DENA ZIARI

This essay featured in AArchitecture 34 and Kayhan Life in 2018.

The Villa Namazee, Tehran, by the Italian Modernist Architect and founder of Domus, Gio Ponti, is one of only three villas that he designed in the world, and one of only two of his buildings in the entire Middle East. Built in the early 1960’s in collaboration with the artist Fausto Melotti, in the wealthy district of Tehran called Niavaran, and was commissioned by the affluent Namazee family after their consultation with an architect by the name of Mohsen Forooghi (a graduate of École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris, and at that time the Dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts at the prestigious Tehran University). He recommended that they employ Ponti. The Namazee family was a family of successful businessmen, but also one that had patriarchal ties to the government as members of the National Assembly and Senate during the reign of the Shah, the last monarch of Iran. After the Islamic Revolution in 1979, which turned Iran from its constitutional revolution of 1906, which had secular substance, to an Islamic theocratic regime within less than a year, the house and the property upon which it stands were seized by the new government. This was a practice that was entirely common in the period immediately following the fall of a monarchic system that had survived until that moment for the last two thousand five hundred years.

The other two of the three villas that Ponti designed are in Venezuela – Villa Planchart and Villa Arreaza – and all three were built to a standard that he termed ‘joie de vivre’ (a French phrase for the exuberant enjoyment of life) because one of Ponti’s foremost concerns was with the happiness of the inhabitants of his buildings. The other building, the Iraqi Development Board Headquarters, Baghdad, completed a few years before the Villa Namazee in 1958, is currently being restored by UNESCO after having been badly damaged by the war in 2003. But here we are in present day Tehran, and since departing the hands of its original owners after the revolution in Iran, it has fallen into contention — pushing the building from being an elegant family house, to a disfigured body whose fate sits on the very bedrock of confusion and instability at its best, and an implied but not necessarily explicit corruption that favours individual and commercial interests at its worst.

Not much is known about the life of the property when it was owned by the Namazee family, but it is said to have been frequented by the female Iranian Modernist poet Forough Farrokhzad, who is famously known for her beautiful depictions of female desire in patriarchal society. We do know that immediately after the revolution when the property was seized, it was used by the government as a Registry Office for many years, until it was eventually sold to a man by the name of Haj Ahmad Abrishami, the then representative for Nokia in Iran – when it was experiencing its boom years as a mobile phone company in the country. Though the date of the sale is unknown, according to official documentation from the Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts, and Tourism Association of Tehran, Abrishami successfully applied to obtain heritage status for the house in 2007 (although some sources suggest it may have been as early as 2003) during the presidential period of Ahmadinejad, the favourite amongst radicals. It is also equally unclear under what circumstances he sold the property, and in 2012 the ownership was transferred to someone by the name of Nasser Saffari. Little, if anything, is known about who Nasser Saffari is and open sources only make reference to a man who is a Professor of Chemistry at Shahid Beheshti University, but one cannot be sure if this is indeed the same person. With the information that is available to us, however, it can only be assumed that this Saffari is a ‘developer,’ whether as a side-line or as a permanent occupation, as the property has remained empty since the change of ownership — a swift way to promote degradation in any building and clever because leaving a building of this era to ruin does not disrupt any laws. The following year (2013), and immediately after the change of ownership, Saffari applied for planning permission to construct a 20 storey hotel, which also included within its terms the demolition and construction of the site (i). The planning and construction permit was immediately granted by the former head of the Tehran regional arm of the Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism

Association (CHHTA). He had no legal jurisdiction over the vice- president of the association, despite the villa having been under the supposed protection of heritage status for the last 6 years when it was granted in 2007 by the vice-president of the association at the time, Esfandyar Rahim Mashaee. Mashaee was the most influential advisor of the President, and may have held the post as vice-president of the association for four years until 2011 despite being forced by Khamenei (the Supreme Leader) to resign from his other political post after just weeks in 2009. This was the last time there were massive and violent uprisings and clashes between the different factions of the Islamic Republic that left three hundred protesters dead and thousands in prison.

In the same year that the planning application was successfully granted, Saffari applied to have the heritage status of the building revoked in order to gain the legal jurisdiction that supposedly necessary to raze it to the ground and replace it with the 20 storey 5* hotel, although the successful planning application rather confusingly already granted planning to the proposal, along with the right to demolish and construct. The proposal was designed by an architect by the name of Farzad Daliri, who seems to specialise in shopping malls and hotels of the kind of stylistic property that one might only call uninspired, and a hybrid between neo-liberal and post-modern styles. Fashionable 3D visualisations seem to aim to make Tehran look more like Dubai than the city that it is, with a vast history behind it of having always been some sort of settlement before it became a city. The proposal for the hotel seems to come in the wake of renewed efforts to expand tourism to the country, of the Obama-era sanctions relief granted from apparent adherance to the Nuclear Agreement, where they had been said to limit work on their nuclear programme, though it has never been confirmed. The revocation of the heritage status was not immediately granted, however, and Saffari took the Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Association to court on the basis of the Antiquity Law of 1309 — eventually receiving a ruling in his favour, on the basis of this dated law, that says anything up to 1794 cannot have its heritage status removed. So on this basis, the status of the villa is removed by a judge that then paved the way for the absolute legal destruction of the building. But it is unknown why the listing was ruled in his favour and removed, while it falls within the remit of the Antiquity Law of 1309 it seemingly disregards the reasons and merits that the villa possessed in order for it to be awarded the status in the first place. It is also not known who the judge was who gave the ruling. The former Mayor of Tehran (from 2005-2017), Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, who was a former General during the Iran-Iraq war, with a chequered past in suppressing the student uprisings of 1999 — elected to the position by the local- government – was officially called upon to halt the legalities, or to even go so far as to re-purchase the building from Saffari in order to restore its ownership to the state, in the period immediately following the verdict. There is no locatable response on the matter, and one can only assume there was no response to locate.

But despite the efforts to halt or reverse the ruling, on July 27th 2016 the heritage status of the Villa Namazee was officially removed, and although there was an uproar from the architecture community within the country (an anonymous group of activists formed, by the name of ‘Tehran Historical Houses’, in order to express its opposition to the demolition of the villa and were the body responsible for successfully getting the word out of Iran), the efforts came to no legally binding fruition. The villa has received international attention since then, with a petition that has been circulating for over a year, but the continuation of the petition, and the general silence on the topic from the Iranian press, suggests that the status remains in limbo to this day.

The prospect of the ease of destruction of early 20th century architectural history seems implausible to most of us, but in Iran where deregulation is often practically the norm and not the exception, and where according to Shahab Katouzian, in a Domus article from 2007 written about the villa, by Lisa Lucitra Ponti (Ponti’s daughter) and himself, they both expressed their concerns over the villa’s future on the basis of the careless alterations that had been made up to that point. But Katouzian is also concerned with the fact that deregulation has been going on for years and ‘wildcat speculations have targeted entire residential districts,’ he says, ‘any building may be demolished at any time.’ (ii) During Qalibafs tenure as Mayor of Tehran, from 2005-2017, 80% of the cities revenue came from selling construction permits, but the city still has £12.8 billion in unpaid debts (iii) despite this. While it is not known if such a permit was sold to Saffari, such a condition in the city makes demolition a lucrative business for individuals serving commercial interests and leads one to question whether it is indeed also possible to consider the odds that this happened with the Villa Namazee because of the ease with which the permit to construct, demolish, and renovate the site was awarded without any consideration for its heritage status.

The status of the villa also seems to have been actively abused by the dated Antiquity Law 1309 (1930), as anything after that period becomes fair game. This has resulted in what only allows for the arbitrary denial or acceptance by the regime of two centuries worth of architectural history from the 19th Century Qajar and the 20th Century Pahlavi Dynasties. The law seems outmoded almost a century on from its creation. It seems puzzling how there can be such careless treatment towards the fate of the building when one considers that the other of Ponti’s two buildings in the Middle East, in Baghdad, is being protected and restored by UNESCO. This suggests that there is a formal recognition outside of the architecture community, on the level of the United Nations, of the importance of this Italian Modernist architect, that even the dimmest could comprehend, while the other is under a condition where it may purposefully and legally be destroyed in the wake of a lack of competency to protect anything from these two centuries of history.

In recent years there have been many examples of 19th and 20th Century architecture in the country that have been wilfully destroyed, disrespected, or neglected under unpredictable circumstances — the Modernist house of Queen Touran, that seems to reference Le Corbusiers Villa Savoye, and featured in the poetic film by Albert Lamorisse entitled ‘The Lovers Wind,’ from 1978, is one such example. Queen Touran was third wife of Reza Shah, and her home was demolished in the middle of the night in late 2016 much to the shock and dismay of the architecture community of the country. Rahnama House, a Qajar era building, belonging to an important historical figure by the name of Zeyn-al Abeddin Rahnama who in 1944 was made Envoy to Paris, as well as being in the hands of a poet and film-maker from the 60’s called Fereydoun Rahnama, currently sits in a state of worsening dilapidation. The house is on the site of a protected garden in Niavaran, which is also shared with the Villa Namazee. However, the site of the house has recently had a tower constructed on it in very close proximity — casting a heavy shadow, as it belittles this aging, uncared for, historical house, and compromises the integrity of the gardens geometryiv and ‘protection.’ This is in spite of the heritage listing of the building and the site, neither of which seem to have been respected very much. One can only really deduce from this that while a heritage listing means that a building cannot legally be demolished, deregulation makes the building industry a free-for-all, where a lot of money is to be made by individuals, and it does not seem to ensure the active cause for conservation of the building and its structural integrity as it sits there in disrepair in one of Tehran’s wealthiest districts. But it is not the only historical building, or building of architectural significance, that has suffered such a fate or is in such a condition. Frank Lloyd Wright’s only building in Iran — Kakhe Morvarid (which translates to The Pearl Palace) — was commissioned by Princess Shams Pahlavi, the sister of the late Mohammad Reza Shah, and after the revolution was home to the Basij Militia (consisting of voluntary loyalists to the Islamic Republic). It has been empty and in disrepair for years, quietly and slowly crumbling, despite also being registered by the CHHTA. But this is only a small handful, and there are countless other examples of similar treatment.

There has been no evidence of a formal discussion, or expression of the reasons for the change to the status of the Villa Namazee, and also no recognition of the opposition to it being demolished or having its heritage status changed. Any requests to remove the construction permit were refused on the basis of the Antiquity Law of 1309. There may, however, be one saving grace for the Villa Namazee. It is called Article 79, which seems to be the legal way to reverse and revoke the decision for destruction, and was applied for a year ago. Though it was filed it still remains on the table of the new vice-president of the CHHTA, Ali Asghar Mounesan, as they get on with dealing with the status of other buildings first, even those who lost their status after and their fate was similarly in limbo. The eponymously named Alizadehs House constructed in 1978 by the engineer himself for himself and his family is one such example. On the 11th of February 2018 on the official Twitter page of Mounesan (the use of which is illegal for ordinary Iranian citizens) — the newly appointed vice-president of the association since the 13th August 2017 announced that the restoration of the heritage status of Alizadehs House was a gift to the Iranian people.v The eponymously named house was constructed in 1978, by the Iranian engineer just one year before the revolution. Its heritage listing was removed a few years after that of the Villa Namazee, and reinstated after complaints by neighbours, but later revoked againvi. Yet there is the claim by officials that they deal with each case in order, and they somewhat understandably cannot make executive decisions on cases in order to treat one with more importance than another. It seems reasonable enough, but when dealing with architectural heritage it is not as simple as taking each case in the chronological order that they came in, but treating each one individually and evaluating them objectively. Mounesan himself seems without any necessary qualification to head a department that deals with the question of Iranian heritage, architectural or otherwise, except for the work in tourism he had undertaken on Kish (Iran’s free-trade Island). That each vice-president of the association is appointed by the President seems to suggest that the treatment of heritage sits directly within the ever-changing political context, and that the association itself is a direct arm of the political system, therefore set to change direction along with the direction of the government. There is, therefore, a reason to believe that when a condition can change so frequently there is no general consensus around what heritage means for Iran in an official capacity. In conducting my research I have found that more than six different people have held the post of vice-president of the association, compared to one in the last 10 years in the UK, this can only lead one to assume that there is a sense of instability within this government department — not only politically speaking, as each one is appointed by the President, but also in terms of the successes one might have in carrying out protection work to successful completion on a limited budget.

A budget of approximately £5.5 million (vii) was allocated in 2014, which was to broadly encompass all three areas of cultural heritage, handicrafts, and tourism for the entirety of Iran. Compared to the £80 million that English Heritage receives for the same work just in heritage protection, it seems a very tiny fraction, while they also have a separate association with its own budget for Tourism. English Heritage is part of the government, but it does not formulate a part of the political construct of the government. This tells us that there is a general consensus as to what heritage is considered to be in the UK, and it is not something that is deemed acceptable to enter the political arena and be batted between differing political views — in fact, it is entirely removed from the political arena, and therefore not scarred by or held in the balance of politics.

Trawling through the endless articles around the Villa Namazee, one quickly discovers that government data is obscure and difficult to decipher, with only ever fragments of information on the ever changing decisions and views of whoever the current vice-president may be. But the continued question around the fate of the Villa Namazee is also the question of how democracy and egalitarianism operate in the city, and whether the government works in the national interests or individual and commercial ones. It is the question of how they deal with the interaction between the desires and intentions of a government or select individuals on the one hand, and the moment those meet with the desires and identities of the people and the nation on the other. It is this moment that these two forces meet and what is done with it that matters in the progression of any healthy democracy, and a well-functioning egalitarian society.

The fate of the villa rests on a political condition that when one makes an attempt to disentangle the swathes of disjointed information it seems to exhibit more favour for individual and commercial interests over national onesviii. Heritage status does not seem to ensure that a building will ever be conserved through planned intervention, and the best we can hope for is that a building of any importance might at least be protected from demolition — though in some instances it does not seem to have successfully ensured the safeguarding of this either. Arbitrary decisions are made that have no bearing on the establishment and acceptance of a consensus on architectural history and what that means for the visual identity and identities of the city, let alone the country, and how those views are expressed through its architecture, whether for Iran or otherwise. With the continuous overuse and abuse of an out-dated law we can only expect to see more of this, as in its very application it fails to take into consideration nor protect two entire centuries and more of architectural and, therefore, also national heritage – not just that of the Iranian nation, and what that means, but also part of that history that is shared with the rest of the world too.