Structural Elements and the Built Environment

Built environment does not “simply appear overnight, like a movie-set springing up on a vacant lot, but has to be produced”.Thus, the first point in dealing with such an environment is considered to be the tracing of time in the evaluation of the city and keeping in mind that the whole is more than its parts. The last point becomes naturally understood when the process of city building is probed; because the notion of process in itself comprises the relatedness among the socio-cultural events that resulted in urban artefacts. This also means considering a large number of factors, especially socio-cultural ones, involved in this process. By doing this, we can relate the physical environment with the social, “relating the world of artefacts with the world of people” – who built and used them Considering this argument, the paper examines structural elements influences on the development and use of urban space in Qatâr-chyân quarter, Sanandaj, Iran as a historical narrative. It is argued that the existence of Dara-bayân River, socio-political role of the Wakils’ family and Ulamâ (educated people with religious backgrounds), and the continuation of principal route, through the residential segregation, formed and drove the phases of quarter’s development and defined the main socio-spatial structural elements of the quarter. The paper then proceeds to examine those structural elements as they were before overall influences of modernism in Iranian context, especially before the first cross-roads of the city in 1930. The paper concludes that, in defining and conceptualising the structural elements of a particular built environment, it is difficult to rely on one factor. While the role of nature as form giver is an important factor, we can not undermine other soft factors, especially socio-cultural ones. This defines the nature of built form which comprises both the realms of the physical and the social and multi-dimensions background namely as socio-spatial factors.