Examining the Role of Physical Factors in Nobahar Street’s livelihood in Kermanshah According to the Users’ Opinions of the Space

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Assistant Professor of Architecture, Department of Architecture, Faculty of Engineering, Razi University, Kermanshah, Iran.

2 Ph.D. Candidate of Architecture, Department of Architecture, Faculty of Art and Architecture, Tarbiat Modares University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran.

Abstract

People’s presence, moving, and voluntary stops in urban spaces are some of the most important indicators of the vitality of these environments. According to these indicators, Nobahar Street is one of the most vital streets in the city of Kermanshah. However, it seems that people’s presence in this environment, more than anything, is due to economic, social, and cultural factors, and the current architecture of the street has little importance in the matter. Therefore, the current study attempted to prepare the background for using the capacity of this factor to make this important urban hangout more vital by evaluating the architectural strengths and weaknesses of Nobahar Street based on the users’ demands and opinions. The current study aimed to evaluate the Nobahar Street’s physical strengths and weaknesses according to the required factors to create and strengthen the vitality of environment and to prioritize and balance this evaluation based on the users’ opinions in order to provide the context to improve the environmental qualities according to the users’ demands of this street. The study’s approach was descriptive-analytical and the data collection method was a combination of written sources and field survey; in the first part, the architecture of Nobahar Street was evaluated using the vitality factors extracted from written sources. The results of this evaluation were examined according to the users’ opinions using the in-depth interview and a questionnaire. For this, questions in 7 different areas were asked of 38 randomly chosen users. The repetition or verification of factors was the criterion for testing the hypothesis and prioritizing the physical strengths and weaknesses of the street according to the users’ opinions. The results showed that the most important architectural strength of Nobahar Street was due to its geometry on macro-scale, whereas its weaknesses generally were in medium and micro scales. The users of this street considered the use of trees, soft and penetrable edges, and eventually its proper and observable width to be its most important architectural strengths while they recognized the architectural weaknesses to be associated with its unrecognizable inner parts, lack of awning windows above the ground floor, and eventually non-uniformity among the facades. Thus, according to users’ opinion, improving the quality of architectural factors can be realized by considering medium and micro scales.

Keywords

References

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Armanshahr Architecture & Urban Development
Volume 14, Issue 34
June 2021
Pages 47-64

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History

  • Receive Date: 02 June 2019
  • Revise Date: 29 December 2019
  • Accept Date: 13 July 2020

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