The legacy of the École des Beaux-Arts in twentieth-century Iran: the architecture of Mohsen Foroughi

Abstract

The first Iranian to graduate from the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris was Mohsen Foroughi. A leading architect and educator who played a key role in the professionalisation of architecture in Iran, Foroughi maintained his status as a respected national and international figure in the architectural discipline from the early 1960s until the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Through a focused investigation of Foroughi’s teaching and architectural works from the 1930s to the 1960s, this article foregrounds a convergence that occurred between Beaux-Arts practices and the Iranian will towards a nationalist expression. This convergence was not simply an exportation of the Beaux-Arts methods abroad; it explicitly began in the setting of the Beaux-Arts in France where such a convergence found a productive ‘testing ground’ before its eventual transfer to Iran. The article’s findings are based on archival research conducted in Paris and Tehran, and a close comparative analysis of Foroughi’s student projects at the École with his significant architectural projects in Iran. What emerges is a surprisingly subtle transformation of architectural expression from one context to the other, made possible by the particular operations of the Beaux-Arts methods within the Iranian context.