Flowers harvest for the friends of architectural school, reflections on achievements for architectural education in Iran

Mohammad-Karim Pirnia, one of the most prominent scholars of Iranian architectural historiography, was the first who tried to introduce the concepts and principles of Iranian traditional architecture into the modern architectural school and academic realm. He did it through his two main projects: “the principles of Iranian architecture” and “the stylistics of Iranian architecture”. The subject of this article is questioning about Pirnia’s motivations, manner and method; and also some unwanted consequences of his work. Pirnia’s effort to theorizing such a practical tradition is a twofold phenomenon: putting the tradition into the academic education and discussion on one hand, and putting some new obstacles in the way of studying Iranian architecture on the other hand. We will first investigate how he formulated his findings in Iranian traditional architecture and abstracted his proposed principles. Then we try to unfold his principles to light his motivations in his great project into the architectural education in Iran.