Aesthetic fitness of new architectural design in urban historical context in the city of Shiraz

Abstract

The aim of this research was to establish the quality that contributed to the aesthetic fitness of new architectural design in urban historical context. Although the international organizations such as UNESCO and ICOMOS in dealing with urban historical area as world heritage site had clear policies and guidelines to be followed with the aim for preservation, they were basically generic and did not critically address the needs of those historic cities to be relevant in the face of modern development. Besides the usual conservation approach, new aspirations and activities necessitated new interventions and spatial qualities within the urban historical areas. As well-documented in the literature, the degree of the existing design approaches within the built environment fluctuated between two extremes, which were compatibility and contradictory. Therefore, identifying building physical attributes those contributed to their historical contextual fitness regardless of the design approach, and the responses toward their aesthetic qualities were paramount in this research. Methodologically, a case study of Shiraz Historical City was adopted as it allowed an in-depth inquiry into the subject matter. The investigation has led to the construction of the city's morphological development and recognition of the building components and characters that contributed to the quality and physical presence of the historic city. Visual preference survey and interview were carried out to gauge both laypersons' and experts' preferences of the building aesthetic values and contextual fitness of new building interventions within historical areas based on existing historical built environments through photographic identification technique. The focus of the investigation was on the formal, symbolic and expressive aspects of adopted design strategies. Initially, the obtained data were analyzed quantitatively utilizing such as correlation, variant and estimation methods and then triangulated with the qualitative data that were obtained through in-depth interview, and also with the established theories. There were four main fmdings with regards to the aesthetic fitness quality that need to be considered in designing new interventions in urban historical context, which were characteristics of contextual compatibility, presence of diversity, novelty, coherence and style. There were also three main implications that need to be observed in dealing with such built environment, especially in terms of theory, design framework and public participation in general These findings and implications were discussed in relation to the condition of Shiraz Historical City and may only be applicable to historical cities with similar characteristics. The main contribution of this research to the body of knowledge, however, lies in the establishment of the more definitive design parameters in dealing with new design interventions that contribute to their aesthetic fitness in urban historical context.