فرح حبیب

Culture has always been regarded as the most important element of human communities; we can easily observe cultural changes. What causes these changes has been a matter of controversy. The issues such as people’s increasingly getting detached from each other, psychopathy, behavioral abnormalities, traditions being increasingly faded away, malformation, extravagancy and value conversion into anti-values led the authors to conduct an investigation into the factors which cause such changes to happen. Moreover, the paper proposes strategies for improving the situation. First, the concept of culture and its elements are discussed. Then, the impact of urban physical aspects on the culture is dealt with. In developing a theoretical framework for the study, content analysis was performed. Qualitative and quantitative research methods were employed for small-scale (micro-level) and large-scale (macro-level) case studies, respectively. Finally, the results were discussed and a model was proposed for the impact of the urban physical aspects on culture and behavior.

Purpose- Nowadays, with the disappearance of traditionalism in rural housing design, constructions that deviate from the traditional and indigenous housing patterns are noticeable, and as a result, native values and traditions in rural housing have been disregarded. On the other hand, rural housing is the most humanistic subject of architecture and provides for the diverse needs of local residents. Therefore, this research was conducted with the aim of examining the effective factors in preserving the values of endemic housing and regional texture in Sistan towards revitalizing rural settlements.Design/ Methodology/ Approach- The qualitative-quantitative research method was used in the present study. The statistical population consisted of two parts: the first part included experts and graduates in architecture who were selected as a sample size of 20 people based on purposive sampling. The second part consisted of the villagers of Qaleh now, Deh Arbab, and Deh now Piran. Background field method, Delphi method, FARAS + FKOPRAS models were used to analyze data in both qualitative and quantitative sections.Finding- the results of background theory showed that from the perspective of experts, some factors such as preserving rural landscape, principles of protecting native housing values towards development with a focus on indigenous culture, interaction in preservation and revitalization of regional fabric and rural indigenous housing as well as cultural tourism in villages were identified as effective factors in preserving endemic rural housing values. Also, Delphi results showed that Kendall’s coefficient for concepts and meaningful units obtained from expert interviews did not differ significantly. In this regard, fuzzy model results showed that developing an ideal pattern for indigenous housing in Sistan with a weight of 70/72; principles of protecting native housing values towards development with a focus on indigenous culture with a weight of 66/72; integrated and cohesive management with a weight of 59/72, received the highest and lowest importance in preserving indigenous rural housing values in Sistan respectively.

In this paper, the system of language and architecture has been studied in three levels of elemental, structural and semantic in cases of traditional and modern mosques in Iran through the method of analyzing the content of texts and in a conceptual model. Then, in a comparative method, the common patterns of these systems have been explained at all three levels. The common features at the elemental level included double-edged signs, the notion of sign value, as well as syntagmatic relations. Concepts such as the two-way functioning of the systems, textuality and spatial cohesion were identified at the structural level. The concepts of marking, explicit and implicit meanings, and metaphors were investigated at the semantic level of the architecture of the mosques. In the following, the variables were categorized in tables based on the concepts and the data were analyzed through inferential analysis. Then, the findings were coded based on the indices of each variable. On this basis, it became clear that the common patterns, the mental forms of the language sign system can be translated into the physical forms of the architecture system through representation. The respondent also reads or interprets based on a picture or a represented form when confronting the representation. The research findings indicate that readings are based on the collective language and interpretations are based on the individual’s personal language. In the meantime, the cultural, historical, and ethnic contexts, as well as the role of mass media are of high prominence.

What is called the problems of Tehran metropolis now a days, is deep- rooted in the policies ofurban planning in our country. Since not far past up to now, immigration from all over the country to Tehran, irregular growth of urban population, inconsistency with urban infrastructure development, environmental pollution and low quality of living areas, erosion of self -growing fabric in most areas which get erosion very quickly due to not being benefited from minimum constructional standards, service and urban infected organ are all those problems that a city such as Tehran is confronted with. These cases caused that the greatest growth center of the country loses its capability of attracting the possibilities and parameters needed for efficient development and due to heavy pressure imposed by other towns and villages, this city is now suffering from serious problems which only by allocating extra budgets and additional funds, may be temporarily decreased. The topics which will be discussed in this article are those problems arisen from immediate neighborhood of two heterogeneous fabrics which have not been properly paid attentions to. So it has been tried in this article to address the heterogeneity in Tehran, caused by economic and social problems. In this article different aspects of the issue from urbanization viewpoint with analytical approaches and the existed challenges have been addressed.

The problem which has been the focus of city constructors and architectures since the beginning of citizenship life is the issue of the nature of environmental quality. This study, with a review of explaining paradigms of environmental quality and by reliance on basic works, has assumed the question of nature of environmental quality an interdisciplinary concept (civic construction, sociology, psychology) and is in seek of explaining perceptive quality factors from citizens' perspective. Since the nature of this study is multidimensional and understanding of its different aspects and answering of its relevant questions bounds researcher both to test present theories and to understand mental world of his or her subjects, therefore, synthetic approach has been applied for methodology of it. It should be mentioned that Delphi method has been applied so as to obtain different indices and factors of the study. To determine the unit of sampling, multiple-stage clustering sampling method has been used in a way that between 22 regions of Tehran municipality, based on their development, first 6 regions were selected and in the next stage all the local states of those 6 regions were listed and then six local states were randomly selected. Size of the sample of this study is 200 persons. The results show that most of the perceptive factors derived from qualitative section of the research conform to factors derived from quantitative section and questionnaire. In other words factors derived from qualitative section are the same as those derived from quantitative factors. The significant point to notice in this section is that some of the derived factors from this section couldn’t be categorized by previous theories but rather they belong to the research community of this study (i.e. local states of Tehran). Thus we can state that the total perceptive criteria of environmental quality of these local states are as follows: legibility, place atmosphere, permeability, peace, tranquility, liveliness, sensational rapture, time sense, civil justice, security, human standard, sociability.