Today, the term “sustainability” is used in many academic and nonacademic communities and the themes of many conferences and seminars are dedicated to this topic. But in an era of escalating consumerism and endless growth, it seems that sustainability will f
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Today, the term “sustainability” is used in many academic and nonacademic communities and the themes of many conferences and seminars are dedicated to this topic. But in an era of escalating consumerism and endless growth, it seems that sustainability will face more difficulties in pursuit of its goals. Although architecture schools care about sustainability and seek appropriate solutions for environmental concerns, the recentness of the topic has caused architecture to face various obstacles such as "limited expertise", "lack of inspiring prototypes to counterbalance prevalent non-sustainable lifestyles", "fringe reputation", "number crunching", "the old guard", "holistic vs. fragmented", "the Braux art tradition", " unawareness of environment crisis" and "lack of technical courses that support design studios" inside the classroom and "ambiguous identity", "confusing implications", "the magic flute", "the question of aesthetic" and high cost of sustainability outside the classroom.
Following an investigation into environmental crises, the principles and history of sustainable architecture, two sustainable education models (one theoretical and the other practical) and the obstacles facing the teaching of sustainable architecture, this paper attempts to analyze architectural education in Iran in order to assess the performance of Iranian architecture schools in teaching sustainable design. For this reason, courses taught in Iran's architectural schools are divided into 5 categories including: "Architectural Design", "Building Technology", "Architectural History and Theory", "Urban and Rural Development" and "Historical Building and Renovation”. Then the challenges mentioned are examined in each category with secondary data reviews. While courses related to sustainability and environmental crisis are not taught in Iran's universities, some obstacles like "fringe reputation:, "number crunching”, “limited expertise" and "the old guard" are not studied and only 4 obstacle including "holistic vs. fragment", "the Braux art tradition", "unawareness of environment crisis" and " lack of technical courses support of design " are investigated in architecture universities.
This paper will conclude that architectural education in Iran follows one rigid strategy, which is not suitable for a multidisciplinary field like architecture, particularly sustainable architecture: therefore Iranian architecture schools are not capable of teaching sustainability, whether as an attitude or as a technique. Therefore, a systematic policy is essential, one that concentrates on all three important parts of an educational system: well-defined goals, planning in accordance with these goals and the assessment of programs to refine goals. This paper also proposes two level programs consisting of:
Level 1 (architecture education system): In this level, one flexible system will be defined consisting of several subsystems in accordance to global and local challenges. Each of these subsystems includes various theoretical and practical courses with focus on its subsystem goals. Students can choose some of these subsystems _which are controlled by one management system_ according to their interests. . This model of education system, not only lets students learn what they are interested in, but also produces graduates with different types of skills who can cover the different needs of society.
Level 2 (sustainability subsystem): This level consists of theoretical and practical courses (especially interdisciplinary courses) relating to sustainability education in architecture.
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