The manifestations of architectural flexibility in rural residences (A case study of Tazareh village in Damghan, Iran)

The concept of flexibility has been considered in Iranian rural residences since the past. However, contemporary socio-economic changes in the structural have lead to extensive evolutions within the architectural pattern of rural houses; such that it seems the concept of flexibility attracts less and less attention in the present day. Meanwhile, the old rural residence architecture has a number of valuable characteristics and standards regarding the flexibility. Hence, the present study aims to examine the manifestations of architectural flexibility within rural residences. This is an applied research in terms of purpose and a descriptive analytic study in terms of methodology. The main manifestations of flexibility (diversity, adaptability, changeability) are identified through examination of the library resources regarding architectural flexibility; then those manifestations were analyzed and compared within six characteristics patterns in Tazareh village throughout the field studies. This study suggests that all the residential building patterns are flexible in the Tazareh village and in all the micro-spaces of these patterns, there is a manifestation of flexibility, while a higher level of architectural flexibility exists in the plans with higher numbers of yards, floors, porches and entrances. As our results suggest, planning for the elements such as multiple yards next to the building mass or multiple masses next to the yard, various entrances and floors (two storey houses) that allows for division of the building between more than one households or various applications are amongst the most effective factors of a flexible design in rural residences. Therefore, the factor of “changeability” in flexibility is the main design factor in rural houses.