Art Appreciation Lecture Series 2017 Site Specific: The power of place Persian Architecture: building with the elements Dr Christopher Allen Wednesday 15 – Thursday 16 November 2017 Lecture summary: The most characteristic forms of Persian architecture arise from the materials it employs: building in brick produces broad flat surfaces punctuated with the openings of windows and archways, as well as towers and domes, which the bright sunlight makes into austere and constantly changing patterns of light and dark. And flat brick surfaces inherently lend themselves to ornamental tile work, akin to brick in its flatness and in being fired in kilns, but complementary, in its blue and turquoise hues, to the ochres and reds of the brickwork. The highest expression of this architectural language was reached between the Timurid and Safavid periods (roughly equivalent to our Renaissance and Baroque centuries), but the origins of its distinctive forms and techniques go back to the earliest Persian civilisation and even to its pre-Iranian precursors. Thus glazed tiles are found as early as Elamite (pre-Iranian) and Achaemenid remains; the barrel-vaulted iwan appears in the Parthian and Sasanian periods; many centuries later, long after the Arab conquest, it is revived in the design of mosques; and some time after that glazed tiles are revived in their turn to adorn these new structures. At a still deeper level, as you travel through Iran it is hard not to feel that this architecture arises from the very earth itself: the soil is dug up, baked into bricks and used to build with. And when we look more closely, we understand that Persian architecture is equally attuned to the other elements – to fire, in forms that mitigate the heat of the sun; to air, in structures (badgir) designed to capture the breezes and to ventilate cool subterranean rooms; and to water in the remarkable underground aqueducts (qanat) which ultimately feed the beautiful Persian gardens. Note: the term ‘Friday Mosque’ (Masjed-e Jom’e) refers to the principal mosque in every town where the Friday prayers are held; so it is something like the equivalent of our ‘Cathedral’. Slide list: 1. Friday Mosque, Yazd, Timurid Period (14th century) - façade 2. Friday Mosque, Yazd - courtyard 3. Chogha Zanbil, Elamite period, c. 1250 BC 4. Palace of Darius, Persepolis, 6th-5th century BC 5. Glazed bricks from the palace of Darius at Susa, c. 510 BC 6. * Palace (or Fire Temple?) of Ardashir, Firuzabad, 3rd century AD 7. Iwan of the Palace of Ardashir at Firuzabad 8. Parthian and Sasanian Fire Temples 9. Dome at Firuzabad 10.Tagh-e Kasra, Palace of Ctesiphon, 3rd to 6th century AD 11. * Friday Mosque, Nain, Abbasid period, 9th–10th centuries 12. Friday Mosque, Nain, courtyard and details of decorative monochrome brickwork 13. Samanid Mausoleum, Bukhara, c. 892-943 14. Arg (Citadel) of Karim Khan, Shiraz, 18th century – detail of decorative brickwork 15. * Old Friday Mosque, Isfahan, begun 8th-9th centuries, mainly Seljuq period, 11th-12th centuries 16. Old Friday Mosque, Isfahan, courtyard with Mongol period tiling, c. 13th century Proudly sponsored by 17. Xavier Pascal Coste, Courtyard of Old Friday Mosque, Isfahan, 1840 18. Old Friday Mosque, Isfahan, view of the interior of the north dome (late 11th century) 19 Old Friday Mosque, Isfahan, view of Seljuq period colonnaded halls 20. Friday Mosque, Natanz, Mongol period, portal 21. Friday Mosque, Natanz, Mongol period, detail of brick and tilework around portal 22. * Friday Mosque, Yazd, Timurid period, 14th century 23. Friday Mosque, Yazd, Timurid period, façade 24. Friday Mosque, Yazd, Timurid period, courtyard 25. Friday Mosque, Yazd, Timurid period, detail of mosaic faience tilework 26. Friday Mosque, Herat, Timurid period 27. Xavier-Pascal Coste, view of the Meydan-e Naghsh-e Jahan, Isfahan, watercolour, 1840 28. * View of the Meydan with the Masjed-e Shah (the new Friday Mosque of Isfahan) 29. * Masjed-e Shah, Isfahan, view of courtyard with four iwans like the Old Friday Mosque 30. Xavier-Pascal Coste, view of the courtyard of the Masjed-e Shah, Isfahan 31. Mud houses at Do Ab, Herat Province 32. Caravanserai at Abarquh, 17th century 33. Zoroastrian priest with eternal flame, Zoroastrian temple, Yazd 34. Nineteenth-century view of the interior of a Tower of Silence 35. How the sun strikes a flat ceiling and a spherical body 36. View of Yazd with windcatchers (badgir) 37. Courtyard of the Boroujerdi House in Kashan, 19th century 38. Cross-section of a badgir 39. Windcatchers with a water reservoir (ab anbar) in Yazd 40. Ice-house (yakhchal) in Yazd province 41. Wind-flow in a contemporary Persian architectural design 42. Anahita water-temple, Bishapur, 2nd century AD 43. * Underground water channels (qanat); diffusion of qanat technology 44. Qanat well-shafts crossing the desert 45. Courtyard of the Caravanserai at Meybod, near Yazd 46. Underground waterpool in the Caravanserai at Meybod 47. The garden of Cyrus at Pasargadae 48. The garden of the Chehel Sotoun palace, Isfahan 49. * The garden of Fin, Kashan, 17th-19th centuries 50. The Shazdeh garden near Mahan in Kerman, 19th century Reference: Michael Axworthy. A History of Iran: Empire of the Mind. Penguin, 2008 Homa Katouzian. Iran: a Beginner’s Guide. Oneworld, 2013 Arthur Upham Pope. Persian Architecture (first published Shiraz, 1969) Henri Stierlin. Persian Art and Architecture. London, Thames & Hudson 2012 For access to all past lecture notes visit: https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/members/current-members/member-events/site-specific/ .