معماری عادی شیراز

Shiraz Vernacular

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Community Design •Architecture •
by Rezwan • 04/01/2009, 11:03 PM • Tell-a-friend •

ٌThis is what I experience from the rooftop in Shiraz, any given morning.

A cock crows. Somewhere, workers assemble scaffolding. They stand on the ledger and call to eachother as iron and stone clang together. A large blue plastic sheet, draped around a building, flutters and slaps at the exposed brick, yearning to break free. A power saw hums its way through stone, or metal. A magpie flaps over the roof and into a nearby fir tree, and rustles in its branches.

Another rooster wails. The city murmurs. The sun breaches the hills.

I look out over the city. What a mess. No discernable skyline. Haze obscuring the hills. Buildings sprawled across the valley. Dozens of apartment buildings, 6-8 stories, under construction, pushing their way up through the dilapidating older houses in rapid urban succession. Flush up to the street and eachother. Setbacks? Are you kidding? Don't give an inch.

Most of the houses are crowned with barbs and festooned with bars. Branching spear heads guard the tops of walls. A spray of static arrows bristles around every odd corner. Some houses have razor wire, some walls are topped with broken glass.

I long for the days without bars, when I could climb off the roof and into the city, a were-cat, unnoticed and unremarked.

Windows everywhere shine neon oilslick blue. They are tinted and impenetrable. They reflect the world outside, reject it, repell it. It's a sad town for voyeurs.

Rusty satellite dishes perch on every roof. Evaporation air conditioners are crammed into every apartment balcony like tumors, eating up any sitting space.

But who would sit on their balconies anyway? Who has a porch? The private/public boundary is thick, deliberate, bristling with deterrents, well guarded. What are you looking at? You looking at me? You looking at me? Don't even THINK about my inner sanctum or my women.

Bling and broken glass and one-way window mirrors and shiny marble facades all wink in the morning sun. It's lovely. Truly. Urban spontenaity, mistrust and self-assertion written in shiny stone and glass. This is the result.

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