Re-visiting Three Neighbourhoods of Modern Tehran: Chaharsad-Dastgah, Narmak and Nazi-Abad

Abstract

In 1945 the municipality of Tehran planned for the first time the development of large-scale Residential Neighbourhood projects. Over-population, increasing rents and land prices in central Tehran made de-centralisation and expansion necessary. With the approval of the first seven-year development plan in 1948, the construction of ‘Low-Cost Housing’ got a prominent place on the development agenda (Planning Organisation, implementation report of second socio-economy development, 1964). The ‘Rahni Bank’ [Mortgage Bank] was appointed by the Tehran Municipality as the executive organisation for low-cost housing projects. The organisation included young Iranian architects with European training and new ideas for the creation of a modern Tehran and adhering to the credo of modernist urbanism. The first modernist residential neighbourhood ‘Chaharsad-Dastgah’ was built in 1946 for government employees. As in so many (official) discourses (worldwide) of the time a lot of emphasis goes to efforts to attain affordable prices, what was supposedly related to materials, economy of scale, modern techniques and middle-class as a target group. In 1952, the new cabinet approved the construction of two large townships, respectively, Narmak in the north-east and Nazi-Abad fields in the south of Tehran. In Narmak and Nazi-Abad designs, the challenges of modern and traditional life style were clearly seen. As such, their development histories (conception, implementation, reception and appropriation) are crucial to understand the metamorphosis of Tehran from a traditional city into a modern metropolis. The present chapter attempts to shed light on these development histories as a particular case study that articulates the specificity of Iranian modernism and modernisation.