After my PhD work to shed some light on the architecture of modern housing in Iran, an area of architectural study that is ignored in Iran, I studied the city of Masjed-I Suleiman (MIS), which contains the oldest modern housing projects in Iran.

MIS is only 100 years old. The discovery of petroleum caused the founding of MIS in a mountainous region of northern Khuzestan in 1908. However, the city stopped growing in the 1970s after the oil administration moved the oil industry from MIS to Abadan near the Persian Gulf. Oil-related jobs disappeared, and many people left the city because of rapid economic decline.

Documents produced by my work in 2007 show that there is a high probability that MIS has the first modern housing in Iran. My study tracked the development of the city by featuring selected examples of housing chronologically, according to age.

 

Site plan of the Mal Karim community in Masjed-I Suleiman, Document: Dashti, M.

 

A part of the Mal Karim development shown from above, Photo: Dashti, M.

 

Plan, facades and cross-section of one house in Mal Karim, Document: Dashti, M.

 

The first houses built by non-local people came into being about one hundred years ago on a free, mountainous region where Bakhtiyari nomads spent their summers. The workers were from India, and built the homes for England to house themselves and British workers. The houses were of stone and had tunnel vaulted roofs, which were built utilizing a wooden framework, which was removed after the roof was complete. This is a primitive technique that dates from the Middle Ages.

After the initial success of the project, the English built other houses for new employees to come to the region. The other houses included a veranda, a feature with its origins in the British colonization of India. The British were also te first to introduce row housing, which had a relatively long history in European urban architecture, but had never been seen in Iran. Finally, prefabricated homes appeared in the late stages of development in MIS.

Almost all of the information for this research came from occupants of the houses and employees of the oil administration of Iran, both in MIS and in Tehran, and other firsthand accounts from individuals who were somehow connected with MIS. The research in MIS shows the first European influence on the morphology and typology of urban design and architecture in 20^th century Iran.