This lecture presents key characteristics of Persian Garden in Iran, to offer an understanding of architectural and urban qualities of it; accordingly, the components of the Persian garden can be summarized as follows: Walls, The Surroundings, Water, Vegetation, Shades, Geometry and viewpoint. It also illustrates the architectural characteristics of four case studies from different contexts and eras to show how important the relation with the Persian Garden is in Iranian architecture. The four case studies addressed in this lecture are selected because of their historical and architectural importance; their exemplary nature in terms of Persian Garden settlements; their location in different parts of Iran, thus expressing a variety of architectural and cultural elements.
It is in the gardens of ancient Persia that we have always looked for the symbolic source and the aesthetic ideal behind the great traditions of garden art across the countries of the Iranian plateau. From prehistoric times, with the art of pottery from the Iranian plateau, an image appeared, that of the division of space into four parts around the point where the two branches of a cross meet. This structure, we find it constantly in all manifestations of the Iranian spirit; this archetype of the garden-paradise is in fact the invisible thread which constitutes the memory of Iran, and which is constantly renewed and metamorphosed. It was for the first time in the reign of the Achaemenids that this primordial image was materialized in architectural forms of the gardens called Paridaeza. The palatial group of Pasargadae (6th century BC) with its garden is exemplary in this matter, and it was at this time that the foundations of the Persian garden were laid.
As a UNESCO World Heritage property since 2011, the Persian Garden occupies a central place in the Iranian world. Although no Persian description of the Achaemenid pleasure parks has survived, the etymology of the Median pari.daēza and the old Persian pari.daida designates a wall and the territory it delimits. These structures were delimited by a wall separating the inner zone from what was beyond. It is imperative to emphasize more precisely on the configuration of these walled gardens as the fruit of the ingenious marriage of natural and artificial elements, animated by an intelligent hydraulic infrastructure developing systems and technologies to collect and use water and to exploit the properties of different types of vegetation to create proper microenvironments. The construction of these gardens required a precise knowledge of topography, mechanics, water management and engineering, botany and agriculture. It also presupposed the performance of a powerful executive authority capable of carrying out projects from the smallest scale to the largest. Choosing a place, taking water there, limiting it with an enclosure, digging irrigation canals and ponds, greening plants, raising pavilions were the issues faced by the creators of these gardens.
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