Typo-morphological Analysis of the Metamorphic Course of the Lar Old City’s Historical Urban Fabric Blocks

Cities undergo a gradual transformation over time, and this is a time-based process. If the basic definition of the urban fabric is considered a criterion for including the building blocks of the city, beyond the issues related to architectural style and historical background, the arrangement and composition of blocks have a significant impact on the development of the fabric. In some cases, this combination gives the texture so much that it can make a difference. The shape of each city can be analyzed not only in terms of space but also in time, so to emphasize the relationship between the elements and how they communicate and interact over time; they can be examined in a typo-morphological framework. This approach can include a hierarchy of scales, development cycles, and a set of target objects, or the ‘block types’ and areas in successive historical maps. Obviously, because of the noticeable functional differences, it is futile to expect contemporary cities to be physically the same as old ones. Still, it is likely that in the current situation and by considering the functions and physical conditions of contemporary cities, it will be conceivable that physical actions lead to a logical relationship between the old and new, in a way that preserves the city’s integrity and identity. In this regard, this research tries to answer the study’s central question - how to determine the morphological types of urban texture elements with emphasis on urban blocks in a particular area and the process of change of each element. This study aims to present a morphological model of urban blocks as one of the main elements of urban development. The case study of the old city of Lar is one of the examples that have been less studied so far, and a comprehensive survey of the historic fabric and its developments has not been fulfilled. In addition to having a coherent structure of interconnected neighborhoods, old Lar has a fabric in which a pure sample of the architecture of hot and arid regions of Iran, intertwined with one another, formed blocks that, in terms of composition, It is a unique case of the evolution of the physical structure amid Iran’s historic cities. In addition, the 1960 earthquake caused sudden changes in parts of the urban fabric, and the resulting damage destroyed parts of the physical structure. Thus, the investigation of the case of the old Lar’s historic fabric, as a suitable representative of the fabrics in which both the course of historical development and the effects of natural disasters and subsequent intrusions and seizures affect urban blocks, has been considered in this research. In this regard, after extracting the types and clustering them using the basic algorithm of grouping analysis based on the ‘k-means clustering’ method, the course of changes of each of them has been investigated. As a result, with a descriptive-analytical approach and methodological framework, while re-reading the historical-deliberate process of historical fabric’s blocks metamorphosis from a combined morphological process perspective in the historic fabric of the old city of Lar, a model for the development and continuity of original morphological features has been developed.