Explaining the Continuity of Hospitality from Iranian House to Contemporary Apartment

Hospitality has been a pleasant trait in Iranian-Islamic culture. In the past, the physical-spatial context of Iranian houses provided a good opportunity to meet this social need. However, nowadays, the quality of the spaces of the houses has undergone several changes, considering various factors, such as a reduction in people’s financial capability, change in lifestyle, and increase in the density of the cities. For instance, the quality of the spaces of the house has reduced to entertain the guest. The current study aimed to explain the continuity of hospitality in today’s apartment units without repeating the spatial-physical feature of the Iranian house. The second research question is as follows: By changing the lifestyle, which physical, behavioral, and semantic features can be preserved in today's apartment housing to continue the culture of hospitality? The research hypothesis was that despite the spatial-physical limits of contemporary architecture, hospitality could be created by adapting semantic-perceptual, and behavioral-functional criteria of the traditional houses to the physique of the contemporary apartments. This study was logical reasoning research using a comparative study of the traditional and conventional housing samples. 12 samples of the Iranian houses from the Qajar period to the contemporary apartment housing were selected, and the research results were obtained by analyzing these samples. In the theoretical framework of this study, hospitality was analyzed using semantic-perceptual, functional-behavioral, and environmental-physical criteria in three layers of welcome-see-off, accommodation, and reception (service). The research findings indicated that by creating a spatial hierarchy and proper designing of the territories, the ground for hospitality and its continuation can be provided in the contemporary house. The non-interference of the private and public realms (privacy) and overlaying the public and semi-public realms (flexibility), when necessary, made the traditional house proper for hospitality. The secondary effect of the spatial-physical realization of the hospitality was an answer to the initial hypothesis of the research regarding the latent values in the family’s relationship with others in the intimate environment of the house.