Promotion of the Group of Art and Architecture to the Faculty of Art and Architecture/Masjedsoleyman; The Birthplace of Modern Housing in Iran/ Much of Our Knowledge about Earthquakes is Based on Guesswork

The researchers at the first international conference on Architecture, New Technologies and Construction Management, which was held over two days by Khatam University in Tehran, presented the latest findings about the role of new technologies in the developments in the field of art and architecture.

According to the website of Khatam University, the first international conference on architecture, new technologies and construction management was organized by the scientific association of the Faculty of Art and Architecture of Khatam University and with the presence of specialists and enthusiasts in this field on Wednesday and Thursday, November 15 and 16, 2023 at Khatam University, Tehran, Iran.

Promotion of the Art and Architecture group to the faculty of Art and Architecture

Amir Faraji, a faculty member of the Art and Architecture group of Khatam University and the scientific secretary of the conference, in the opening ceremony of this event, referred to the history of the establishment of this group in 2016 under the management of Dr. Simon Ayvazian, the full professor of architecture of Khatam University and announced the transformation of this group into a faculty and said: “This significant transformation will be officially announced in the coming days.”

He also added: “The group of Art and Architecture started with 4 majors and now this number has increased to five. Our doctoral program started in 2019 and we started accepting undergraduate students 5 years ago.”

This faculty member of the group of Art and Architecture of Khatam University continued: “484 students have been accepted since the beginning of the activity of this group, of which 385 have graduated so far. The student-to-professor ratio in our group is 9.2, which is not far from the world average, which is 15.”

After explaining the structure of the group of Art and Architecture of Khatam University, Faraji pointed out the characteristics of the construction industry and reminded: “The construction industry is one of the most resistant industries to changes in the field of new technologies, and therefore the role of universities in its transformation can be very vital.”

At the same time, he emphasized the significant role of the construction industry in the economy of each country and said: “The share of the construction industry in the GDP of each country is about 7-12% and 15% of the workforce of each country is directly and indirectly engaged in this industry, 70% of which are related to the private sector.”

This faculty member of Khatam University ended his speech by stating: “The construction industry, which plays an important role in the gross national product of any country, is very prone to benefit from new technologies.”

​The International Architecture Conference has paid attention to the issue of sustainability

Further, Razavi, the Research Director of Khatam University, in a speech, after referring to the low share of research and development in the country's GDP, said: “This issue is ongoing in the field of construction industry and the share of research and development in this industry is also low.”

He also added: “Research in the university system is important by itself, but how much of the results of these research studies are utilized in the industry is another issue as well.”

The research director of Khatam University referred to the fact that the international conference of architecture has paid attention to the issue of sustainability and said: “According to scientific estimates, 40% of energy consumption occurs in the building sector, and the building materials used in a building are among the factors influencing energy consumption. It is worth mentioning that the further we have gone, the more research has been done in the field of sustainability and energy consumption.”

Afterwards, Simon Ayvazian, the full professor of architecture at Khatam University, said: “Architecture is related to many arts, primarily literature, music, cinema, painting, and sculpture, and has either influenced them or been influenced by them from past till now.”

Next, Anoush Jahanshahi, a string player, and Hoshang Mehrardalan, an architect and university lecturer, in an artistic performance and a combination of playing string instruments and painting, displayed the connection between these two fields, which was created with architectural thread.

Modern housing first happened in Masjedsoleyman

Following the programs of the conference of architecture, new technologies and construction management, Mehran Dashti, the assistant professor of the architecture group of Khatam University, presented an article titled "Tradition, Modernity and Housing of the Masjedsoleyman" to present the results of a research he had done years ago focusing on the architectural condition of the city of Masjedsoleyman.

He said: “Westerners have learned a lot from Iranian architecture and have understood and used it in their own architectures. However, it is interesting that the person who discovered our traditional architecture was a Westerner named Roland Rainer. At the same time, the fact that the architecture of Masjedsoleyman is a western architecture and we don't know anything about it is interesting.”

Dashti talked about the reason he chose Masjedsoleyman as the subject of his research in the field of architecture and said: “When I was in Germany, I wanted to choose my doctoral thesis and after thinking more, I became interested in Iranian architecture. The big question that came to me was why this architecture, which was so beautiful, was destroyed.”

He added: “In my doctoral thesis, I started the research on western housing in Iran and as an example, I examined 5 examples of western housing in Tehran; University of Tehran neighborhood, Chaharsad Dastgah, Narmak, Shahrara and Ekbatan. On the contrary to predictions and imaginations, modern housing did not happen for the first time in Tehran, but in Masjedsoleyman. I published the results of that research in the book ‘The Origin of the Western Housing Sector in Iran’.”

According to this faculty member of the group of Art and Architecture of Khatam University, the important parts of traditional architecture include the main idea, closed spaces, open and semi-open spaces, and implementation of details. These items can be seen in metal and industrial windows, and metal roofs.”

Stating that Western architecture is about 70% away from traditional architecture, Dashti said: “Those houses (in Masjedsoleyman) were built only by the British, and considering the fact that about 100 years have passed since the construction of the houses of Masjedsoleyman, has the ratio of 70 to 30 in western architecture changed to a more traditional one?”

At the end of the first day of the conference of architecture, new technologies and construction engineering, some selected articles were presented, among which the following articles can be mentioned:

native architectural solutions; An answer for affordable housing, cold and mountainous villages (Sepideh Babazadeh Salut), life cycle assessment of changes in green buildings (Mahsa Goudarzi and Zahra Mirrahimi), social sustainability of place (Marjan Eshaghi), effects of construction information modeling in order to improve management Knowledge (Samaneh Karami) and the role of artificial intelligence in sustainable urban development (Mirzaeipour).

All areas of art are subject to imagination

The conference on architecture, new technologies and construction engineering continued on the second day (Thursday, November 16) with the holding of educational workshops and scientific panels and the presentation of the latest findings on the topic under discussion. In the first part, a meeting on the topic of "The place of architecture in the wisdom of Iranian-Islamic art" with the participation and speech of Esmail Bani Ardalan, a faculty member of the faculty of Theoretical Sciences and Higher Studies of Art, Mahmoud Arzhmand, a faculty member of the Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning of the University of Art, and Houshang Foroughmand Arabi, a member of Iran's Distinguished Architecture Association was held.

In his speech, Bani Ardalan first pointed out the connection between art and reality and imagination and said: “All areas of art are dependent on the power of imagination. According to Aristotle, the beginning of the course of art starts from the tangible world and the external world, and although imagination and art are together, Aristotle does not consider the combination of the two as imagination.”

He added: “However, Kant believed that the meaning of fantasy and the meaning of science are different. For Kant, it is ‘I’ who finds the world in relation to ‘my ego’. The world of our architecture today is this world, while in architecture, a world beyond this world must be imagined. Although in the past, our architecture was based on Futuwwa, but it is no longer valid at present.”

In the following, Mohammad Arzhmand, in his remarks about the Futuwwa, listed them as the practical rituals of the owners of trades and professions in the past and said: “Many of the teachings that were expressed in the past trades, referred to the people who were employed in them, not the trades themselves. The audience of Futuwwa letters have also been urban professionals, in the sense that it is in the city that professions and industries are formed.”

He added: “Futuwwastarted from the fourth and fifth centuries and continued until the Qajar period. They have had a shape; from the very beginning, and can be translated as chivalry.”

According to traditionalists, the images of the past are the best type to represent the sacred art

Houshang Foroughmand Arabi, a member of Iran's Distinguished Architecture Association, referred to traditionalists' views on ancient and new architecture and the fact that traditionalists believe that the forms that existed in the past are the best type for representing sacred art. One of the most influential people in this field is Heidegger, who, while paying attention to the past, was looking towards the future.”

He also described Henry Carbone as a philosopher who accepts modernism and is not anti-modern, but does not consider the past as a thing of the past, and said: “Carbone was a Heideggerian, but like Sartre and other Agrarianists, he did not have their thoughts. When he came to Iran for the first time, he went to Isfahan and when he saw the Shah Mosque, he wrote a book about Futuwwa names.”

The goal of artificial intelligence is to create a structure like a human that can think even stronger

In the continuation of the programs of the mentioned conference, Eshaq Ronaq, an architect and computational designer, in a speech entitled "Artificial Intelligence and Architecture", stated that the goal of artificial intelligence is to create a structure that can think like a human and even stronger and can make the best decisions and said: “The goal of artificial intelligence is to have a machine that learns, analyzes and makes decisions.”

He then discussed the history of artificial intelligence and said: “Artificial intelligence started in 1942. The first practical example was Alan Turing, who in 1950 created the Bombe device and coded the communications of the Germans during World War II by the Sigma machine. The failure that led to important changes in the discussion of decoding.”

About the future of developments in the field of artificial intelligence, while referring to Gardner's cycle of excitement (an American research company that analyzes and predicts the trend of artificial intelligence), Ronaq discussed the difference between artificial intelligence and programming and said: “Artificial intelligence is the opposite of programming. A tradition that relies on fixed inputs is connected to a cloud network and takes its data from there, analyzes it, and makes decisions.”

This computational designer went on to introduce some of the most useful programs in the field of artificial intelligence, including LookX, 3D Guru, Midjourney, Al Paca, Hypar, Delve, Finch 3D and Swapp.

Much of our knowledge about earthquakes is based on our guesses

At the end of this conference, the workshop of Dr. Alan Abrishami on the subject of earthquakes and its effects on the structure was held. What we know about the earth and the underground is just a guess, but we know that earthquakes do not happen everywhere but only in certain places.”

Abrishami then stated that the earth is probably riding on 12 very large plates, which are called tectonics, and the mountains are the result of these plates approaching each other, and carefully examined the case of the recent earthquake in Türkiye, centered on Herod Maresh.”

The earthquake in Türkiye was the result of the movement of 3 of the 12 tectonic plates of the earth

Abrishami said: The earthquake in Türkiye was the result of the movement of 3 plates, including the Anatolian plate, the Arab plate and the Eurasian plate, and the reason for its intensity was the same. Movements like this, despite being only 5 or 1 cm, have huge effects.”

According to this expert in the field of seismology, the movement of the earthquake itself does not cause destruction, and it is the reversal of the movement of the earthquake that causes destruction.

According to this report and according to the announcement of the secretariat of the first conference of architecture, new technologies and construction management, 102 articles including 15 English articles were sent to the secretariat and 54 of them had an acceptable rating, and finally 5 articles were selected and 15 articles were also selected to be included in the poster.

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