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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The advent of modern planning in the early twentieth century and its failure in practice caused the emergence of planning crisis which theory-practice gap has been its central theme of debate. This gap begot various readings of urban planning theory to make theory and practice much closer. Radical planning, as one of these readings, deprives the power of central government in favour of empowering the citizens and considers the highest level of participation in decision-making processes for them. Nevertheless, it failed to address the planning crisis and theorists continued theory making to address the crisis. Hence, the current study aims to investigate radical planning with a critical perspective by using a deep-seated research method and referring to related topics. Results ended in finding reasons led to the failure of radical planning to address planning crisis. The uncertainty of radical planning process, the idealistic looks of theorists and radical planning mismatch with the current forms of state planning are three main reasons which hindered it from addressing planning crisis despite being the turning point of urban planning theories. 

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Nowadays, urbanization is growing increasingly and cities are going to be more complicated than ever including local-global duality. On one hand, Cities are not limited to their geographical boundaries. Neoliberal globalization, which has been rapidly expanding since the late 1980s in the economic circle, places the world into a money game and cities into competition with each other. On the other hand, there are some influential forces on a local scale that determine the urban evolutions. Regarding these two global-local factors, non-powerful groups are neglected increasingly from urban transformation and main projects. This article reviews the “everyday life” concept in spaces through Lefebvre’s writings and draws its dimensions and criteria through descriptive- analytical study. How could everyday life be explained in the current architectural and urban transformation? Surely, Urban evolutions could affect everyday life. After that, it reviews the transformation of Valiasr intersection through historical- interpretation study. Valiasr intersection is the most important intersection in Tehran. It is considered as the spatial gap of Tehran, separating the “high status” and the “low status. Recently, an underpass project for pedestrians was built in this intersection. The results show that this urban transformation is mainly defined by administrational- status forces in the absence of social ones which mainly consider the economic- ideological aspects. It reduces social inclusion and social participation. Following that, this important project could not improve the everyday life of Tehran.