سید احسان مسعود

Problem Statement: 

Through time, Kashan’s historical houses and lifestyle have had a reciprocal relationship. In contemporary times, however, lifestyles have changed very much; to the point of being forgotten. The Adaptive Reuse of some historical houses presents an opportunity to gain a better understanding of the lives that people once lead in them.

This study seeks to discover the characteristics of lifestyle in Kashan’s historical houses, as well as the extent to which tourists understand this lifestyle during their stay in historical houses retrofitted as hotels. What are the characteristics of the lifestyle in the historical houses of Kashan? To what extend do tourists understand this lifestyle during their stay in historical houses retrofitted as hotels? Gain a better understanding of traditional lifestyle components and analyze tourists’ understanding to better address shortcomings in future adaptive reuse projects are the research objectives.

The research methodology of this study is mixed qualitative-quantitative methods. First, the lifestyle in Kashan’s historical houses was analyzed through literature reviews and field studies, such as participatory observation and in-depth interviews. Next, after extracting and codifying the most repetitive components previously obtained, tourists’ perceptions of these components were examined through 102questionnaires in 8hotels.

The repetition of the expressed characteristics of interviewees from different socio-economic groups displays a dominant lifestyle across different cultural-economic groups in traditional society. Moreover, the extraction of lifestyle components in Kashan’s historical houses in three categories, namely cultural, social, and economic components, reveals the multidimensionality of this lifestyle. Despite their connection to physical spaces, tourists’ perception of this lifestyle’s nature, characteristics, and intangible features are fragmented and incomplete. While many lifestyle components manifest in customs and behaviors, furniture and appliances can play an important role in introducing a lifestyle when effectively integrated in experiences rather than being mere decoration.

Conservation and development are the significant challenges in the field of cultural heritage which exist in every conservation practice on any scales, including interior architecture. In this regard, the main challenge is that how much the interior architect has the right to interfere with the components of the interior in the process of reuse of the heritage. This article is intended to provide a functional answer to the concept of managing the change in the process of interior architecture redesign. Then the concept of value is studied. Because it is in fact the value which specifies what kind and amount of changes can be made to the interior architecture in the building and what changes should not be made. This reveals that the task of the interior architect, after determining the extent and modifications of the interior architecture based on the values of the building, is to manage the changes to maintain and enhance the meaning of building. To achieve this goal, the qualitative research method is selected. In the first step, with the strategy of logical argumentation and content analysis technique, the main documents and theories are analyzed in the subject of value; in the second step, a theoretical framework for recognizing the values of a building on the scale of interior architecture is suggested that has the potential to be used in the evaluation of the redesigns.Accordingly, the values of a building in eight types are "Age", "symbolic", "narrative", "spiritual-religious", "Aesthetic", "spatial characteristics", "activity - Use," " Evidential" and space The interior architecture was described in three categories of "fixed-Feature Space", "Semi-fixed Feature Space " and "Informal Space". The purpose of this theoretical framework was to provide the values and spaces of interior architecture with the shortest path to the design language, and, as far as possible, the path to various interpretations. In addition to helping the design team to recognize values, this provides a framework for evaluating changes in user experience in terms of success rate in maintaining and improving the values of the building on the scale of interior architecture. On this basis, we can evaluate the approach to them in terms of the weight of each of the values. In the following, the proposed framework was evaluated in a case study in the Garden of the Qasr Prison Museum by qualitative method.The evaluation of the case study of this paper showed that with the help of this theoretical framework it is possible to take into account all the values of the work and to reveal how much they have been considered and promoted to each other. On the other hand, it is possible to examine all the spatial capacities of the manifestation of values. The study also revealed that the focus on Informal Space, including human activities and relationships, as part of the interior architecture of the project, has remained largely neglected. The application of this theoretical framework will assist in the process of regeneration of the interior architecture of the reuse of valuable monuments.