The World of World Architecture: A Qualitative Content Analysis of World Architecture Tests in Iranian Master of Architecture Entrance Exams from 2002 to 2021

In the past decades, under the influence of Postcolonial theories and their critiques on the Eurocentrism prevalent in architectural history, the curriculum and textbooks of architectural history survey courses have changed in some European and North American countries. The purpose of these changes is decolonizing the curriculum to achieve a more balanced representation of global architectural history. However, in Iran, these kinds of revising curriculum are not observable. Thus, it raises the question of: is there a necessity to make amendments in the “world architecture” course in Iranian architectural education system? To answer that, one needs to clarify whether the “world architecture” course in Iran is also “Eurocentric”, or it has its unique characteristics. The world of world architecture course is a constructed object, rather than it being ahistorical, universal, and natural. Nevertheless, it is not clear what this world is and what it has to do with our past and our present problems. To understand this constructed world and our place in it, we need to map its conceptual geography. One way of recognizing the constructed “world” is to analyze the texts that make it visible. Since the questions of “world architecture” in the university entrance exams are good representatives of the dominant discourse of the curriculum planning and teaching of this course, the authors have conducted a qualitative content analysis of the tests related to this subject in centralized entrance exams for the Master of Architecture (M.Arch.) programs from 2002 to 2021. The aim of this research is to shed light on the ways of the world-making in the questions of “world architecture”. To this end, we coded 165 tests in Atlas.ti software and extracted the main constitutive categories of world architecture from them. Then, we developed a coding framework and analyzed the relations of the emerged categories with each other. To conclude, the constructed “world” in world architecture tests belong to the European ‘man’, whose cultural and geographical canon is Italy and the city of Rome and the Renaissance and Baroque periods are most significant historical periods for him. From all monuments of all times in the world, the constructions related to Christianity —like churches, baptisteries, abbeys, and monasteries— have an exceptional importance. In other words, the analysis of the tests reveals that the Eurocentric approach to world-making is dominant in the discourse of world architecture in the Iranian education system. This Eurocentric world not only dominates, but also fails to establish a meaningful connection with its “Others” in the Global South. In this way of world-making, the history of non-European, their constructions, their periodization, and architectural styles are placed in a lower position than those of Europeans and are considered just a prelude to the history of European architectural achievements.