مجله منظر
پیاپی 40 (پاییز 1396)

The advent of Islam in Iran and other parts of the world was advocated by notions such as human equality, freedom of opinion, etc., which was highly accepted and welcomed by different suppressed classes of society in that era. Through the practice of Islamic ideology, Muslim artists transformed the art and architecture tremendously, mostly in the fields of language, expression, principles, attributes, and association of these concepts to Quran, the principles of Islam and the traditions of the Prophet. The most significant concept that was introduced after the advent of Islam was the concept of paradise which led to an evolutional transformation in gardening.
According to Islamic trainings, the plants are highly valued. Paradise in Quran is described as a garden covered with dense vegetation promised to the righteous people. This concept (paradise) led to a considerable transformation in Persian gardening after Islam. This paper aims at visualizing paradise in Persian garden and using symbols and signs to intensify the sense of place in the garden as replica of heavenly paradise. It is a descriptive-analytical research in which the information and data were collected using library resources.

The word ‘Landscape1’ is an ancient and widely used terminology which denotes different meanings in different school of thoughts. Even though over the course of time it has been emerged in different forms, it and all its associated forms of the word signify a single meaning. The history of Iranian linguistics and anthropology shows that people have been conscious of landscape and its conceptualization. Landscape in Persian language is equivalent to "Manzar". Landscape and its group of equivalent words in Iranian sources date back to early Islamic centuries. Attention to different layers of the meaning of the landscape and has led to Persian word coinage. Although all words apparently explain "a scene in front of an observer", they are differently conceptualized. There seems to be a hierarchy of meaning systems which begins with a neutral and non-moving image in front of a human being and ends with a dynamic, human-dependent image. The emergence of Iranian gardens since the first millennium BC, as landscape artifacts reflecting the interpretation of the nature, shows that landscape has received attention in an old and rich culture of Iran. This article reviews the pertinent literature of the word landscape in Persian language and shows how it is represented in Iranian civilization.

Today, Shopping centers are considered as significant urban amenities whose most important feature is to provide a "place" that are used for production purpose in some societies and with consumption purpose in some others. A deep scrutiny in the history of these shopping centers reveals their cultural origins of their formation during modernity; a course that configured different segments of urban life in isolation. The first shopping centers were built in suburban areas which attracted citizens not only for leisure and shopping purposes, but also for dwelling in suburbs. Gradually, with the advent technology, the second generation of these buildings acquired their own style of architecture and became design subjects for architects.
As a result of suburbanization, the government and the urban managers were made to locate the third generation of these shopping centers into central city districts. This solution aimed at solving the problems of suburbanization with certain mechanisms; and consequently the shopping centers were relocated in central parts of the cities. However, with their modernist origins, the shopping centers were influenced by technological advancements, and influenced their surroundings at the same time. These centers are criticized due to distortion of local businesses, the abolishment of indigenous identities and various subcultures as a result of modernity.
Although the advancement and development of shopping centers are considered as a process of globalization in the international community, it should be noted that commercial centers did not initiate the international business in the world. Trading has been long practiced in big urban markets, the routes of international convoys and chain stores, from ancient Greece and Middle East to the modern era. Today, commercial centers are considered as important means of urbanization due to their various social and cultural aspects. The transformation of the public shopping area into a closed private space, the creation of social and cultural events, the formation of social norms and the configuration of modernism symbol are the various aspects of these centers. Hence, it should be noted that not only are shopping centers a part of urban landscape, but also they configure urban landscape; presenting a new style of architecture, changing the consumption and society norms and becoming an integral amenity of the city.

Throughout history, urban space has functioned as a meeting place on many levels for city dwellers. People met, exchanged news, made deals, and arranged marriages- street artists entertained and goods were offered for sale. People attended Large and small city events. Processions were held, power was manifested, parties and punishments held publicly - everything was carried out in full public view. The city was the meeting place. But today these social places are decreasing and instead new social spaces like mega shopping malls are being constructed in cities, thus making sure these spaces work properly to attract human interactions is very important. The aim of this article is to introduce new methods to understand and model human (agents) behavior and co-presence patterns.
Unfortunately, at the moment there are no good methods used in Iran to understand and predict co-presence patterns in public spaces, as a result in this article two methods, space syntax and mobile cellular data were examined based on agent based modeling theory and their role in understanding patterns of co-presence was reviewed. Then the case study of Kourosh shopping mall was analyzed through these methods. The results show that the southern part of the complex has more capabilities for social gatherings and events and also that the peak of human traffic in a day in this complex is 7 PM., the most crowded days of the week are Thursdays and Fridays and that the first and last days of the month are actually the busiest days of the complex. In the end it was concluded that these methods can shed light upon our decision making process to have better quality of life with improving new social spaces.

With the rapid growth of cities, the lack of efficient urban management, and the volume of construction that generally takes place without considering comprehensive plans and urban landscapes and expenses which goes to the town hall, our cities have been transformed into massive spaces that have been completely overlooked in terms of mass-space proportion. On the other hand, the disappearance of public spaces and lapses, which were a place for collective experience and socialization practices, and even the experience of a place, changed the face and the essence of the city into spaces without any quality and merely a physical and spiritless shell. This excessive expansion, which mandates consumerism and lofty demand, led the shopping centers to morph toward malls and mega malls, an area which has always been a place for the critique of urban area researchers and critics of modern architecture. The main objective of this research is to review these spaces from a new perspective. How to use the potentials of these new spaces? And whether malls can contribute to the formation of new kinds of public spaces? Although the reviews attributed to these spaces can be considered in diverse areas and the challenges posed can be studied, it seems that, in spite of the theories about the malls and the need to eliminate or marginalize these spaces in the city, in the last decade, we are faced with a kind of transformation in The function and even the concept of such spaces for the new generation of Iranian urbanites. After field surveys and the classification of observations by a descriptive and analytical method on four major commercial malls in Tehran, it was concluded that, these spaces, in addition to the spatial function and the role played in meeting the needs of a region, are transformed into A club or meeting circle, and perform as a place for social gatherings in the urban space of Tehran.

Support spaces in shopping centers (playgrounds, food court and the like) were first created to serve the booming of the business in such centers. But, they gradually were turned to direct destinations for human activities meaning that the visitors, having no intention to buy, spend some of their leisure time in these shopping centers for such purposes as amusement and social interaction and so on and, in fact, a sort of novel public space is formed in the business centers. It seems that the main reason why these places have been transformed is their livability. Thus, the present study’s primary hypothesis is that “the newly-formed public support spaces are lively and this livability causes functional shifting of these spaces from dependency on active spaces to semi-public urban spaces”. The present study aims to identify, within the format of a conceptual model, the factors contributing to livability in the support spaces of the business centers. The present study is a qualitative survey and, in line with this, after performing documentary research and reviewing the relevant experiences, the related concepts were, in the first step, extracted in the form of livability aspects and variables; then, in a second step, in the survey study stage, five commercial blocks, as examples of more successful complexes in terms of livability and attraction of the visitors, not business clients, to spend their leisure time in their support spaces were selected according to the geographical scattering diversity in Tehran. Next, observations and deep interviews were carried out for each of the case samples to extract the aforementioned variables giving rise to support spaces’ livability. The results of the study indicated that there are two major branches for the livability of the support urban spaces in the modern commercial buildings: convenience and semi-public nature of them. Thus, the collection of the effective indicators was offered within the format of a conceptual model to assess livability of the modern commercial blocks’ support spaces. The study hypothesis was approved according to a qualitative analysis undertaken in the survey research based on the functional independence of such spaces in modern commercial buildings. Finally, the questions raised herein were answered and suggestions were made regarding the methods of enhancing livability of the support spaces in such public spaces.