The Role of the " Sense of Place" Concept in Improving Architectural Conservation Quality

Although, subjective aspects of architectural spaces were taken into consideration by scientific circles during last few decades and after the development of environmental sciences, current experiences in the field of maintaining architectural heritage in Iran shows the little attention paid to this aspect, against the focus given to the structure and function in related planning. The "sense of place" concept, as one of environmental science’s meanings, has helped specialists and designers to identify subjective characteristics of natural and built spaces. This paper believes that by considering the "sense of place" notion, spatial aspects of conservation can be recognized and can form practical strategies to establish a comprehensive connection between space and human beings. Due to the fact that the "sense of place" shapes the relation between human and space by introducing the meanings of space, it will be a proper basis for cognition of the meanings of heritage spaces and explanation of an appropriate attitude towards protective measures. According to this view, the hypothesis are; A. Semantic preservation is the main basis of architectural conservation, B. Paying attention to the "sense of place" is an important part of semantic protection and C. Conservation that is based on the "sense of place" explains the pattern of physical and functional conservation. Studying the relation between architectural conservation and the "sense of place" shows that recognizing the "sense of place" in heritage spaces, results in understanding their structure and character, and thus leads the architectural protection towards policies containing physical and functional measures which finally results in the preservation of people’s sense of belonging to those spaces. This research is done by relying on analytical and descriptive methods and using interpretation and classification of library resources.