Persian Vernacular Buildings—Lessons on Resilient Design

This chapter highlights the significance of Iran’s rich architectural heritage in a changing world and climate. Iran’s vernacular architecture resulted from the gradual co-evolution of climates, buildings and many cultures over millennia that created some of the most sophisticated passive structures in the world, capable of keeping people not only thermally safe by comfortable but at best sensually delighted within their walls and gardens. As climates become more extreme around the world lessons from the traditional Iranian houses and technologies can provide important insights for today’s architects into how to create secure and durable shelters for the future, using their practices involving thermal mass, water, advanced natural ventilation systems and spatial arrangements. At the crossroads of routes from major civilisations to the East and West Persian buildings were enriched by exposure to the knowledge and craftsmen of passing dynasties who left in their wake a dazzling architectural legacy. First recorded in books by awed European travellers, the chapter touches on the antiquity of the settlements in Iran and the various viewpoints from which the buildings were originally recorded, as ancient monuments, works of art, backdrops to history, technologies—and more importantly—as sources for study on human practices and behaviours. Since the 1920 the recording of Persian vernacular has been undertaken through the efforts of visiting scholars and Iranian government agencies. Since the 1950s its study has moved more into the realm of academics and universities in Iran and abroad using new methods and tools to open new avenues of enquiry. From the depth of wisdom being accumulated by this and previous generations of scholars come new principles of resilient design that can teach the world much about thermally safer design in a heating world.