دکتر مهدی صادق احمدی

In research on vernacular architecture’s values, identifying architectural and construction patterns is increasingly attracting attention. It leads to documentation of the architectural heritage, which in turn helps in revitalisation and restoration planning. It renders one village as an ancient museum, and another as enjoying a dynamic life. Vernacular architecture is influenced by natural environment, as well as local culture and daily life. This research aims to study the patterns of spaces and events in a village to unveil its recurring features: a qualitative research which studies the architectural patterns in the historical village of Vaneshan, near Golpaygan, a town in Isfahan province. The data obtained through observations, library, interviews, and detailed surveys, is studied in a logical-analytic manner. To do so, the natural features affecting the formation of the village's domestic architecture is discussed, followed by the study of architectural elements of houses and the events related to each element.The results show that the desirability of nature has resulted in semi-open spaces: spaces corresponding to most daily activities and provide environmental comfort in different seasons. The yard plays a connecting role for other elements, significantly contributing informingpause and movement patterns. Porches play three different roles. The 'Kebas', the 'Khune nunva-e' (twotypes of kitchens), and the stableconsist of two separate spaces for cold and hot seasons. Normally, the first floor includes service spaces and the second floor is used for living. This functional division, creates more privacy on the second floor, and at the same time, provides suitable answers to heating requirements in liveable rooms in cold conditions.

The international conservation documents are one part of the most consequential achievements of human communitie's collaboration in recent 50 years. These documents are the abstract of international experiences as well as demonstrating the increase and evolution of communal knowledge and conception in conservation field. The expansion of new conceptually vocabulary, and also the entrance of novel meanings to the documents after the Venice charter, have caused the conservation doctrine to be improved and the more complicated heritage patterns such as rural heritage, to be considered. Mentioning some of these meanings has directly affected on the overall admission of some neglected aspects of village - as a dominant part of human heritage , and some others on presenting more elaborated and multidisciplinary attitude to it. The purpose of this essay is to discuss the effective concepts in the documents and to analyse how effective they would be on improving the necessity of rural values conservation.This paper is the result of analysing and studing about forthy documents extracted from 3 international organizations: UNESCO, ICOMOS and Council of Europe, hence limited to them.Library studies and investigation of the original texts have provided the necessary basic information for the essay.this study is considered to be categorized in qualitative researches, following a descriptive-analytic research strategy.This essay is exploring the appearence of seven meanings, having the most influence on the genesis and evolution of the concept of rural heritage: living heritage, quality of life, sustainability, cultural landscape, vernacular, intangable heritage and the spirit of the place.The following study reveals that each on of those meanings being recognized precisely, can illuminate widely the new aspects of rural heritage and lead to approximate the "rural heritage" to the total concept of "village".The overall analysis of this prosses Illuminate that the future vision of evolutionary concept of “rural heritage” will confront the challenge of multiplicity and adopting it with its ontological roots.

Considering the conservation and cultural heritage of the most significant achievements of human communities have been reflected in various international documents during the last fifty years. Examining these documents are critical given that they summarize international experiences and reflect the evolution of human knowledge and philosophies in the field of conservation in general and conservation of rural heritage in particular. As one of the human's precious assets, villages and their characteristics and elements have been constantly mentioned and discussed in the process of evolving these documents. These documents view village as an ancient phenomenon, which expresses harmony between human and nature for centuries Villages have been continually adjusted to human needs, their social and natural environment, and hence are worthy to be conserved in their entirety.
This paper relies on examining and analyzing around thirty international documents in the field of conservation. This examination focuses on the meanings and conceptions of villages and rural values. This study is specifically concentrated on documents from three international organizations: UNESCO, ICOMOS and Council of Europe, in four periods; starting from International charter for the conservation and restoration of monuments and sites (Venice Charter 1964 A.D.) to Pan-European charter of rural heritage: for a sustainable territorial development 2012 A.D. Research methods consist of document review and content analysis of the original texts, using a descriptive- analytic research strategy. The content analysis focused on comparing different definitions, values, strategies and other elements related to the principles of conservation in these documents and their evolution. The paper concluded that in these documents, the “rural heritage” is considered to be of importance as a “harmonious whole” and a “multidisciplinary base”. Furthermore, conservation approaches have shifted from restoration to integrated conservation through multidisciplinary strategies, while the challenge of integrating rural conservation and rural development persists in these documents. This study and further research in this area can result in establishing reliable principles and approaches for rural conservation.