New urban developments in Safavid Isfahan continuity or disjuncture?

Abstract

Some historians and critics have claimed that the generation and the evolution of traditional pre-modern urbanism and architecture were based on a deep understanding of the natural and man-made environment; they present its achievements as an integrated structure in which a clear sense of continuity and integrity exists. But the new Safavid developments of seventeenth century Isfahan, a city that has been extensively admired and referred to as an ideal Iranian-Islamic city, narrates a different story and discredits this supposition. By applying the concept of genius loci, introduced by the Norwegian architectural critic Christian Norberg-Schulz to study the major natural and man-made characteristics of settlements and their later developments, this article investigates formal and structural differences and contradictions between new Safavid developments in Isfahan and the old pre-Safavid city. It attempts to explain and clarify whether these differences are based on a misinterpretation of the existing genius loci of the city and thus generate a sense of discontinuity or whether they are the result of its re-interpretation and thus present a sense of continuity. Ultimately, it will be argued that Safavid Isfahan expresses a sense of ‘disjuncture’, which must not be ignored at the expense of idealizing traditional urbanism.