Assessing the Methodology of Design-by-Analogy with Historical Elements in Iranian' Contemporary Architecture

In the middle of the Qajar period, history intervened in education and design. This intervention was introduced into the architectural literature using metaphor, allegory, and analogy, and in the first and second Pahlavi eras, Iranian architects had applied «history» for designing collective buildings and in various ways. In this period's architect works, this perceptible intervention, which consciously or unconsciously was influenced by various objective and subjective Iranian and Western (imported) architectures effects, despite the appearance or taste differences, had a kind of design strategy called «analogy and metaphor». Accordingly, the present study seeks to answer the following question: Despite private and governmental employers' different mental tendencies, various goals, and tastes, what methods did the architects of the Pahlavi period applied to analogize history?  The present study is an interpretive-historical study carried out using logical reasoning and a case study. Considering the common categories of historical building measurement in this period's architecture and using the documents and reports related to this period, the present study tries to analyze and examine the historical analogy methods in each period by selecting samples representing the criteria of each category. Therefore, the present study aims to recognize and categorize the historical analogy methods in the first and second Pahlavi periods' architecture. In terms of the architectural design methodology, traditionalist architecture, with apparent dependence on mental qualities and the geometry hidden in Iranian architectural buildings, has used metaphor, while the neoclassical and archaist Pahlavi architecture has used iconography. Using the technical knowledge enhanced in the 1970s and 1980s in the rationalist and modernist Iranian neoclassical architecture' literature has led to an empiricist analogical design in which history has emerged in its design process secretly and freely.