Architecture as Pedagogy

The History of Architectural Education in the Middle East and North Africa explores the varied socio-political landscapes within which different architectural programs and schools were established across Middle Eastern and North African countries. It addresses a significant gap in our understanding of the diverse strategies and paths through which architectural pedagogy underwent institutionalization and standardization during nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This process of modernization was greatly influenced by rapidly evolving socio-economic conditions and the interests of the real estate market. Concurrently, architectural educators and institutions responded to public demands for more inclusive urban environments, shaping the social ambitions and expectations of emerging modern cities.

n Chapter 5, Ali Mozaffari and Ali Javid examine the evolution of architectural education in the developmental context of Iran in the 1960s. The 1960s was a decade marked by significant events in international relations, with direct domestic repercussions. A core global concern at the time was development, for which a key universal indicator is education. Hence, the heavy investment, especially by Third World governments, in establishing universities and setting up courses in collaboration with or modelled after those in western (developed) countries. Iran was no exception to this general pattern. For Iran the decade was marked by the Pahlavi establishment’s reform program (started in the mid-1950s but the ratified in 1963 as the White Revolution) in which a central tenet was the improvement of educational facilities for all. In the university sector, this manifested in, among other things, the establishment of Melli University (est. 1959, now renamed Shahid Beheshti University) and its architecture course in 1961. This challenged Tehran University’s (est. 1931) monopoly on architectural education. Architecturally, the 1960s was a formative decade, one that influenced the tenor of education and practice in the field in subsequent decades (especially coming to fruition in the 1970s). In understanding this decade, three important factors stand out. First, the personal practice, connections, and biographies of prominent faculty (who acted as interlocutors in the adoption and exchange of knowledge); second, the developmental momentum inside Iran, which encouraged modernization and international contacts; and, third, the slowly evolving national and intellectual consciousness with a heritage bent in the Second Pahlavi period. Despite this significance, scant and fragmented evidence turns understanding the educational aspect of this decade into a forensic historical-interpretative endeavor. The chapter embarks on that endeavor by invoking instances from the curriculum structures, faculty relations, and students’ output that together produce a picture of the decade against a backdrop of global exchange and circulation of knowledge.