Download Evaluation of the Relationship Between Culture and Traditional

International Journal of Applied Engineering Research ISSN 0973-4562 Volume 11, Number 3 (2016) pp 2120-2123
© Research India Publications. http://www.ripublication.com
Evaluation of the Relationship Between Culture and Traditional
Architecture and its Effects on Design Quality Improvement.
Gholamali Karimi Hessam
Master of Architecture Qeshm International Branch,
Islamic Azad University, Qeshm, Iran.
El-Din Sotoue
Associate Professor Qeshm International Branch,
Islamic Azad university, Qeshm, Iran.
(2). The aim of this project is to provide an explanation with
which one can access an architecture which accommodate
with cultural features of its era and steps into fulfill the
traditional needs of its users. The following question is in this
regard:
What is the relationship between culture and traditional
architecture?
Abstract
In the past, the tribal, racial and ethnic differences, distances,
class borders, climate, land, religions had effects on
architecture and it resulted in forming different patterns of life
styles, living space, invocation buildings and also residences.
But the revolutions of the present decade creates differences
in some of the life views and social culture and architecture
has no time match with culture. This article aims at finding
the relationship between culture and traditional architecture
using logical reasoning method and previous studies and
provide an explanation of culture according to the researchers
and scientists of different scopes via creating a logical
arrangement. Then the traditional architecture will be
explained and by using the important extracted features from
the concept of culture and traditional architecture, the
relationship between culture and traditional architecture will
be mentioned as a result. Culture has always been a directing
factor for creating unique methods in architecture, especially
the traditional one.
Culture
While every society and thinking provides its own explanation
of culture based on its worldview, many concepts and
meanings can be assigned to culture. Here we name only some
of them.
Ali Akbar Dehkhoda provides this meaning for culture
“Farhang”: it is a Persian word containing the elements of
“far” and “hang” which means front heaviness. Hassan Amid
explains culture as the knowledge of educating scientific and
literature works of an ethnic or nation and a combination of
beliefs, myths, and folkloric lyrics of a land. The Latina word
“culture” which means to worship, in fact means to respect.
Some years later this word was used in the meaning of
cultivation and then in the meaning of growing the soul. Al
last, in 19th century this word has taken into use for describing
open-mindedness and aesthetic aspects of civilization.
According to Taylor’s theory in 1871 in the “primary Culture”
book, culture includes:
the collection of sciences,
knowledge, arts, beliefs and thoughts, ethics, principles,
traditions and other habits which an individual learns as a
member of a society{4} It can be extracted from Taylor’s
description that culture is a complex collection, a chain of
combined activities. Religious traditions, ethnics, art, cookery,
tailoring and social behaviors completes this collection.
Culture is Adventitious and a collective phenomena.
Hiller describes culture as:
beliefs, systems of thinking,
scientific techniques, life style, traditions and all the
behavioral methods which is organized by the society is
culture. According to this explanation “culture includes all the
behaviors and activities among peoples of a society and is
learnt from a social group but does not include those
behaviors which are congenital” {4}DaryoushAshouri, one of
the Iranian sociologists, believe that culture is nothing but the
complex of human experiences during time. He says that:
culture gives a “world” to human via direct and indirect
Keywords: culture, architecture, traditional architecture
Introduction
According to Motyosis, architecture is the means of
evaluating a nation’s culture {3}. Each nation’s culture
indicates how thespaces had been formed. Culture in present
in architecture in many ways. As an example, architecture can
be present in the forms of elements, patterns, decorations and
mass compounds. Architecture has the responsibility to
subjectivize a mental concept via its visual form which is a
way of indicating culture. The role of culture has always been
more in organizing
cultural, religious and public places. According to Powel
Elior, traditional architecture is a type of architecture which
grows from inside the societies and accommodates itself with
social, climate and technological situations over time and
improves and is harmonious with the values, economy and life
styles of its culture. In other words, architecture is by people
not for them {1}Doubtlessly, the responses of traditional
architecture which is a type of permanent architecture is
formed in order to fulfill the needs of residents in other
cultures. Expressing architecture differs in different societies
and cultures and can have a unique form in different cultures
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International Journal of Applied Engineering Research ISSN 0973-4562 Volume 11, Number 3 (2016) pp 2120-2123
© Research India Publications. http://www.ripublication.com
tradition and places him in his own world in which he can find
his human identity
The term “culture” has different meanings and has many
meanings in its historical travel including:
politeness,
upbringing, knowledge, cognition, tradition, scientific and
literature works of a nation, dictionary, art, goodness, power,
education, training, schools and ideology {5}
Blonette, one of the intercultural sociologists, introduces
culture as: “a special type of cognition which is used by
members of a society in order to give meaning to their
behavior. They make their behavior acceptable and
explainable in this way {6}
Features of Culture {7}
Culture reveals in compromising interaction.
Culture has mutual elements.
Culture is conveyed over different periods of different
generations.
Values are the essence of culture. Culture is life structure and
life index thinking. Culture is a tradition for all the people of a
society and doesn’t belong to a special group, therefore this
activity is different in different groups. Culture is changing.
One of the reasons of this changing is the relation of cultures
whose aim is cultural revolution. This type of cultural convey
is done by being in contact. The cultural differences and
number of cultures lesson every day by cultural contacts but
the cultural disagreements will remain until there are different
groups of people. The other type of cultural changing is
centralized on cultural intentional aspects and is done by
inventing elements of culture and then deepens by effecting
on public and private elements. Because of cultural changing
and revolution, a cultural activity is a very dynamic activity
which results in progression. According to Kant, acculturation
is possible via two ways of art and science and the way of
cultural conveying in generations is education and via
observation and examination.
The relationship between culture and education has two
dimensions: the first one is the revolutionary form of culture
which is given to the younger minds. The second one is the
developmental phase of culture and the young minds are
trained to accept and refine it. Therefore, the aim of culture
education is to convey cultural heritage, evaluation of its
value and development of cultural heritage; education or
training is a process in which society tries to distribute its
culture to all its members and it is a one-sided and supplying
communicative process. Distribution includes acknowledging
people and training them and changing the people’s behaviors
which is a communicative supplying and demanding.
Cultural survive depends on communication and
communication is the way of cultural activity, culture is the
product of communication and culture is the indicator of
communication structure. Cultural development includes
learning, act and evaluation debate, which is a continuous
process using forming interpretations and ideas.
Traditional architecture includes houses and other buildings
which is related to climate and accessible resources of the
land and is usually constructed via traditional technology or
by the society owner {9}
Features of traditional architecture
1. Expression of individual’s characteristic completely
2. Needlessness to birth time of the work
3. Anonymousness
Traditional architecture can be described as follows:
According to PAUL OLIVER, traditional architecture is a
type of architecture which grows from inside of the societies
and accommodates itself with social, technical and climate
situations over time and faces revolution and is harmonious
with values, economy and life style of its cultural roots; in
other words, traditional architecture is by people architecture
not an architecture for the people {10} In this explanation,
one of the traditional architecture indexes is cooperation of
people which must be taken into consideration and the other
index is considering values and matching them with nature.
Rapaport describes the traditional architecture as: this kind
of residence (traditional) is the immediate expression of
changing values and it is also the picture of home and
worldview and life style and a combination of different
situations. In his view, traditional architecture tries to create a
balance with nature instead of dominate it and he considers
this factor as the factor of superiority of this architecture in
comparison with stylistic ones in terms of the relationship
between human made environment and nature {11}
PietroBelluschi, the Italian architect, describes architecture as
follows:
Traditional art is not a type of art planned by a small number
of specialists, it is formed following the activities of all
experienced men (heritage) and in a limited domain of
experience by the ordinary men.
Rodovsky in his book entitling “architecture without
Architect” notes that there are many lessons which can be
learnt from architecture before making it a professional art
and assign it to a number of specialists. He introduces the
architects of these works anonymous artists of this play –
illiterate organization – who had had special talent over
building in their environment in their special tie and place and
respected climate and nature instead of dominate it, the thing
which the architects of nowadays do much, and helped earth
topography and damages.
HasanFathi whose works are well known in Egypt in
matching architecture and tradition and culture states in his
“Constructing Buildings with People”:
“Each nation which has built its own architecture, has
expressed its own forms of language, traditions, habits. ” He
also states the features of the form bed considering
relationships between form and culture: Before the collapse
of cultural boarders in 19th century, the traditional architecture
special elements and forms were seen in the whole world and
the buildings of each land was the wonderful fruit of people’s
imagination and environmental needs. ” {12}
Traditional architecture
Traditional architecture is a collection of urban architecture
collected in a special land whose harmony in terms of form,
mass, color, level harmony, and building materials and
systems is obvious {8}
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Features of Traditional Architecture
Alpagonovolo in the traditional architecture book explains the
traditional architecture features as follows: {13}
- There is a high familiarity between traditional
architecture
and
traditional
dialects
which
differentiates each group.
- Production date and anonymousness of the traditional
architecture
- Includes a building constructed for human being
- Is built by the owners or society and is dependent on
accessible resources and profits from all the traditional
technologies
- Traditional architecture forms are constructed in order
to fulfill the needs of economy, life and lifestyles of
their cultures.
The weaknesses of theoretical foundations of architecture has
not resulted in proper works of artists and researchers. Some
of the contemporary architects have provided new theories in
order to connect past and present architecture. They believe
that the previous architecture must be taken into account in
order to make a good connection between past and present.
Considering the general sprit, foundations and using them is
important in order to complete previous and present
architecture.
It must be considered that reflecting the pastern architecture
regardless of its roots and features is a useless job. Therefore,
it is expected that the experts of contemporary era refine the
features of architecture, history and tradition according to the
rich identity of Iranian architecture.
Traditional constructs are created from the residents’ views
with climate situations {14}
The effective factors on forming traditional architecture
include: culture, beliefs, religion, climate, geography,
economy, life, social structure. Traditional architecture is
useful in every historical level and had always survived its
identity although facing with revolutionary phenomena and
indicates the traditions, emotions, thoughts and art of people
as it is a credible identity of members of a land.
Culture and Form of Architecture
The form of architecture cane be important for two reasons:
first reason is that each imagination of architecture cannot be
fulfilled without citation of form, second reason is that the
physical of visible form of anything is the most important and
immediate thought of the building. Form can be the key to the
culture which is revealed by the built space. The subject of
form in the culture scope can be studied in two forms: 1)
when we face the excising architecture of others, 2)when we
look at architecture as something that we want to make.
In the first case, the architectural space, cannot be understood
without knowing its culture and culture is a phenomena which
talks in the form of its form after passing thoughts, tactics,
techniques and inventions. The form of a building constructed
by others is their statement about that building whose resource
is their cultural architecture. In the second case, when one
wants to create a new architecture, there is no way but
showing its form if we want to describe it.
Our culture is a dynamic set of our knowledge about a special
building and its main formation. What we grow in our mind
and express it via its form is our architectural culture which
cannot take the way of its building for granted. Architecture is
like a viewpoint which changes during time, has root in
culture which will never get a fixed form. In this regard, the
way of wanting and designing an architecture are considered
as two separated moments of one phenomena. The first one is
the cultural moment and the second one is technologic
moment, showing architectural culture of groups and
societies. In fact, the human perception of space is not static.
This feeling is dynamic because it is related to act; that is, it is
what can be done in a special space not what is seen via
inactive view.
What makes the human works following the world’s dynamic
everlasting is its solidarity of concepts. These concepts has
been indicated differently in each period and resulted in
differentiation and creativity just as energy is fixed in the
whole universe and will be expressed differently and will
never die. For example the heat us permanent and fixed but it
has different functions and the previous systems are replaced
by the advance ones and result in a better functionality.
Culture and Architecture
The presence of culture in architectural and civil spaces is by
many ways among which one can note elements, roles,
decorations, mass complexes, or special combinations in plan.
Each building as a part of a whole architectural culture has the
responsibility of subjectiving an objective thinking by its form
which is a way of evaluation of culture. The role of culture
has not been the same in forming all the architectural spaces
and it has been more in cultural, religious and public spaces. It
is mostly tried to forget that each building is a cultural
evidence because it may be built for a special purpose.
Indication of culture in space includes signs with special
meanings and contents. These signs are sometimes have one
meaning and sometimes have multiple meanings. They can
also be obvious or non-obvious. Obvious signs (e. g. Dome,
minaretandporch) are visible for non-experienced and
ordinary people.
Space in its ordinary meaning is a reality with specific
identical features. The result of human’s conception of space
is effected from mental, personal, cultural and social
experiences. Therefore, an architectural space in its general
concept shows the cultural and social features of a land. The
usage of building is also important. In some cultural and
traditional buildings one can see the tradition and identity
explicitly or inexplicitly while it is taken for granted in other
ones. Our land has seen many revolutions in architectural era
in its thousand year history including central yard, Dome,
minaretandporch. Unfortunately, in the present time we
cannot find a building with the national architecture identity.
The revolutions of this era has removed the connection
between life and culture and has a westernized theme which is
developing. Traditional architecture has stopped working and
is replaced by technology and new situations.
Therefore it can be concluded that:
1. Culture is a connection between aim (perfection) and
plan (art, religion and science)
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2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
culture of a region has a direct relationship with form,
materials, relations and architecture of that region.
The form of architecture is created from environmental
and philosophical features and time forms new spaces
because of its revolutionary element of human life
style as the main parameter. The architectural form is
the most obvious index of cultural effect on
architecture.
According to the stability principle of direct concepts
in each phenomena, the stated principles can be
maintained over time and be used as main concepts.
In fidelity to culture and art of a land, saving and
repeating the previous errors are not considered and
creative and dynamic view is among the primary
necessities in designing and art.
Architecture conveys meaning, not form
Architecture has two main cultural and scientific
principles and when one of them gets weak, the result
will grow uncompleted.
Using main cultural and artistic factors in a building
can change a simple and cold building to a complete
and good architecture. A work which contains all the
history, culture, thinking and art of a society can
improve the expression of architect and show the main
message of architecture in this stage according to
realities and necessities of building.
Conclusion
This article evaluated the descriptions of culture and
traditional architecture in order to conclude that culture and
tradition of a land have a direct relationship with architecture.
Architecture is building according to mental formats and the
architectural form and system of each region is affected by its
cultural environment. In traditional architecture we face
ethnicity, people and new operational methods of beliefs,
religion, climate, geography, economy, life and social
structure of a region. These factors had been taken into
traditional architecture while being combined and affected by
culture as the most important factor as a controlling element.
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Culture and Traditional Architecture
Three important elements of ethnicity, people and social
operational methods create traditional method by getting
combined and passing some filters the most important of
which is cultural filter. Architecture is one of the main factors
which both fulfills the need of residence and has a close
relationship with culture. Architecture has roots in culture as a
social phenomena and is like a mirror of human thoughts
about space, aesthetic and culture. The architecture of each era
has a direct relationship with its culture and art and different
thoughts create different architecture and styles. Architecture
pays attention to people’s cultural needs. Religious and beliefs
of Iranian people which is a part of Iranian architecture
creates the separation of inside and outside spaces and the
focus of Quran on nature and lightening was the reason of
presence of nature in Iranian architecture. The sprite of
hospitality and respecting guests resulted in creating Hashti
space which is a door with two stone platforms which are
created for the guest to sit before the host opens the door and
don’t wait while sitting. Also in the Gymnasium buildings
because of the humble sprite of heroes and athletes, the
entrance is shorter than people’s height because those who
enter bend and make themselves far from pride.
Keeping fundamental cultural and artistic factors in building
changes an ordinary building into a perfect and good
architecture. A work which includes history, culture, thoughts
and art of a society. This view leads to perfection of
architecture and reveals the message of architecture.
Culture is the connecting circle between aim and plan and
architecture will come into life by following environmental
and philosophical features. The architectural form is the most
obvious Index which shows that it is affected from culture.
This description enlightened the relationship between culture
and traditional architecture and showed that the traditional
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International Journal of Applied Engineering Research ISSN 0973-4562 Volume 11, Number 3 (2016) pp 2120-2123
© Research India Publications. http://www.ripublication.com
[13] Alpagonovolo, Adriano, 1384, Translated by Afsari,
Traditional Architecture and New Perspectives,
Space Publication
[14] Norouzi, Malihe, Shayeste, Nima. (2013) Traditional
Architecture and Culture. Permanent Architecture
and Civilization and Development
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