Bio: Mina Marefat
Mina Marefat, an architectural historian, urban designer, and
registered architect, holds a PhD from MIT and masters degrees in
architecture and urban design from both Harvard University and Tehran
University. She currently holds an NEH fellowship and directs the Cities
Project; she was formerly the Rockefeller Scholar of the John W. Kluge
Center for Scholarly Studies at the Library of Congress. Dr. Marefat
teaches at Johns Hopkins University and Catholic University of America's
School of Architecture where she initiated a studio project on the
reconstruction of Bam after its devastating earthquake. She has taught art,
architecture, and urbanism at MIT, Wesleyan University, and Technical
University in Vienna, Austria, and has lectured and published widely. Her
practice has focused on the revitalization and rehabilitation of cities and
streetscapes, including Washington, Newark, Tehran, and Isfahan, in each
case integrating cultural heritage with redevelopment. Prior to establishing
her own firm she served as senior architectural historian at the Smithsonian
Institution, was a research associate at the Center for Advanced Study in
the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art and later served as director
of architectural education at the Aga Khan Trust for Culture in Geneva,
Switzerland.
Abstract
Streets & Squares of Tehran
The advent of Reza Shah marks not just a major shift politically but also
socially and spatially. The conscious transformation of the inward Oriental
city into an outward Western-type city had spatial implications which
changed the nature of public space. The centuries-old tradition of street
as extension of living space and social gathering space gave way to a public
passageway where the means of transport took precedence. This paper will
raise questions about the changing nature of the street and our
understanding of modernity as new networks of orthogonal streets surgically
placed over the labyrinth of the Oriental city had irreversible implications
on the nature of public space. The street and square (maydan), once places
of public spectacle were redefined as spaces of commerce and interchange on
the Western model. In the process, the theatrical character of the Oriental
city was consciously effaced.