Emergence of Iranian Architectural Field in Early Modern Iran: Vartan Havanesian and his Modernist Perspective, Notes on Sociology of Architecture

Iranian architecture, concurrent with a wide multi-dimensional transformation in different aspects of Iranian culture, was needed to be rearranged -in the beginning of the contemporary Persian century- especially after decadence in Iranian architectural tradition. The article is guided by Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory and Ervin Panofsky’s sociology of architecture. Relying upon this theoretical basis, the research questions are asked to design the structure of Iranian architectural field then to compare it analytically with other cultural fields. Graduated from French academic system, Vartan Havanesian, came to establish specialized associations and journals besides a modified theoretical manifest and a refashioned technical glossary. In doing so, his cultural, social, economic, and symbolic capitals helped him achieve a first portrait status inside the field of architecture. Considering the intrinsic traits of architecture and its moderate position between Art and ordered job, capital distribution rules of the field are absolutely different from other cultural fields. While trying to scrutinize traits of the Iranian architectural field and the structural position of Vartan inside the field based on Bourdieu’s field theory, the article attempts to depict essential differentness of architectural field through a comparison among other cultural fields, such as poem, novel, drama, and painting.