ABSTRACT
Iranian architecture primarily encountered the Modern Movement Architecture in the late 19th, and early 20th centuries, during the late Qajar and early Pahlavi periods. Although the governments did not entirely affect the encounter, their ideological policies profoundly influenced it. The Pahlavi government attempted to build a “national” identity based upon the modern notion of the “nation-state.” Consequently, Pahlavi I’s government ideologues tried establishing the modern Iranian identity on pre-Islamic Persia/Iran images. Pahlavi II also continued building national identity, allowing it to encompass Islamic history and culture. It had its architectural manifestations in many monuments, including an ambitious memorial building named Shahyad, erected in commemoration of the 2,500th year of the Imperial State. Shahyad Tower was a demonstration of two distinct tendencies: The first was to establish a purely national and ancient identity providing the government with validity and legitimacy, evident in the tower’s “architectonic” elements and historical motifs; and the second was to establish a modern identity capable of conversing with the rest of the world using advanced design techniques to define the surface of the tower. The details of the construction process and the way media publicized and ideologically symbolized the tower also allude to these tendencies. Examining the tower’s formation, this chapter will address the conflicts of using traditional architectonic elements to imply a modern nation-state identity and to demonstrate a quasi-postmodern discourse in Iran’s 1960s and 70s architecture. Interestingly, after the 1978 revolution, the Islamic Republic government did not demolish the tower. Instead, Shahyad Tower was given a new identity and name.
