Effects of Iranian Earlier Gardens Architecture on Recent Gardens Architecture

The Iranian gardens architecture and their design have a special position in the world and they are being famous because of this matter. Iranian gardens are one of the national symbols and cultural signs of our country.

Iranian gardens from the point of traditions and principles view have many innovations and fine details. In Iranian gardens, nothing is dysfunctional and designed only for aesthetic. Everything which is useful and helpful, are designed beautifully. An Iranian garden is a beautiful artwork, multipurpose and multi functional. But some design principles govern there that people of this territory have adhered to these unwritten principles from a long time ago. The main question that has made author to do this research is, if the Iranian pre-Islamic gardens architecture has had any effect on the Iranian Islamic gardens architecture? In this research, the author has used the archaeological information about pre-Islamic Iranian gardens and tried to find the architectural knowledge from archaeological information.

The main goal in this research, is the recognition of the Iranian pre-Islamic gardens architecture and to discover their repetitive architectural design principles and comparing these features with the architecture of Islamic Iranian gardens.

This study has achieved on information by referring to books, papers and web pages that have information about the Iranian Pre-Islamic gardens basically.This paper is an output of a research which was based on written sources. It must be mentioned that the author has visited all the gardens mentioned in this study.

It should be noted that one of the main problems of this research is a lot of information existence in articles and books repeated unproved subjects of which the author has followed the rejection.

For example Chaharbagh idiom in Iranian gardens᾿ design which includes two perpendicular axes, has caused Stronach who is the Archaeologist of Pasargadae, to draw the longitudinal axis of the garden without being aware of this discovery in his exploration. At first he drew it as a dotted line because he had guessed that it might have been real, it has been there and was gradually destroyed.

After Stronach, other researchers changed that dotted line to full line and called it as an existing one. In this way they introduced Pasargadae as the first Chaharbagh in Iran. Accepting Pasargadae as the first Chaharbagh, was also a reason for introducing other gardens as Chaharbagh. This paper attempts to explain these wrong ideas.

Two Assurian gardens, Pasargadae garden, Shaour garden, Kakhe Khosro and Taghe Bostan are introduced in this paper and the architectural design principles of these gardens are defined.

To understand the architecture of pre-Islamic gardens, orientation of pre-Islamic gardens, hierarchy of entry of the garden, the impact of four divisions in the design of garden, the slope of garden, fountain, natural landscape, the architecture of the palace of garden and repetitive rhythm of walls around garden were considered.

The design principles of Assurian gardens are concluded as: gardens full of trees, a river full of water with the possibility of sailing, garden on slope, the building of the temple at the highest altitude, hunting birds in the garden, alcove in the lower slope of the garden, diagonal drains, regular and repetitive garden fence walls, royal palace which has balcony was situated in the upper height of the garden, watchtower for care.

The design information of Pasargadae garden can be summarized as: dividing the garden into inner garden and external garden, hierarchy of entry, building residential-palace in the inner garden, long balconies facing inner garden, rectangular channels and small ponds ordering specially to irrigate the garden, using natural landscape to make garden complex.

Architectural lessons which Shaour garden has for Iranian architecture of gardens can be summarized as:

lack of visibility to the inner garden for everybody, creating porch to see the inner garden, visibility from private life space to the garden, presence of fountain in the center of garden.

Architectural lessons of Kakhe Khosro garden can be summarized as: presence of inner and outer part of the palace, lack of visibility to the inner garden for all, creating balcony to see the inner garden, view from private life part to the garden, locating fountain in the center of the garden, constructing the building of the garden on a platform with 8 m. height, vast longitude green space following along the courtyard, joining longitude axes of green space and courtyard, large pool in the green space, the pool and built domed space have joint to the longitude axes, the palace of the garden has specified inner and outer part, columned hall and room with domed ceiling face to the outer courtyard, small shrine houses face to the inner courtyard, vast natural garden outside the palace fence, large pool in the middle of garden which is outside the fence, joining longitude axes of the garden and the fountain and the palace building.

Architectural lessons for Iranian architectures that can be obtained from Taghe Bostan garden studying, can be summarized as: Taghe Bostan as a royal hunting garden, presence of a regular fence around the garden, a hedge as a garden fence, the landscape of the garden is a natural one, there is a large river with boats sailing on it, regular divisions of garden show a worthy discipline of kingship, a specified entrance to the fence of garden.

Finally the mutual features in the design criteria of pre-Islamic gardens have been compared with the architectural principles of the Iranian garden design and as a result of the pre-Islamic gardens architectural design effect principles, on the Islamic gardens architecture and recent gardens have been specified.

Being involved with design principles of Iranian Islamic gardens, the articles and books of specialists and expert researchers in the field of Iranian Islamic gardens design have been studied and design principles of the gardens have been extracted from their books and articles.

After comparing the design principles which have been used in the architecture of pre Islamic gardens with design principles have been used in the architecture of Islamic gardens can be found on the following common principles: Presence of geometry in the architecture of Persian garden, presence of water and psychological and climatically impact of them in the architecture of Iranian garden, presence of fountain for supplying water and beauty of the landscape in front of palace, using symmetry to design Persian garden, symmetry of built palace in the garden,

The main sight axes are symmetrically, using straight lines in architectural design, the importance of the economic aspect of the garden, being a fence around the garden, being surrounded by a wall surrounding or plant.This paper is an attempt to introduce the results that are obtained from the research on pre-Islamic architecture of our country, Iran. It should be mentioned that the reason of researched and selected gardens for this paper was the presence of them in Iran's current territory and their visibility by the author and the existence of many written sources about them. Although the number of pre-Islamic gardens of Iran are much more than discussed ones, in this paper, only some of them were chosen to be investigated.

I hope this article can make a small contribution in recognition of the Iranian architectural heritage.