During the history weather in Iran has not been changed that much in comparison with contemporary weather. Ancient architects always considered the climate in their architecture in order to build houses, mosques, bazaars, palaces and et cetera in their own age.
They knew climate and architecture are two inseparable things like newborn baby and hugging or safe territory to thrive. Because they believed we would always be an element of the nature and got the inspiration from nature instead of being against that.
For example, using cooler, air conditioner, chiller or heater are the solutions and tools for being against the nature but the solution like making underground floor in order to have cool and chill chamber in traditional houses in districts with hot and dry climate like Yazd province is kind of getting inspiration from the nature.
In our website we want to describe about four general climates of Iran and their effect on formation of historical monuments and traditional houses in Iran.
What are climate elements?
Generally, there are some of factors which make climate in a district and effect not only the ancient but also modern architects to build the houses. They consider these items in their architectural approach. Of course, in our website we are going to take part in ancient palaces and houses not modern ones because our website is about historical or ancient attractions of Iran:
- sunshine
- Air temperature
- humidity
- wind
- rainfall
how did climate elements effect on architecture of traditional houses?
- sunshine is effectively necessary for keeping inside the house light but because of changing the light to heat inside the house, considering the climate used to be an important factor in defining windows and doors dimensions to adjust the amount of light entering inside the house. If you visit a house which is located in hot and dry climate district of Iran like Yazd or Kashan, you will notice that architects built roofs in hemisphere shape. The reason is during the day half of the hollowed hemisphere roof is under the shade and this state makes inside the room below the roof kind of cool. Importance of wind made Iranian architects built or invent some elements according to the climate. Some of these elements are several types of windcatchers, windmills, traditional or ancient refrigerators and house gardens which we talk about them more and more detailed in our website.
- Air temperature is a factor the house builder considered. They chose the special material for walls like adobe bricks and muds for minimizing the heat wasting from inside the rooms in winter and summer.
- humidity made architects stablish their houses on wooden poles for those which are located near the Southern shoreline of Caspian Sea because of humid weather. But the house which are located on foothill mountains were built on stone and mud to protect them from humidity.
- wind also played an important role in defining architectural way to stablish traditional houses in different eras. Again, we want to bring another example up from hot and dry climate houses. The location of yard established in a way which didn’t allow external and harmful winds to enter the rooms and on the other hand catch desirable winds via fantastic element named windcatcher in order to keep inside the hall cool and ventilated.
- rainfall is another climate elements which made architects to find a solution to protect houses from that. They create balconies around the houses in every floor to protect inside the rooms from rain penetrations in districts with moderate and humid climate.
What are Iran’s climates?
- Hot and dry climate (Central Plateau)
- Cold and mountainous climate (Northwestern and Western mountains)
- Moderate and humid climate (Southern shoreline of Caspian Sea)
- Hot and humid climate (South of Iran)