Niloofar started architectural studies in 2003 in Iran where she particularly became interested in history of the discipline. In 2009 she received her Master’s degree in Histories and Theories of Architecture from Architectural Association. She then enrolled again at the AA for the PhD course in 2011. As well as her research, she works on architectural projects in Iran.
Identity Disinterred: The Uses and Abuses of a Past in Architectural Representation of a Present
Marina Lathouri, Vida Norouz Borazjani
This thesis focuses on the development of the historicist understanding of collective identity in the architecture of Iran since the country’s modernization in the 1920s. It looks at this architectural approach as a consequence of much broader socio-political conditions and nationalist movements that led to the change of monarchy in 1925 and ultimately the revolution of 1979. In this sense, it focuses on the politics of production of architectural knowledge and historiography and follows its academic developments. Ultimately it aims to construct a conceptual platform for critically assessing such representations of identity in contemporary architecture and revisit the almost ignored value of the contemporary as a means to express a collective identity. PhD completed in 2015.
