A 19th century stellar vault in Tehran

What is it about?

We discovered and documented a decorative vaulted ceiling belonging to a commercial plaza in the Bazaar district of Tehran. The plaza belongs to late 19th century, commissioned by the Persian prime minister (chancellor) of the time, and based on a number of clues, most likely by an outstanding builder of the time, Us Hassan Qomi. The plaza is still in use, however they have remodeled it with a flat drop ceiling that has concealed the lavish vault. We photographed the vault from the modern-day attic, and reconstructed the stellar plan from the pictures. We also rendered a very minimalist 3D model of the load-bearing structure behind the decorative ceiling and ran some simplified load assignments to measure the loads running down to each pier/column. Our other contributions to the topic include a background on how mathematical aesthetics found central role in Islamic arts, a brief history on the evolution and morphology of Islamic stellar vaults, and yazdi-bandi in particular, and a review of the state of knowledge on the subject.

Featured Image

Photo by Reza Payandeh on Unsplash

Photo by Reza Payandeh on Unsplash

Why is it important?

1) Scholarship into the subject of Islamic stellar vaults has much to catch up with. 2) The most referenced classical sources on Persian architecture stop at the end of the Safavid period, leaving the far richer heritage of the 18th and 19th centuries to complete oblivion. 3) In addition to the scholarly blackout on Qajar architecture, much of Tehran's cultural heritage has been razed in the past mere decade or two to a corrupt power class, who with strong political ties can violate every statute, replacing priceless historical heritage with malls and condominium towers. For these reasons, our effort to document this architectural edifice before its destruction, and the key role it plays in completing that historical picture of Qajar architecture becomes important.

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