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BUILDING IRAN: MODERNISM, ARCHITECTURE, AND NATIONAL HERITAGE UNDER THE PAHLAVI MONARCHS Talinn Grigor New York: Periscope Publishing, 2009 (237 pages, bibliography, index) $55.00 (cloth)
Building Iran is a well-articulated, invaluable account of cultural heritage and modern architecture in Pahlavi Iran that is sensitive to the politics of architectural practice. Rather than surveying the aesthetic, spiritual, or technological aspects of architecture in Iran, as has normally been the case in textbooks on Iranian architecture and art history, it draws our attention to the inevitable entanglement that existed between the architectural projects of the Society for National Heritage (SNH) and the modernizing plans of the Pahlavi monarchs in twentieth-century Iran. In so doing, it reveals the politics of aesthetics, preservation plans, public pedagogy, and cultural heritage.
Grigor builds her argument around the central idea that "architecture was not only a symbol of progress and modernity, but also a means to those ends" (13). Established in the early twentieth century, the SNH aimed to scientifically affirm the Aryan roots of the Iranian race, secularize the Iranian psychogeography by shifting the sites of Shi'i pilgrimages to civil ones, and reshape collective historical memory through a systematic destruction and reconstruction of the built environment. Under the Pahlavis, Grigor argues, the SNH discredited the Qajar tradition of the near past in favor of pre-Islamic culture of the ancient past. This doublefaced process of destruction and construction, she shows, was in accordance with the dynamics of political power in Pahlavi Iran. In monumental architecture, antiquarianism meets modernity, crystallizing the nationalist ideology of the state and secular intellectual thought.
Building Iran's study of the SNH's construction of new civil mausoleums presents major trends in the literature on modern Iranian architecture. The author critiques the apoliticized, yet normative and canonized, narratives and shows the ways in which the discourse on cultural heritage was shaped by colonialist and/or nationalist ideologies. During the reign of Reza Shah (1925-41), the speedy modernization of the country took place under the state's iron-fisted policies. Reconstruction plans, highly influenced by Western architectural practices, replaced the traditional methods of construction and urban design with certain European modes, especially the neoclassical style (as exemplified in the Central Bank, Hasan Abad Square, and the Ministry of Justice). Later,...