Tradition to modernization: Privacy and social sustainability in Iranian architecture and urban design

Privacy is interwoven with the Iranian culture as the majority of people have introverted personalities. This inclination of society towards maintaining high levels of privacy is reflected in the architecture and formation of traditional houses and cities. Compared to the present time, it is demonstrated that this desire in keeping the privacy not only reduced the social interactions but also it is relatively higher. However, concurrency of the urgent need for affordable housing due to sudden population growth and imitation and implementation of western architecture in Iran, brought about the elimination of traditional hierarchy of spaces and spatial configuration which was developed during millenniums. However, the traditional culture was not able to change with the same velocity of the swift modernization transformations and the privacy needs of residents were not fulfilled in contemporary designs. As a result, the sense of privacy, belongings, and convenience that was achieved by the means of transitional spaces (such as semi-public and semi-private) were lost by their disappearance. Therefore, this study aims to unravel the key characteristics of these transitional spaces and the key role they played in traditional architecture and environmental psychology. Afterward, this study suggests that to reach social sustainability and interactions, the concept of space hierarchies in traditional neighborhoods must be revived in contemporary residential buildings. Moreover, residential buildings must be looked at as shrunken neighborhoods of the past and in that way contemporized solutions could be presented to resolve lack of privacy and social interaction problems in mass constructed residential buildings. In this regard, semi-public spaces with specific applications could be considered in residential buildings to increase interactions of the same building. In addition, carefully arranged spaces on each level of the towers could play the role of semi-private spaces in previous neighborhoods. This study hopes that with the its important suggestions for developing the shrunken neighborhoods of residential buildings, pave the way for sustainable society by comprehending the importance of privacy

کلیدواژه ها:

Privacy ، social sustainability ، residential buildings