Investigating Kerman's Vernacular Landscape with an Emphasis on Rural Landscapes as an Endangered Heritage

Today, it is important to pay attention to the rural landscape as a rich context consisting of cognitive and identity components. In landscape study, recognizing the nature and spatial values are important. Especially when these values are in danger of structural changes. The rural landscape is a set of conceptual infrastructures whose combinations as components of a system crystallize the identity and culture of the village. This will contribute to the legibility of the village. But what has emerged today as a rural landscape is the result of a naïve view that has overlooked what a village is. This has resulted in the negligence of why we should preserve the village and highlights the necessity of this issue. Due to climatic, cultural, and identity diversity, Kerman’s villages reflect different perspectives of the rural community of this province. These perspectives have changed the structure of villages, especially after modernization and improvement attempts were done after the earthquakes of recent decades. The result has disrupted the rural system at the micro and macro levels, and we can see this disruption in the native landscape of Kerman. We collected data for this study through a bibliographical research method and field observations during a trip to Kerman province and visiting its villages. This study is based on the assumption that several factors have played a role in changing the rural landscape and have accelerated the process of changes. To this purpose, we examined the different concepts of the village, and then we presented the factors that change the rural structure by identifying the rural landscape and its components.