| Abstrakt: |
In recent years, the concept of "mentality" has found its way into architectural research especially within the realm of Persian historic architecture, often framed as a research approach known as history of public mentality. While this approach extends beyond architectural history studies and has been employed in various historical fields in the West for decades, there remains a gap in understanding the essence of mentality and its role in relation to architecture. a nuanced comprehension of this concept, including its functions, or its determinants and components is crucial, especially in architectural studies, where it can serve as a valuable tool for sourcing reliable data and informing research process. The main goal of this paper is to explain and consolidate the interdisciplinary notion of "architectural mentality" -as a complex interplay of thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, imaginations, and wishes of the people of a society in relation to architectural issues- and its various dimensions, relying on existing sociological explanations of the concept of mentality, and applying logical argumentation research method. Through a comprehensive literature review, the paper examines existing definitions and explanations presented so far for the concept of mentality and its features, functions, determinants and components are drawn out from existing sources. Then the concept of architectural mentality is consolidated through discussing various examples, using inductive reasoning. At the next step, relying on the explanations about the concept of mentality based on the theory of social construction of reality, and by applying deductive reasoning, the concept of architectural mentality is explained. To facilitate a clearer discussion of the concept's dimensions, the word "Pir-Neshin" -which in Persian means a place where old people can sit and refers to the platforms in both sides of the entrance doors of Persian historic buildings- is selected as one example of architectural mentality in Iran. Through this lens the features, functions, determinants and components of architectural mentality are examined. The findings underscore, architectural mentalities are social constructions of architectural realities within specific temporal and spatial contexts. They operate at unconscious and dispositional level, shaping habits, andserving as tools for attaining knowledge about architectural realities. Architectural mentalities are determined by factors based on cultural structures, collectivity, time and space encompassing Architectural thinking (thinking about architectural realities), architectural imagining (imagining about various features of an architectural reality), architectural feeling (feelings that individuals experience while confronting with architectural realities) and architectural acting (the action containing a specific meaning that individuals preform when confronting with architectural realities). Additionally, contemporary manifestations of architectural mentality such as Pirneshin reflect ongoing social constructions in response toarchitectural contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
