Explaining the Concept of Authenticity in Architecture with Emphasis on Henry Corbin's Views

After the entrance of modernity and its way of thinking to historical countries, some attempted to modernize all aspects of life and concepts. In these countries such as Iran, because modernity does not conjoin with cultural and intellectual movements, there is still a substantial contrast between modernists and traditionalists. Therefore, the will to achieve authenticity appears ubiquitously alongside thinkers in several fields like architecture. In the 21st century, authenticity is not a principal value for most experts but is often a concept to accentuate history and culture. But Iran, as a specific place which is not dominated by western modernity, had a dazzling past in written and tangible forms. Iranian distinguishable thought, which integrated Greek philosophy, Islamic theology and ancient Iranian wisdom, was developed by some masterful thinkers such as “Suhrawardi”. As these studies are deeply dependent on the philosophical view, it is critical to find an effective way of theorizing cultural specificities. In modern times, a French philosopher and Iranologist Henry Corbin brought Iranian thinkers and philosophers to the fore. This study investigates the notion of authenticity discussed by Corbin as well as his other concepts relevant to architecture. By employing the content analysis method, the relevant works of Corbin and some of his commentators have been analyzed and evaluated. Also, in order to develop a "conceptual framework of authenticity" the "descriptive-analytical" method is used. The central question of this article is how the notion of authenticity, especially in Iran, is explored and a consequent question is: what is the relation between architecture and Henry Corbin’s philosophy. In order to investigate and categorize the viewpoints related to the concept of authenticity, due to the connection between architecture, restoration and urban planning, sources related to authenticity in the aforementioned fields were included in the review. The review showed that almost all debates related to authenticity in Iran are direct translations of foreign works or indirect influence of their thoughts. This article seeks to find a suitable authenticity framework capable of reflecting and resonating with the history of Iranian thought and civilization, the body of this article has been divided into two parts: A) Issue of Authenticity in Corbin’s thought B) Art and Architecture in Carbon's thought. In the first part, by investigating the Corbin’s studies in Shahab Al-Din Suhrawardi and the School of Illumination and his reintroducing of eastern and Islamic philosophy, the article shows that it is “Alame Mesal” or “the world of ideas” which had the main role in Iranian creative thoughts. In the second part, the quotations that directly point at Art and Architecture have been discussed. In conclusion, this article shows that the disappearance of the Iranian worldview in the modern era has cleared the field for predominance of Occidental world. While the article does not investigate exact Corbin’s solutions to the authenticity problem, a brief discussion of Corbin’s works, as the basis of philosophical thinking, points us in the direction of a new, or perhaps old but forgotten, way of thinking about Iran and its architecture.