University-level architectural education in Iran began in 1940 with the establishment of the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Tehran. The very name of the faculty was the Persian rendering of the École des Beaux-Arts, and many of its early instructors had themselves been trained within that system; even student design projects closely followed recent studio assignments from the École.Footnote 1 Under this influence, architectural education in Iran took shape as a six-year integrated master’s program that privileged competition as a pedagogical principle and emphasized artistic creativity and the architectural work as an artistic object, while relegating architectural history to a marginal position and largely setting aside questions of architectural context.
The second school of architecture in Iran was established at the National University (Melli University; Shahid Beheshti University since 1983) in 1960. Its first generation of instructors were graduates of the Faculty of Fine Arts in Tehran who also had completed advanced training with the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Rome (later Sapienza University of Rome), an institution noted for its strong emphasis on architectural history and contextual considerations in architectural education. A second generation of faculty members, who began joining the school from 1962 onward, likewise often consisted of individuals who had left their studies at the Faculty of Fine Arts unfinished to pursue architectural education in Italy.
With this background, architectural education at the National University initially followed a pattern generally similar to that of the University of Tehran. After roughly three years, however, this model gradually evolved. Shaped in part by pedagogical currents associated with the University of Rome, the program developed a relative—although discernible—attentiveness to geographical, economic, social, cultural, and historical contexts and incorporated a somewhat greater emphasis on architectural history within the curriculum.
The inclusion of art history for students in the first through third years of study, as well as the history of modern architecture for fifth-year architecture students, signaled a comparatively heightened attention to architectural history within that school’s curriculum.Footnote 2 Nevertheless, sustained engagement with Iran’s historical architecture, or its systematic and historiographical study, did not constitute an integral component of the educational programs at either of the country’s two architecture schools at the time. Even so, this limited attention to architectural history at the National University created a relatively conducive intellectual space for students interested in Iran’s historical architecture and helped lay the groundwork for the emergence of an intellectual current that would take shape at the same institution several decades later.
In the years and decades that followed, additional schools of architecture were established across Iran, many of which experimented with four-year, technically oriented engineering-based models of architectural education.Footnote 3 Nevertheless, the six-year integrated master’s degree model in architecture continued at both the University of Tehran and the National (Shahid Beheshti) University until the late 1990s. In 1999, as part of a nationally centralized curricular reform, this integrated program at the two institutions was formally replaced by a two-tier structure, consisting of a four-year bachelor’s degree followed by a two-year master’s degree in architecture.
This structural transformation opened up an institutional space conducive to the emergence of diverse graduate programs and specialized orientations in architecture at these two schools. It was within this context that the MA program in Iranian architectural studies (IAS) was established at Shahid Beheshti University. In 2005 the program, following several years of planning, admitted its inaugural cohort from among undergraduate architecture students.
Today, after two decades of sustained development, the IAS program has significantly elevated the level of architectural historiography and thought in Iran, institutionalizing architectural historiography as a distinct scholarly discipline. Furthermore, by foregrounding a holistic understanding of architecture as an integrated whole rather than a set of fragmented elements, the IAS program has reoriented historical inquiry toward Iranian architecture and embedded indigenous intellectual perspectives within schools of architecture. In doing so, it has disrupted the long-standing stagnation that confined these institutions to the cultivation of artistic creativity alone, transforming them from design-oriented schools into comprehensive academies of the built environment.
This article examines how this program—through its curriculum, stated objectives, and pedagogical strategies—was able to produce these transformative effects. The question is particularly pressing because a comparison between Iranian architectural historiography in 2005 and 2025 suggests that, prior to the establishment of the IAS, the field remained underdeveloped along several key dimensions that only gradually took shape over the program’s two decades of activity, becoming integral to the practice of architectural history in the Iranian academic context. These dimensions include the following.
1. A clearly defined institutional position within the university
2. Recognition as a distinct field of specialization
3. A body of formally trained specialists
4. A critical historical perspective
5. A problem-oriented mode of inquiry
6. A clearly articulated methodological framework
7. Methodological diversity and plurality
8. A thematically diverse field of inquiry
9. A correspondingly expansive range of sources
10. Clearly formulated research questions
The IAS program began its activity at Shahid Beheshti University at a time when Iranian architectural historiography had struggled for decades to move beyond the legacy of its first-generation “giants.” A cohort of early twentieth-century foreign scholars—Ernst Herzfeld (1879–1948), André Godard (1881–1965), and Arthur Upham Pope (1881–1969)—through the cumulative weight of their scholarship had succeeded in placing Iran’s historical architecture at the center of scholarly and public attention and offering a relatively cohesive narrative of its overall development.Footnote 4
Subsequent Iranian scholars who contributed to the historiography of architecture largely came from adjacent fields, among them archaeologists, historians of culture and literature, and scholars of historical geography of Iran, such as Mohammad-Taqi Mostafavi (1905–80), Iraj Afshar (1925–2001), and Manouhehr Sotudeh (1913–2016). Each, from the vantage point of his own disciplinary training, sought to write about Iran’s architectural monuments and helped to sustain a certain continuity in the study of Iran’s historical architecture. Although their work ensured a degree of continuity in the study of Iran’s monuments, it did not culminate in a specialized, autonomous field of knowledge, nor did it foster a consolidated scholarly movement inside or outside Iranian universities or a coherent body of literature strictly defined as “the history of Iranian architecture.” Consequently their efforts remained largely overshadowed by the first generation.Footnote 5
Following the 1979 revolution in Iran and the subsequent eight-year Iran–Iraq War, the effective suspension of Western scholars’ presence in Iran brought about an almost complete rupture in their direct engagement with Iran’s architectural monuments. The limited and largely unsystematic activities of Iranian scholars, despite the continued efforts of the second generation, failed to coalesce into anything beyond a fragmented body of literature. This state of affairs largely endured until the 1990s, the decade that saw the preliminary steps toward the establishment of the MA program in IAS.
Against this backdrop, the proposal for a graduate program in IAS at Shahid Beheshti University took shape. After several years of extensive planning meetings involving architects, archaeologists, and heritage specialists, the program was formally launched in 2005. The ultimate outcome of these collective efforts was a curriculum that has since served as a key pedagogical foundation for the field of architectural historiography in Iran. Accordingly, this article examines the program’s parameters, structure, modes of implementation, and scholarly outputs, retracing the path it forged within the broader trajectory of Iranian architectural historiography.
Programmatic Foundations and Pedagogical Mission
The planners of the program’s initial curriculum, ratified on June 15, 2005, envisioned the MA in IAS as a graduate program centered on the “critical re-evaluation of and reflection upon the historical foundations of Iranian architecture, the city, and urbanism, together with the expansion and deepening of existing knowledge in this field.”Footnote 6 They emphasized that this undertaking would require sustained attention to other dimensions of human life, including “belief systems, culture, art, history, and various branches of knowledge.”Footnote 7 The program’s aim was defined as the training of research specialists in architectural historiography and the advancement of knowledge in Iranian architectural history through rigorous scholarly inquiry. Taken together, these statements reveal three interrelated tenets underlying the founders’ conception of the program: first, that the MA in IAS was conceived as a research-based graduate course of study; second, that its core intellectual substance was rooted in the history of Iranian architecture; and third, that it was framed within a holistic and context-oriented analytical perspective.
These three tenets were not explicitly articulated in the first curriculum and can only be inferred from its overall intellectual spirit. In the second official curriculum, ratified on May 13, 2015, however, all three were formulated with considerably greater clarity and conceptual precision.Footnote 8 Additional indications likewise suggest that the second curriculum was framed with a more mature scholarly awareness than the first, notably its heightened terminological rigor, most clearly reflected in the more careful formulation of course titles.
A closer comparison of the two curricula reveals further distinctions. The first curriculum does not appear to rest on a clearly articulated theoretical foundation; rather, it reflects the aggregation of viewpoints contributed by several individuals well-versed in their respective fields and long engaged in architectural historical or archaeological research, but without a sustained history of collective theoretical collaboration. It also exhibits little evidence of an explicit interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary orientation. Fields such as anthropology or material culture studies—and even the specialized concepts and terminologies associated with them—are largely absent, whereas these qualities emerge with much greater clarity in the second curriculum. Taken together, these differences indicate that, over the ten-year span between the first and second curricula, the IAS program contributed to the theoretical and scholarly maturation of its own planners and administrators. For this reason, the enhanced intellectual coherence and maturity evident in the second curriculum justify treating it as the primary basis for further analysis.
Focusing on Research
The IAS program’s central pedagogical tenet is defined by its rigorous focus on research in architecture and the history of Iranian architecture. This acquires particular significance within the context of architectural education in Iran, which for decades has been shaped by an excessive emphasis on architectural design as a creative practice—one that has tended to devalue not only research but the very notion of systematic study in favor of artistic creativity. However, this emphasis is grounded in a deeper intellectual rationale.
Within the program, architectural history is approached as an emerging interdisciplinary field of knowledge: a field that has taken shape at the intersection of history, art history, archaeology, and architecture; that articulates its own questions, problems, and objectives; and whose knowledge production relies on forms of research requiring specific approaches, tools, and methodologies. For this reason, the backbone of the curriculum is composed of three core research courses: Research on the History of Iranian Architecture I (Prehistoric Era), II (Pre-Islamic Era), and III (Islamic Era). Likewise, the remaining courses and the master’s thesis are fundamentally research-oriented. This structure demonstrates the central place accorded to research within the program since its inception.
Integrating Interdisciplinary Methodology
Recognizing architectural history as a research-based and inherently interdisciplinary subject, the IAS curriculum integrates methodological perspectives from adjacent fields alongside its core research training. Given the formative role of archaeology in the emergence of architectural history, the longstanding contributions of archaeologists in Iran to architectural historical research, and the importance of engaging archaeological approaches to architectural evidence and material culture, the program incorporated the course Introduction to Archaeology, which also opened architectural schools to professional archaeologists and a broader humanities-based discourse. Complementing this perspective, Introduction to Architectural Theories familiarizes students with interpretive practices in art and architectural history, and Research Methods in Architectural History introduces the methodological foundations of the field and its specific research questions and approaches.
Cultivating Historical Knowledge and Insight
Parallel to its emphasis on research and interdisciplinary methodologies, the IAS program advances a central pedagogical premise: architecture is a historical phenomenon, and architectural history is a historiographical inquiry.Footnote 9 This premise, which permeates the curriculum, has informed the design of two complementary groups of courses.
The first situates Iranian architecture within its broader sociocultural and material history. Courses such as History of Culture and Society in Iran, and Culture of Living in the Iranian Environment, explore the historical coordinates of Iranian society and the diverse manifestations of its material culture, providing the contextual framework for understanding architectural phenomena.
The second establishes the theoretical and conceptual foundations of architectural history and historiography through courses including Introduction to Architectural History, Theoretical Foundations of Architectural History, and Sources of Iranian Architectural History. The first two courses move beyond survey-based learning to cultivate an understanding of the historicity of architecture and examine the historiographical lenses and analytical presuppositions through which the built environment is interpreted, thereby fostering a capacity for multiperspectival analysis. Given the constraints of a two-year master’s program, these courses also assume a synthetic methodological role by incorporating perspectives from adjacent disciplines—such as anthropology, cultural and social history, semiotics, and iconography—into the core curriculum. Sources of Iranian Architectural History emphasizes evidence-based historical inquiry. Through the interpretation of diverse material and nonmaterial records, the course introduces architectural hermeneutics and develops the capacity to decode architectural significance within textual sources, thereby bridging raw historical data with a more nuanced sociocultural and historical geographical understanding of the Iranian context.
Program in Practice: Key Actors and the Emergence of Scholarly Trajectories
First established in 2005 at Shahid Beheshti University, the IAS program was subsequently introduced at the Isfahan University of Art in 2009 and at University of Tehran in 2014. By 2017, six universities in Iran had launched IAS programs, and by 2022 this number had risen to eleven, with the field continuing to expand within the country’s system of graduate education. Although such quantitative growth does not in itself attest to qualitative academic advancement, it nonetheless created a distinctive institutional condition for the emergence and gradual consolidation of a new intellectual atmosphere within Iranian schools of architecture.
A decisive feature of this development was that the IAS program became institutionalized within schools of architecture. This institutional positioning was particularly significant because it marked the entry of Iranian architectural historiography into the university through architectural faculties rather than through departments of literature, art history, or archaeology. Given that architectural historiography is inherently intertwined with a range of theories, perspectives, and debates drawn from the humanities and historical disciplines, the placement of the IAS program within schools of architecture turned it into a critical conduit through which new humanistic, historical, cultural, and social approaches to architecture entered architectural education, effectively contributing to the reshaping of the prevailing climate of architectural thought in Iran. In this sense, the emergence of the IAS program within Iranian universities constituted a genuine turning point in the trajectory of architectural education and inquiry in Iran.
Owing to its formative role in conceptualizing and establishing the program, Shahid Beheshti University came to be regarded as the pioneering institutional base of IAS, serving as both a reference point and a model for subsequent programs. It was at this university that schools of architecture were first defined as the primary institutional home of the IAS program; subsequently, in all other Iranian universities, the program was likewise established within architectural faculties. It therefore becomes necessary to examine how the program operated in practice at Shahid Beheshti University.
The quality of the IAS program’s implementation was closely dependent on the caliber of scholarly debate and intellectual exchange that took place within its departmental sessions. It may be argued that the intellectual vigor of these sessions—largely consisting of sustained academic debate among board members—constituted the principal catalyst for the program’s pedagogical vitality and research enthusiasm. Despite clear differences in theoretical orientation and methodological position, the participants in these sessions collectively formed a coherent and integrated intellectual whole, even as each member pursued an independent research agenda. The initial participants in these faculty meetings included Bāqer Āyatollāhzādeh Shirāzi, Kambiz Haji-Qassemi, S. Mohammad Beheshti Shirāzi, Mahdi Hodjat, Zahra Ahari, Mehrdad Qayyoomi Bidhendi, and Mohammad-Reza Rahimzadeh.Footnote 10
Together, this collective formed a constellation of perspectives and approaches: Haji-Qassemi advocated an agent- or designer-centered approach to architectural historiography, whereas Beheshti represented a culturally and environmentally oriented mode of historical inquiry. Hodjat favored an educationally oriented, didactic, and utility-driven reading of architectural history, whereas Ayatollahzadeh Shirazi, during his relatively brief period of participation in these meetings, represented the traditional historiography of architecture. Among the younger members of the group, Ahari represented the current of urban historiography and approached architectural history from a distinctly social perspective. Qayyoomi articulated a context-oriented mode of architectural historical analysis, especially the cultural history of architecture, whereas Rahimzadeh advanced a philosophical approach to architectural historiography, drawing primarily on continental philosophy.
It may be argued that Beheshti, Ahari, Qayyoomi, and Rahimzadeh approached architectural historiography through an explicitly interdisciplinary lens, whereas Haji Ghasemi and Hodjat tended to conceive of architecture as a self-contained and autonomous discipline—one that preserves its autonomy even within the practice of historical inquiry.
Although these sessions were formally convened in accordance with their organizational definition to administer the program and regulate its pedagogical framework, in practice they played a constitutive role in shaping academic architectural historiography in Iran. The sustained confrontation of divergent viewpoints and methodological positions within these meetings rendered the strengths and limitations of each perspective visible to its proponents, thereby contributing to their gradual clarification, refinement, and consolidation. These intellectual exchanges were reflected in the individual teaching and research agendas of the participants, and ultimately informed the formulation of student research projects and theses. In this way, while also ensuring a sustained pedagogical dynamism within the classroom, they directly shaped the defining characteristics of the earliest university-based historiographical studies of Iranian architecture.
More specifically, this sustained, dialogue-driven scholarly engagement led to the gradual clarification of the nature and scope of Iranian architectural history and historiography, as well as a clearer articulation of its inherently interdisciplinary character. It enabled the emergence of new perspectives on Iranian architecture and its historical trajectories, while progressively expanding, refining, and sharpening the thematic boundaries of the field. At the same time, it broadened the range of sources employed in architectural historical research, diversified historiographical approaches and methodological frameworks, expanded the corpus of scholarly studies on Iranian architectural history, and generated new research questions that reoriented inquiry in the field.
Legacy of the IAS Program
Perhaps the most significant outcome of the IAS program lies in the learning process and scholarly maturation of its earliest planners and instructors—a point already noted in the comparison of the program’s first and second curricula. A comparison of the scope and depth of their research trajectories over the course of their professional careers demonstrates how the program itself functioned as a catalyst for intellectual growth, expanded analytical horizons, and increasing theoretical sophistication. Over the years, some of these figures defined and supervised coherent and meaningful constellations of research within the framework of the IAS program; a review of these research trajectories may therefore be regarded as a partial survey of the legacy that the IAS program has left within Iran’s academic landscape, and more specifically within the field of Iranian architectural historiography.
Foremost among them was Mehrdad Qayyoomi Bidhendi, one of the program’s initial planners, who served as its principal implementer and coordinator until 2023. He institutionalized within the IAS program the central premise that architectural historiography constitutes both an interdisciplinary field of knowledge and an independent academic discipline.Footnote 11 Several theses he defined and supervised were conceived within this framework and together formed a coherent constellation of research. These included studies devoted to the critical examination and analysis of key concepts in architectural historiography; the introduction of research instruments and modes of inquiry or the development of new methodological and conceptual approaches; investigations into the scope, aims, and fundamental questions of architectural historiography; inquiries into core historiographical problems such as classification, periodization, and historical segmentation; critical reviews of influential, pioneering, or canonical works of global architectural historiography; critical reassessments of the historiography of architecture in Iran; critical reexaminations of earlier scholars’ interpretations of Iran’s historical architectural monuments; and studies examining the state of knowledge, methodologies, and scholarly practices in disciplines adjacent to architectural historiography.Footnote 12
Through supervising such theses and dissertations, Qayyoomi was the first scholar in Iran to systematically introduce, theorize, and actively pursue research in areas such as the cultural history, social history, and oral history of Iranian architecture, the history of mentalities and the history of concepts in Iranian architecture, and ontological frameworks for organizing architectural knowledge in Iran.Footnote 13
Another member of the first generation of faculty who played a decisive role in broadening the thematic horizons of architectural historiography in Iran was Zahra Ahari. Grounded in the breadth and interdisciplinarity of her scholarly formation, she approached the city, from the early stages of her work, as a historical phenomenon shaped by human experience and agency—an outlook she consistently conveyed to students in the course History of the City in Iran.
Through the definition and supervision of numerous theses, Zahra Ahari was instrumental in establishing the city, urban spaces, and their constituent elements as central themes within Iranian architectural historical research, while also opening new analytical perspectives of them. In this way, she helped to forge a sustained and widely traveled path for urban history within the field of architectural historiography in Iran.
The theses she supervised addressed a wide range of concerns. Some examined the structure of historic cities or the processes through which cities or particular urban spaces took shape.Footnote 14 Others interpreted urban spaces through the perceptions of their historical observers.Footnote 15 Still others reread historic neighborhoods or urban spaces through the lens of dwelling culture or the human activities and events unfolding within them.Footnote 16 In a number of cases, theory-driven inquiries sought to identify the forces that had shaped historical urban spaces.Footnote 17
This brief account neither encompasses the extra-academic activities of these two scholars nor fully captures the scope of their academic work within IAS and beyond. It nevertheless indicates that they significantly broadened the intellectual terrain of architectural historical research in Iran and opened lines of inquiry that had previously remained unexplored.
The further outcomes of the IAS program may be broadly grouped into three main categories.
A Scholarly Corpus on the History of Iranian Architecture
As a result of the gradual expansion of the IAS program across multiple Iranian universities, the cumulative corpus of graduate research produced in this field has grown substantially. To date, at least five hundred master’s theses in IAS appear to have been completed—theses distinguished by a remarkable diversity of subjects and methodological approaches. These range from the systematic documentation of Iran’s historical monuments to inquiries into the theoretical foundations of architectural historiography; from the elucidation and critical reading of Persian textual sources to the organization of architectural historical knowledge and historically contextualized studies of Iranian architecture.
Given that most of these theses are grounded in original, firsthand research in the field of Iranian architectural historiography, it can be argued that the cumulative scholarly output generated by this program constitutes a corpus that is both more extensive and methodologically rigorous than the total body of academic research on Iranian architectural history produced prior to the establishment of this program. In this way, the program has provided a rich and reliable scholarly foundation for subsequent research in Iranian architectural history.
A Generation of Scholars in Architectural History and Theory
As a result of two decades of sustained activity of this program, a new generation of scholars in architectural history and theory has emerged in Iran, now active across a wide range of professional and academic contexts. Following graduation, some have continued their research trajectories in architectural history and theory, producing a substantial body of books and scholarly articles. Others have pursued the professional translation of architectural, theoretical, and historiographical texts, thereby contributing to the circulation of critical knowledge within the field. Many have continued their education at universities across Iran and abroad, and a number among them have joined university faculties, where they are actively engaged in teaching and advancing further research.
A Generation of Intellectual Architectural Educators
Over time, the IAS program contributed to the formation of a cohort of academically trained architectural educators, many of whom are now active in teaching architectural history, theory, and related subjects within schools of architecture in Iran and, in some cases, abroad. An important aspect of the program’s broader influence on the intellectual environment of architectural education has been mediated through this cohort, particularly through their involvement in graduate supervision and curriculum development. Through the transmission of research practices, historiographical approaches, and conceptual frameworks developed within the IAS program, these educators have participated in the gradual reproduction and consolidation of a distinct mode of architectural historical inquiry within Iranian schools of architecture.
