{"id":1643,"date":"2026-10-30T15:36:32","date_gmt":"2026-10-30T12:06:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/honargardi.com\/en\/?p=1643"},"modified":"2026-10-30T19:10:53","modified_gmt":"2026-10-30T15:40:53","slug":"sina-abedi-le-desir-d-avant-garde-iran-paris","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/honargardi.com\/en\/sina-abedi-le-desir-d-avant-garde-iran-paris\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cLe d\u00e9sir d\u2019avant-garde\u201d: Sina Abedi in Paris on Iran\u2019s Architectural Modernisation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

On Thursday 29 October 2026, the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l\u2019Homme (FMSH) in Paris hosted the launch of Le d\u00e9sir d\u2019avant-garde<\/em> by Sina Abedi, published by \u00c9ditions La Commune. The book examines two decades of architectural modernisation in Iran, from 1960 to 1979. The author presented his research, talked with Richard Scoffier, an architect, teacher and critic, and then answered questions from the audience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Audience
The audience at the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l\u2019Homme, Paris, 29 October 2026. Photo: Kasra Aliha<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The book<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

By the late 1960s, Iran, buoyed by oil revenue, saw itself as a regional centre for art and architecture. According to the publisher, the state summoned the West\u2019s leading architects, multiplied journals, conferences and international competitions, and under the patronage of Empress Farah Pahlavi turned architecture into an instrument of prestige and political legitimacy. From Tehran to Isfahan, a generation of Iranian architects worked with masters from the United States and Europe, on mass-housing programmes as well as on the restoration of historic buildings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The contradiction that gives the book its title is what Abedi calls the \u201cdesire for avant-garde\u201d: an ardent wish for progress, fed by an unbalanced boom and by imported Western ideas that were already ageing, which kept a genuine, home-grown avant-garde from taking shape. Isfahan becomes the emblem of this situation, caught between the care of its Persian gardens and the arrival of huge industrial plants. The book has 342 pages, a hardcover binding, draws on unpublished sources and many illustrations, and runs up to the revolution of 1979.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Three
Le d\u00e9sir d\u2019avant-garde<\/em> by Sina Abedi, \u00c9ditions La Commune. Image: \u00c9ditions La Commune<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Hope and a third way<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

This report begins with the questions and answers between the audience and the author. Scoffier asked whether, after reading the book, one can find a trace of hope: could that period help us rethink the future? Abedi answered that, despite appearances, things have not stopped moving. Today Iran has hundreds of young architects, not necessarily well known and not always able to build what they want, alongside architecture schools, universities and researchers. He sees a desire for a new contemporary architecture that will surface whenever conditions allow, and left it to history to decide how it will develop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He then turned to the Persian Gulf. Saudi Arabia, the Emirates and Qatar, with very different cultural backgrounds, are also investing in architecture and want to be avant-garde; in his view they would do well to look more closely at that period. Without claiming to judge their methods, he said that from a distance one sees haste and a taste for fa\u00e7ades and beautiful photographs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Sina
Sina Abedi at the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l\u2019Homme. Photo: Kasra Aliha<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Scoffier had asked whether media attention and the heavy hand of the state got in the way of a wish for deep change. Abedi said there really was a desire at the time to bring in big names to show that Iran was modern, but Iranian architects were not passive. As he described it, there were two main currents: traditionalists, who wanted to stay within the framework of tradition, and those who held that the past must be swept away each time and everything started from scratch. A third group asked how Iranian architecture itself could become the foundation of a different architecture, a third way between the two.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The title of the book, Abedi said, is itself a question: can the avant-garde be imported, and from what moment does one become avant-garde? Is it a label one can buy? Iran wanted to present itself that way, but it did not become an avant-garde country, and he thinks the attempt did not succeed. He added that, given the very old history of Iranian civilisation, the stakes are even higher for younger countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Questions from the audience<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The first question was about the influence of pre-Islamic Iranian spirituality on the space of the mosque. Scoffier said there is no strict link to a fixed typology and that Islamic space is defined less by form than by atmosphere: passing from a bright courtyard into a dark corridor and then into a balance of shadow and light that allows retreat and concentration. He compared Orthodox churches, where the liturgy determines the typology. Abedi called the subject worthy of a doctoral thesis, recommended A Sense of Unity: The Sufi Tradition in Persian Architecture<\/em> by Nader Ardalan and Laleh Bakhtiar (1973), and said he does not accept the very term \u201cIslamic architecture\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Richard
Richard Scoffier (left) and Sina Abedi. Photo: Kasra Aliha<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Abedi described his work as first of all a kind of classification and rescue, like a bombed site where one first tries to save what can be saved. He finished it four or five years ago, and the book is a selection of what he gathered; he hopes to expand it. He called the book a kind of talisman for hoping in a free future for Iran, and said he hopes one day to discuss it in a garden in Isfahan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Sina
Sina Abedi listening to Richard Scoffier. Photo: Kasra Aliha<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Another question concerned resistance to the new aesthetics and what the avant-garde was avant-garde of. In his answer, Abedi described Iran at the time as a laboratory of ideas in which very different views lived side by side, sometimes within one family: traditionalists attached to local heritage and its rescue, backed by international bodies such as the Italian Institute for the Middle and Far East (IsMEO), and others drawn to avant-garde modern architecture. He thinks that coexistence is older than that period and still present in Iranian society. On the avant-garde, he said Iranians have been fascinated by the West for decades and the avant-garde took its meaning in relation to it, hence the title: ideas from elsewhere that were sometimes already outdated. He added that he was being a little unfair, since the period also produced remarkable projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scoffier then drew a parallel with cinema: Abbas Kiarostami, regarded as a major figure of contemporary film, might be called avant-garde, but his quality, Scoffier said, lies in having absorbed the culture of Persian miniatures: he often films from a low angle, with a lot of ground and very little sky, far from Renaissance perspective and from frames balanced between earth and sky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Sina
Sina Abedi answering questions from the audience. Photo: Kasra Aliha<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Abedi said that if he rewrote the book, he would cut down on subjects, since there is so much data, and problematise more. He is writing a sequel. On hope, he pointed to the garden: in the Iranian world, garden and paradise are not just greenery for a prince but the basic cell of life in desert lands, at once an earthly and a symbolic reality, and the word \u201cparadise\u201d itself comes from an ancient Iranian word for an enclosed, walled space (pairidaeza<\/em>, Persian pardis<\/em>). The garden, he said, may have changed shape but has not disappeared and is very present in Iranians\u2019 lives; one only has to see how they settle into their carpets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scoffier closed with a thought on climate: without air-conditioning, traditional Iranian houses work like thermos flasks, with thick mud-brick walls, channels that bring the coolness of snow-capped mountains, and wind towers that create airflow. In his view, it is now the West that looks to Iran to rethink architecture on new foundations: not building objects or symbols but building the environments human beings need to flourish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Details<\/h2>\n\n\n\n