Reading the Hidden Concepts in the Text of Tehran Highways Walls

Subject Areas : Urban Design

Amirmasoud Dabagh ¹ , Seyed Mostafa Mokhtabad-Amrei ² , Azita Aghamohamadi-Ameghani ³

1 - Ph.D of Architecture, Department of Art and Architecture, Science and Research Branch,,Islamic Azad University, Tehran ,Iran
2 - Associate Professor, Department of Dramatic Literature, Faculty of art, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran
3 - Master of Architecture, Department of architecture, Faculty of art & architecture, Islamic Azad University, Central Branch of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

Received: 2011-08-23 Accepted : 2011-10-30 Published : 2012-04-01

Keywords: Art context reading, Street art, Visual arts semiotic, Context decoding,

Abstract :

Because of the dispersion of activities in big cities, employing highways as the most importantconnecting way is indispensable. In today world, highways are connection arteries of cities transporting people totheir social activities. Because of continual use of highway, their walls prepare a context for conveying many Social,Cultural, Economic, etc concepts. That is why most economic promotions,communication of social concepts andcultural teachings are provided on highways walls and margins.In few recent years, given the same potential, highwaywalls has created a site for appearance of street art. Street art is demonstration of author’s personal signs on the wallsand public places of the city and public audience decode the concepts embeded in the text of that art. Currently Tehranmunicipality, in a general policy, tried to spread and pay attention to street art particularly in the highways contexts.In this paper, we classify these designs on Tehran highway walls while indicating present examples and interpret theconcepts lying in these designs from a semiotic view point.