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This paper sets out to consider the relationship between design education, architects’ colour knowledge, colour orientations and colour use in design practice. Specifically, a survey of 274 architects, architectural academics and postgraduates in Australia and Iran addressed the questions—is design education informing colour knowledge, and does colour education and knowledge inform an architect’s colour use in their designs? The findings suggest colour use in architecture has two chief influences: (1) Colour Orientation (architects’ general attitudes and prejudices towards colour use); and (2) Contextual Variables (the cultural and physical context of designs). The study shows that while the amount of colour education that architects receive has little role in informing their colourfulness orientations (i.e., how colourful they believe architecture in general should be), the greater an architect’s colour knowledge the more colourful their designs will be. The study suggests that the colourfulness of contemporary buildings is likely influenced more by levels of architects’ theoretical colour knowledge and by their personal preferences rather than by contextual influences such as the cultural and physical context of a design, the building function, or client directives.

The development of materials and visualization technology is transforming the colour palettes of cities. As architects have significant roles in determining the appearance of buildings that contribute to city colourscapes, it might be expected that they have considerable colour knowledge. However, there is largely an absence of colour training in built environment education outside of interior design, meaning architects are likely making colour choices based on practical rather than theoretical knowledge. This prompts the question: what informs the architect’s colour choices? While colour has been studied in a broad range of disciplines, few studies have focussed on the built environment and even fewer on how and why built environment designers choose colours. This article explains the origins and development of a framework for understanding factors that influence architects’ uses of colour. The framework has informed a national survey in Australia to determine how personal and educational experiences have affected the use of colour.

Today, our understanding and experience of heritage sites have been reframed by the advent of social media and the ubiquitous use of smartphones that offer more participatory ways of interacting with heritage. The lifespan of a heritage site is highly concerned with how it is understood and experienced by visitors. This study aims to investigate a heritage site and its participatory culture through the lens of social media and how a certain heritage site could be understood by these online networks. The historic city of Shiraz packed with several monumental buildings and heritage sites has been chosen as the case study of this research. Three social media platforms of Flickr, 500px and Instagram were investigated during 2015 and their photos of Shiraz were downloaded for analysis. The analysis of more than 186 images from these websites has provided an opportunity to investigate how the historical district of Shiraz is remembered in the eyes of social media users. Based on the initial photo audits, Nasir-al-Molk Mosque with more than 74 published images was the most published building and therefore was selected for an in-depth photo survey analysis. The Nasir-al-Molk Mosque images were studied regarding the physical and spiritual qualities of its building and how they contribute to its popularity among social media photographers.

The ubiquitous of smartphones and access to social media provide a new way of interacting with urban environments. The archived and shared images on social media not only indicate users’ interest but also they embody what users want to remember from a city. To investigate the evaluative image of a city through published images, Melbourne CBD has been selected as a case study. An in-depth survey of 460 geotagged photos from CBD in Flickr, 500px and Instagram (during 2014), provides an opportunity for city planners and urban designers to transform the image of a city to be more likeable, meaningful.

Culture and identity in a society can be represented in the architecture and the meanings intertwined with it. In this sense, the architecture and design are the interface for transferring meaning and identity to the nation and future generations. Persian gardens have been evolved through the history of Persian Empire in regard to the culture and beliefs of the society. This paper aims to investigate the patterns of design and architecture in Persian gardens and the meanings intertwined with their patterns and significant elements such as water and trees. Persian gardens are not only about geometries and shapes; but also manifest different design elements, each representing a specific symbol and its significance among the society. This paper seeks to explore Persian gardens in terms of their geometric structure, irrigation system, network construction and pavilions alongside design qualities such as hierarchy, symmetry, centrality, rhythm and harmony. In thesecond stage, the paper investigates the fundamental symbols and their philosophy in the creation of Persian gardens and in relation to the architecture and design.

This paper investigates if the cultural indoctrination of architects impacts their use of colour in their designs. Here, cultural indoctrination is considered as the process by which an architect's socio-cultural background informs their design ideas and attitudes. Specifically, a survey of 274 architects, architectural academics and postgraduates in Australia and Iran addressed the question: does an architect's cultural background affect their general attitudes to colour and their use of colour when designing and, if so, how? A series of quantitative and qualitative analyses were conducted to answer these questions. The findings reinforce evidence from other studies indicating that colour use is influenced by culture and elucidate for the design community greater understanding about the relationship between culture and colour use in architecture. In particular, it is demonstrated that architects' preferences towards more colourful designs are informed by practice influences; such as contemporary trends and demands, facilitated by new material and representational technologies, for more colourful buildings in our cities. Moreover, although climatic conditions, light intensity, heritage context and local materials were contextual factors influencing colour use both in Iran and Australia, a large difference was found between the two countries on the impact, and especially imposed limitations, of socio-cultural factors on colour cognition, preferences and use.

This paper considers if the gender of architects, as one aspect of their cultural indoctrination, impacts their colour use. In other words, it considers if colour use in architectural design is gendered via a process of cultural indoctrination that is influenced by the attitudes towards gender, principally in relation to the biological sex binary, that are prevalent in the cultural contexts that shape us. A survey of 274 designers asked: does gender affect an architect's general attitude towards three dependant variables: 1) colour use; 2) colour preferences; 3) use of colour when designing? It was found that while female architects perceived colour to be more important to architecture than males did, females' portfolios are significantly less colourful. Gender differences were also found for hue preference, dominant colour use and the use of colours for building exteriors. The findings provide the design community with more information about the relationship between culture and colour responses and highlight how gender values may, via colour use, impact architectural design. The authors argue for an approach to design education that acknowledges the potency of architects' subjective tendencies in relation to objective design influences such as the brief or the physical context of a building.

High air pollution, car dependency, and increasing statistics of obesity and cardiovascular diseases are growing issues in the mega city of Tehran, the capital city of Iran. Therefore, investigating the quality of walkability as an effective solution for these issues in Valiasr Street, the longest street of Middle East and one of the key vena of Tehran, becomes significant. Research shows that despite the attempts of executed projects, the majority of implemented actions in this street were not in accordance with services of its pedestrian facilities. Even in some cases, they may threaten the walking environment. This paper discusses not only the physical features of Valiasr Street but it also considers the consequences of policies and municipal decisions in light of walkability criteria. Using walkability indexes from various scholars, this study seeks to investigate the level of walkability in Valiasr Street through field observation and mapping by trained observers/ auditors.