In the past decade, the architecture of Iran in the late Pahlavi period has received a considerable scholarly attention. Drawing on archival research and critical theories, these studies have advanced our understanding of the cultural meanings of monuments, while also elucidating the politics and social dynamics of urban planning and housing projects. These works primarily have been produced by a generation of scholars who came of age, as did the author of this review, under the Islamic Republic and look at the Pahlavi era as a distant yet ironically palpable past—a bygone age whose characters are still partly with us today. As the 1970s recede further into history, their distinctive architectural trends and traits can now be seen in sharper grain.
In Development, Architecture, and the Formation of Heritage in Late Twentieth-Century Iran: A Vital Past, Ali Mozaffari and Nigel Westbrook offer new insights into Iran's architectural culture in the 1970s as well as during the two decades after the 1979 Revolution. The purpose of the book—as the authors emphasize throughout the volume—is to analyze the relationship between development, architecture, and heritage. Development, they argue, created massive societal change, laying the ground for new perceptions of the past (or heritage). These emerging notions of heritage (understood in terms of authenticity, tradition, or civilization) were in turn mediated, negotiated, and (re)constructed in the present through architecture.
Mozaffari and Westbrook examine this dialectic through four case studies that include realized and unrealized projects for collective housing complexes as well as civic monuments and urban ensembles dating from the 1970s through the 1990s. In describing and analyzing these cases, the authors draw on the publications of the era, recent scholarly works, and on-site investigations and interviews with users; interviews with architects and Mozaffari's personal experiences provide further insights into the context of the projects. What sets this volume apart from other recent studies is that it does not merely focus on the 1970s, but also examines the post-revolution afterlife and reception of late Pahlavi monuments and architectural discourses. It is primarily in this latter area that the book introduces lesser-known projects and offers new interpretations.
The book consists of an introduction, six chapters that are thematically and chronologically organized, and a conclusion. In the introduction, Mozaffari and Westbrook review (and critique) the existing scholarship and lay out their theoretical concerns. To highlight the shortcomings of recent studies on Iran's 1970s architecture, the authors characterize these studies as works produced by “Western-based Iranian authors” who draw upon “Western critical theory,” an odd statement for a study that fits into the same categories. They also criticize these studies for “falling into the trap of preconceived positions” (3) and highlight the need for further theorization. In developing their own theoretical approach, Mozaffari and Westbrook draw on heritage and development theories, positing architecture as an active catalyst in the formation of heritage (defined in a broad sense, based on heritage studies). This form of dialogue with the past, of course, accounts for only a small fraction of architectural production in the 1970s, namely a strain of modernist architecture that was promoted by a handful of Iranian architects who sought to incorporate historic citations into an architectural language of abstract, austere forms. The majority of the state-sponsored construction projects of the 1970s in Tehran—residential complexes such as Ekbatan, Apadana, and Farahzad New Town (now Shahrak-e Gharb) as well as high-rise apartment buildings such as Saman, Eskan, and APS—were almost entirely devoid of any “nostalgic impulse” and were chiefly designed and constructed by foreign firms.
The book's analytical approach is further fleshed out in chapter 1, which considers the concepts of authenticity, civilization, and tradition. Mozaffari and Westbrook argue that the discourses formed around these concepts were all driven by nostalgia, which they treat as yet another broad concept encompassing the affective reactions spawned by development and the swift societal change that it precipitates. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the Iran Center for Management Studies (now Imam Sadeq University), completed in 1975 and designed by Nader Ardalan, as an example of the (re)creation of heritage through design.
Chapter 2 investigates the dialogue between the local and global contexts of Iran's 1970s architecture by focusing on a series of international congresses that were held at Isfahan (1970), Persepolis (1974), and Ramsar (1976). Supported by the former queen, Farah Diba-Pahlavi, and attended by leading international architects of the day, these congresses provided platforms for Iranian architects such as Nader Ardalan, who advocated for adapting modern architecture to (Iranian) tradition to promote their ideas in dialogue with global currents and practitioners. Yet, these congresses were not merely local events. The authors deftly situate these congresses in the broader trajectory of developments in modernist architecture in the second half of the twentieth century.
The following two chapters 3 and 4 examine the design and rhetoric of “heritage-inspired” housing projects before and after the revolution. Chapter 3 offers a discussion and analysis of Shushtar New Town (1974–1980), a “company town” designed by Kamran Diba in the vicinity of the city of Shushtar in the Khuzestan province. Mozaffari and Westbrook argue that by incorporating traditional motifs, the project created a “lasting sense of heritage and place,” which gradually gave rise to “nostalgic feelings among its residents” (82–83), a claim that they attempt to substantiate through on-site fieldwork. The following chapter 4 investigates the continuities and ruptures in the notions and designs of housing projects after the revolution. As a case study, the authors examine the (unrealized) entries for an architectural competition held in 1985 by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Planning. They argue that, despite the fundamentalist rhetoric of the Islamic Republic, these post-revolution projects perpetuate the approach promoted by architects such as Ardalan and Diba in the 1970s.
From housing the final two chapters 5 and 6 turn to the design and politics of public monuments and civic complexes. In chapter 5, the authors focus on the Shahyad/Azadi tower, designed by Hossein Amanat. Based on a study of the experience and reception of the monument in the present day, they argue that it conveys multiple messages at different scales. Finally, chapter 6 investigates the urban plans prepared for the Abbas Abad district in Tehran from the 1970s onward. After summarizing the planning of the site in the Pahlavi period (when it was conceived as a grand urban center named Shahestan Pahlavi), the authors examine the post-revolution development of Abbasabad, focusing particularly on the National Library and Mosalla projects.
Engaging a broad range of analytical themes and architectural projects, this book is remarkable for its theoretical approach. In fact, the volume offers little in the way of new archival material; it is written from the viewpoint of a contemporary critic rather than an architectural historian. The book is particularly compelling in the ways in which it situates the practice and rhetoric of Iran's 1970s architectural culture in the global context of architectural trends. Dismissing the questions of class and power, however, the tripartite theoretical framework of the study leaves little room for a critical consideration of human agency. The conflicting intentions of various individuals and stakeholders who were involved in architectural production are glossed over; in the narrative of this book, the interaction between developmental processes and cultural discourses spawns results that are all but inevitable. Moreover, although the volume is thorough—even if at times relatively rigid and repetitive—in expounding its theoretical framework, it is not as conscious or nuanced in its methodology. For instance, the study draws on interviews with present-day users, yet the specific contours, import, and limitations of this method of analysis are not explicated. The book also would have benefited from a more meticulous editorial revision. For instance, Laleh Bakhtiar is wrongly referred to as an architect (59). A number of typographical errors also have crept into the Persian-language scripts (in the epigraph on page 27, for example). These errors indicate that using the Persian script in text or citations, although an admirable measure, requires more editorial care in the production stages.
Despite these critical points, this book is an erudite and insightful addition to the expanding corpus of scholarship on the architectural culture of Iran in the second half of the twentieth century. It will appeal not only to readers concerned with the history of architecture but also to audiences with interests in history and in cultural studies of contemporary Iran. The book also will be relevant to scholars interested in global histories of modern architecture in the twentieth century. The production of a high volume of scholarly works on twentieth-century Iranian architecture in the recent decade is not a coincidence; it reflects the immense significance of architecture and the built environment in the formation of modern Iran and their relevance to broader trends in the Global South, past and present. In its relentless quest to create utterly modern yet historically informed monuments, the modernist/traditionalist architecture of twentieth-century Iran is not merely a reflection of power and state ideologies, as Mozaffari and Westbrook reveal in this book; it has been instrumental in the rise of modern Iranian conceptions of national personhood that still reverberate in the country today.
