فهرست مطالب noushin ghorbani

The first Pahlavi Era coincided with many changes and developments that led to the advent of modern Iran. Reza Shah tried to institutionalise power in society based on a new political rationality. To do so, he needed obedient and disciplined citizens to achieve sovereignty. According to Foucault, the famous French philosopher, the modern form of power differs from its traditional. He believes that modern power has tacitly influenced all society layers, and controlled the behaviour of large populations by bringing discipline. In this case, Foucault points to some techniques that create discipline in the space. The question here is how architectural space played a vital role in implementing power in the first Pahlavi era from the Foucauldian perspective of power theory. The extant study aimed at matching the spatial configuration of Tabriz Municipality Building with Foucault's spatial discipline techniques. The research was conducted based on the descriptive-analytical method, and data analysis was done through Depthmap software. According to results obtained from VGA indices (including visual integration, visual control, entropy, coherence, and depth), the location of the main entrance of the building, spatial articulation, settings of walls, the arrangement of rooms along narrow corridors, and transparent room doors were consistent with disciplinary techniques introduced by Foucault. The features mentioned above could play a significant role in visual and physical control of the interiors of a building, as well as creating a spatial discipline. The results pointed to a pattern that can be used in the design of public buildings by city managers.

In different historical eras, architecture has illustrated some concepts based on their times through the space and content conveying political, cultural, and historical implications to the audience. According to Michel Foucault’s theory, in pursuit of the political goals of government, the whole structure of society is transformed under the shadow of dominant discourses and integrated to achieve the political power of the rulers. The architecture has also been affected. Various political orientations appeared in architecture during the First Pahlavi era when Iran transited from tradition to modernity. It is essential to examine how architecture follows these changes and how to responses it by understanding the modern government in Iran. This study aims to investigate architecture as an apparatus for the government system and examine the effect of rationality and governmental techniques of First Pahlavi on Foucault’s state anatomy. This is a qualitative study with a discourse approach and content analysis, and its findings are derived from library sources and field observations. In this research, the Pahlavi government was investigated based on Foucault’s Theory, and then the manifestation of the First Pahlavi era's discourses was examined. The mentioned discourses included traditionalism, archaism, militarism, and modernism or modernity in the architecture of educational, administrative, and service uses in Tabriz remained from the first Pahlavi era. According to the results of this study, the discourses that appeared in the Pahlavi era have been a part of the regime's ideology to achieve its goals, such as dominance over the society, authoritarianism, identity, national integrity, and modernity. These discourses have appeared in the architecture inspired by the dictator neoclassic architecture, imitating the West, advent of new uses for modernization of work system, modern spatial organization, the façades inspired by the ancient architecture, placement of public building around the square emphasizing centralism and objectivism.

Changes in the building space organization in the first Pahlavi era in public buildings in Tabriz, Iran are evident. The question is whether it is possible to study the hidden pattern in modern architectural structures from the perspective of sociological principles and use it as a fixed pattern in architecture and control the people in the building behaviorally? In this regard, Michael Foucault, who relates space to the functional needs of power, introduces disciplinary techniques that lead to the control of people in the space. The goal of this study is to compare Michael Foucault’s disciplinary techniques such as space functionality, row organization, gridding, spatial separation and visibility (Panopticon), which lead to enhanced performance, activity control, removal of scattered circulation and space wastage, spatial dominance and individual behavior control, in three case studies that include a leather factory, a municipality building and a boys' training college in Tabriz in the first Pahlavi era. This study is qualitative and done by analyzing case studies and the findings are the result of library resources, and field observations. The results of this study show that the items such as cellular structure of the space, customization of places, elimination of scattered circulation by a certain and limited circulation design, elimination of space wastage by functional design of the space and the proportionality of the space with the body have been employed in the case studies.