From Style to Identity in Architecture

Question about identity for four decades has been a challenging topic between people in our country. Architecture has inherent, dynamic, and gradual features which is called identity despite regional and climatic differences which have had great influence on its form. Its terminology in mystical interpretation regards God the origin of the identity. In other definitions, human and her/his beliefs, that are the starting point and where a building is constructed or utilized or evaluated by her / him, and other distinctive components which distinguishes it from other types of buildings and also its similarities with its own items, have been taken into consideration. The meaning of the totality that previously from Malekolshoareye Bahar’s point of view had been divided into inside and outside of the human under the name of style has been replaced with “architecture fashion” in recent centuries due to the developments in the world and human being and in the circle of fading tastes and creativity of architects, it has been imprisoned and been miles away from its traditional meaning. Distinctive features of the architectural phenomenon, except human and her/his beliefs include time and place. This essay, in addition to surveying the author and user human status of architecture and the effect of his/her ideas and beliefs in it, deals with place from view points of phenomenological and environmental psychology theorists and its intertwined relationship with human and the effect of place memory, the place where many scholars consider its loss as the loss of human and the architecture identity. Also time component is surveyed not merely in the conventional framework and focused on the past and related to the future but as a field in which life is realized. Since human activities become meaningful during the time and in place, these activities create individual or collective memories in the human mind during the time. By repeatedly referring to them, collective memories which are the elements of human identity are visualized. Social identity and collective memory are the ones that when a person is in a place she/he feels that the place is different from other places. According to the essay concepts identity cannot be a rigid affair and in the course of time it is transformed with human and her/his beliefs. By definition, identity has features which connect us to our past origin and roots like the thread used inside sugar candy to join crystals together, but time based on current requirements forms different crystals around it, including our commonality with the world architecture. What is the concept of architectural style and identity from past to present? Why and how has the concept of identity changed? What and how are the effective features in architecture identity discussion? These are the questions our essay goes on to find an answer for. Creating a suitable intellectual framework for identity concept is the goal of the essay and its search system is qualitative and besides analyzing and interpreting data meanings, it also seeks for multiple factors effective on identity phenomenon.