Modern Middle-Class Housing in Tehran

Rana Habibi, Ph.D.(2015) is a practicing Brussels-based urbanist and architectural historian. She has written extensively on modernity and urbanism. She has authored several book chapters, including The Routledge Companion to Modernity, Space and Gender (Routledge, 2018).

"This book offers a valuable contribution to studies of Iranian urban modernity. Specifically valuable is its timely call for investigating mass middle-class housing projects in Tehran as tools or manifests of the city’s urban modernization processes. Likewise valuable is its historical study of five major housing projects that still provide emblematic models of modernization in Tehran"Somaiyeh Falahat in Journal Of The International Association For The Study Of Traditional Environments, Fall 2023.

• AcknowledgmentsList of IllustrationsPersian TranscriptionIntroduction1 Middle-Class Housing Development in Tehran and the Question of Non-Western Modernity2 Iran’s Position Amidst Non-Western Architectural Modernism3 Modernism as Institutionalism4 From Ideal Modernism to Popular Modernism5 Modernism as a Taste6 Modernism as a Transnational Model7 Tehran Urban Modernization: Articulation of the Walled Gardens and Urban Planning Laws8 Modern Middle-Class Quarters: A Reproduction of Archetype1 The Unveiled House – The Institutionalization of Modern Middle-Class Neighborhoods in 1940s Tehran: Chahārsad Dastgāh, 19461 Growth of the Middle Class, the Question of Modern Collective Housing, and the Birth of Tehran’s First Modern Neighborhood2 Modern District: The Courtyard House New Urban Block Configuration – Chahārsad Dastgāh3 A Modern House by Law: Expansion of Modernity4 Conclusion2 Architects and Architecture without Architects: Nārmak, 19521 Introduction2 Reformers3 A Modernist Vision for a Middle-Class Neighborhood – Nārmak4 A Yard: Contextualization of the Modern5 Builders: Negotiating the Modern6 Conclusion3 Modern Taste – Iranian Domestic Cultural Transformation and the Excellence of the Car-Urban Landscape: Kuy-e Farah, 1961 and Kuy-e Chahārom-e Ābān, 19691 Introduction2 The Modern Iranian House as Embodiment of Global Taste3 A Car-Garden Neighborhood: Transformation of an Iranian Courtyard House: The Case of Kuy-e Farah, 19614 The Automobile Society and the Appearance of the Apartment Building: The Case of Kuy-e Chahārom-e Ābān, 19695 Conclusion4 A Transnational Model – Internationalist Discourses and Practices in Tehran: The Case of Ekbātān, 19761 From Oil Exporting Economy to the Internationalization of Tehran2 Iranian Internationalism: In Search of Methodology3 Iranian Internationalism in Practice: Modernist Architectural Experiments4 Ekbātān: A Transnational Architectural Model5 Neglecting Internationalism and Continuations of Modernism in PracticeCoda1 International Modernism and the Reproduction of Archetype 2 Row Courtyard House Model + Grid3 Linear Courtyard House Model + Grid4 Super Courtyard House Model + Grid5 Tehran: Speculative and Fragmented Middle-Class Urban Landscape6 Epilogue: Chahārbāgh as the Main Structure of the New Center of TehranTimelineBibliographyIndex