cross examination and critical analysis to highlight the significance of surface and appearances in architecture and argue that formulating a strategy to adorn architecture is in fact the generating gene of every architectural movement, from Modernism to Postmodernism and even to Parametricism of recent times. By setting up a philosophical and a theoretical discourse about the notion of surface and the various metaphors used in architectural theory, this paper concludes that from the woven walls of first architectural spaces to the clothed walls of modern times, surfaces have played a sacred role in architecture, and rather than being superficial barriers that mask reality, they are indeed the very materials with which architects demarcate space and create new aesthetics.

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Orientation of classrooms is an important challenge in architectural design of a school. However, there is a lack of appropriate knowledge about influence of orientation on students’ perception of daylighting in classrooms. This paper presents a questionnaire survey that was conducted to compare students’ perception and satisfaction with daylighting in classrooms of a high school in Tabriz, Iran. Statistical analysis of responses was done to identify daylight factor and their relationships with satisfaction with daylighting in northern and southern classrooms. In southern classrooms, satisfaction with daylighting had significantly negative and positive correlation with perception of reflected and direct glare, respectively. In northern classrooms, perception of unified daylight and control of sunlight overheating by operable windows had significantly strong and positive correlation with satisfaction with daylighting, respectively. The students’ seating location had significant influence on satisfaction with daylighting and perception of direct glare in southern classrooms. In northern classrooms, students’ seating location caused different perception of reflected glare. The results showed that orientation did not lead to significant difference between satisfactions with daylighting in northern and southern classrooms. Although, in southern classrooms, the mean votes of satisfaction with daylighting was higher than northern classrooms.

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In today’s mechanized world, the need for a patient-friendly attitude in the hospitals and its psychological effects on the recovery time of patients has been proven. Considering the special pre and post-partum conditions of a pregnant woman, together with the fact that the mother and child cannot be treated as a patient case, makes these psychological effects more critical in this research, the mental state of pregnant women in association with the social support they receive, and its role on their stay and recovery, was considered. In this research we investigated the role of maternity ward architectural design on the quality of mothers social interactions. To achieve this, a survey has been conducted on the affect of maternity ward architectural design on the mothers social interactions with visitors, medical board, and other patients in maternity units of Tehran’s General Hospitals.
It was found that the establishment of social communications with visitors, hospital staff, and other patients had significantly positive psychological effects on patients. Not only the mental health status of patients was improved, also their recovery time was reduced. This was concluded that the design of healthcare centers should provide maternity unit’s patients effective communication opportunities by providing an appropriate space for patients companies, family members, and visitors.

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As recent researches show, creativity is very important in art, technology, science, education, management and etc. Also, preschool ages are a golden time for developing motor creativity. So, it‘s necessary to enhance creativity of preschoolers. Many scholars have studied cognitional-emotional aspects of creativity. Some, have focused on the creativity process and creativity techniques. But, the relation between creativity and physical environment have been rarely studied. The goal of this research, is exploring design patterns which may help architects to design suitable spaces to enhance kids’ creativity. The question is “which architectural variables affect kids' creativity positively”. Survey research method is used to gathering questionnaires of kindergarten mentors, architects, psychologist and preschoolers. Factor analysis showed the effective variables (factors) that were known and labeled. Creativity variables were “imagination”, “curiosity” and “cooperative play”. The variables of physical environment were “flexibility” and “variety”. To find the relation between three creativity variables and two architecture variables, the path analysis method was used. The correlation of creativity variables and architectural ones was significantly positive. Then, 72 architects and psychologists were tested with an open end test. Design patterns were extracted from architects and psychologists suggestions. The results were discussed in a session with 20 children to explore kids taste about them. The outcome was design patterns such as: a) Design of modular wide open plan with several corners; b) Design puzzled Shadow maker partitions; c) Using light modular furniture such as light cubes that kids could move and rearrange them to make new furniture/walls; d) Using incomplete paintings, on the wall or on the ground; e) Design vast planting areas that kids could plant in groups.

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Using the results of the assessment of desirability from the viewpoint of employees and the computer analysis of space syntax, the desirability factors of work desk arrangement in office space have been analyzed in the present study. Firstly a pictorial questionnaire was distributed among 113 employees in two offices of Tabriz city to obtain the desirable sitting places in the room (considering the position of the door of room, the angle of the sitting and the position of the desk of colleague). Next, using the space syntax software, the factors which affect the preferences of employees were analyzed. In this regard, indices such as Isovist, integration and distance from the door were studied. The results show the impact of these indices on the preferences of employees. The significance and impact of the indices have not been similar and in some cases, "distance from the door" has had the highest impact and the "isovist" has had more impact than "integration". In relation to the selection of the sitting place, this research has also demonstrated the impact of organizational and cultural factors on the preferences of employees. Such as the difference between the spatial value of various parts of the room in terms of distance from the door and the position of the door in different cultures, the difference between the results obtained from female respondents and the male respondents in relation to the index of "isovist from outside", as well as the difference between the choices of individuals with different occupational ranks.

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To date, researchers from various disciplines have studies leisure time; most have focused on quality of leisure activity, psychological benefits of leisure, spiritual effect, thereby neglecting the effect of social classes on features and quality of the selected place. Third place is defined as a location outside of home or work that allows for social interaction and emotional support, regardless of levels and social classes, ethnic and racial differences. While it seems that the presence of such places in our society has a significant relationship with social classes; in the sense that different levels of social classes are more apt to form distinct number and types of third places. The current research tries to investigate the relationship between different social setting and people identification of third place, for spending leisure time. People attach identifications or meanings to these third places based on the type of needs met for the individual by these places.

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This study was done with the aim of identifing and prioritizing the supportive housing affordability indicators based on residents` perspective, this aim is practical and our research method is descriptive-analytical. Regarding the nature of the subject and the indicators studied, the current approach to this research is a survey method that first, by analyzing the content of research carried out in different countries, the affordability indicators of supportive housing are extracted and then based on this Indices, a questionnaire was designed. This questionnaire was distributed in the statistical community. The statistical population is residents of Mehr housing in Babolsar. 340 residents were selected by random cluster sampling from the whole (2300 residents). Data was analyzed through exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. Exploratory Factor Analysis showed a 8-factor measurement model that two factors were eliminated due to their low impact. These factors that determine affordability of supportive housing base on residents` perspective, In order of preference, are: physical comfort, Elderly and disabled people facilitations, Green spaces’ landscape, Intra-housing characteristics, Open spaces efficiency, and social interactions. The regression method was used to investigate the relationship between these factors, which indicates high dependence (0.85) of physical comfort factor (as dependent variable) and Intra-housing characteristics. In future researches, it is necessary to evaluate the measures of supportive housing affordability indicators in different regions of the country.

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Postmodernism is a very ambiguous term. It attracted many researchers from different fields of knowledge in the late 1960s. This article explains intertextuality as a critical means to derive its concepts and components in order to understand the hidden layers of meaning in postmodern pluralist ideology. Variable thoughts of postmodern architecture have been divided into two categories—Historicist and Deconstruction—to be able to detect and classify the inner layers of meaning in postmodern architecture.
The authors seek to answer these questions:
1. How can we achieve the intertextual relationship between Historicist postmodern architecture and Deconstruction?
2. How can we define Historicist postmodern architecture and Deconstruction into the diachronic and synchronic axes?
The results show that Historicist postmodernism uses objective signifiers and moves only along the diachronic axis. This group only imitates the past and its elements have humor and irony in the works. Due to the lack of attention to the synchronic axis, some parts of intertextuality are missing. These include the uncertainty of meaning and multilayered texts, which are principles of intertextuality. Deconstruction moves in both the diachronic and synchronic axes and, unlike Historicist ones, multi-meaning, multi-valued, and multi-layered features are seen in the works. They use both previous and contemporary texts. The method of data analysis is based on causal comparison and the rational analysis of authors. This article is a logical reasoning research that uses reasoning to explain relationships and understand the components of a subjective system after gathering information and understanding the theory of intertextuality.

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In the architectural design, designers are focused on the early stages of the design process or conceptual design. The ultimate goal of this stage is to find a solution for an existing problem, investigate design space, or explore an idea. This stage conventionally begins with sketches and diagrams to explore ideas and solutions; the ambiguity and vagueness of conventional freehand sketching can be a source of creativity.
Nowadays, with the advances in digital technology, there are attempts to integrate digital tools into the conceptual design in order to construct a digital design medium in the architectural education. Recent developments in CAAD software shows a shift in focus toward conceptual design interface; but these tools have not developed and still fail to offer an appropriate design environment for sketching; So application of digital tools in the early stages of design, has created problems and challenges especially regarding creativity. The problem is that why digital sketching could not yet replace the conventional freehand sketching. Therefore, this research focuses on the early stages of the design process and aims to investigate the current situation of digital sketching and its related discussions and challenges in architectural design education, also, study the current sketching tools in the architectural schools and tendency of instructors and their students to use digital sketching in real world. This research has a qualitative approach and a survey has conducted via an online questionnaire. Findings show that, there are attempts to study and propose interfaces and programs to enhance digital systems or new ways of working with them in order to support creativity and sketching. Also, findings indicate that the professors yet doubt over digital tools, but there is a tendency to use these tools among educators and their students if these tools can meet educational demands.

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Environment consists of a hierarchy of behavioral settings that create activity systems in conjunction with each other and it will contribute to a better understanding of environment capabilities for people. Recognizing the reflective behaviors of the students provides the possibility of optimized designing of university spaces in order to form the behavioral settings. The aim of the present research is extracting the indicators of behavioral settings and comparative comparison of them in internal frame and landscape of the universities. For this purpose, Azad University of Tabriz, based on the assumption of physical desirability, due to the assignment of use to higher education and its modernization, and Islamic art Faculty with its historical structure in urban texture and change of its function from residential to higher education has been evaluated in this study .Survey method based on map reading is used by students and the questionnaires are collected and the results are analyzed using SPSS software. The results show that Islamic Art Faculty with more student-defined behavioral domains and responding to behavioral setting variables has spatial desirability for students while Islamic Azad University of Tabriz, along with the modern structure, is not responsive to behavioral variables In the meantime, through discovering the problems for evaluation of the building, some strategies are suggested to improve the present condition.

 

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The present paper focused on architecture students' learning styles based on Kolb's Experiential learning theory (ELT) and evaluated relationships between students' learning styles, degree of their academic achievement, gender, and duration of study in architecture. Based on the results of this research, divergent, accommodating, assimilating and convergent styles were the architecture students' dominant learning styles, respectively. Furthermore, there was an unbalanced distribution of dispersed different learning styles as more than a half of the students' preferred divergent learning styles while divergent and accommodating styles in the half north of scatter plot generally covered more than 85% of the participants. Furthermore, no significant differences were observed between the students' mean scores of learning style test at the end of the first to fourth years of study. It was found that there were significant relationships between male students' learning styles and their achievement in architecture education. Accordingly, male students with divergent learning styles had higher academic achievement in terms of their total grade point average, compared to that of assimilating and accommodating groups. Meanwhile, there was a significant relationship between the students' academic performance and gender. In general, female students had better performance in architecture in terms of their total grade point average.

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During the Pahlavi era, Iran's widespread developments influenced by the industrial revolution led to a lot of changes in family structure and by changing the function of family and the roles and relations of family members, paved the way for a change in the houses' spatial organization. Therefore, the main question addressed in this study is: “"What changes are brought about in the space organization of houses of Yazd as a consequence of changes in the family structure (from the Pahlavi era to the present)?
The strategy of research is qualitative and the method is grounded theory. The results of the present study revealed that every change in family structure has an equivalent effect on houses’ spatial organization. In fact, with the horizontalization of the pyramid of power and the creation of democracy in the family, the house has also become democratic and age and gender hierarchies have been eliminated from the organization of spaces. Besides, with the increase of individuality in the family, the organization of housing spaces has also changed in order to create distinct personal realms and eliminate the continuity and fluidity of the space. Moreover, by eliminating many of the functions and duties of the family, the functions and duties of the house have also changed such that it has become just a place for resting.

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Human always tries to achieve a sense of vitality, and wants a liveliness environment; therefore, recognizing factors in the architecture that increases the quality of life is important. Based on the importance of this issue, this article aims to identify the life indicators and evaluating them in architecture. In this way, by relying on a method of grounded theory, the researcher conducted semi-structured and depth interviews with eighteen present perceivers in eight sorts of traditional houses in Yazd. These interviews were completed by the means of sketches, photographs, and personal observations. Participants were selected from among the people who could answer more accurate questions. To increase validity, the findings were evaluated with other related studies. Findings show that nine main factors in traditional houses increase life quality. These factors include: the sociability space, the convergence of space for achieving internal focus, the possibility of continuous interaction with nature (sky, water, tree, open space and natural light), the emphasis on diversity, the perception of time, the quality of being dynamic and active, the expansiveness of space along with the increase Transparency of space, the belonging sense to get acquainted with the Mental memories and hidden order Without extra unity.