A Cross-Scale Rereading of the Linkage between House-Garden and Garden-City in the Historic Urban Fabric of Urmia: A Mixed-Methods Approach to Reconciling Vernacular Architecture and Urban Planning

Abstract

Historic Iranian cities are the product of an enduring nexus between humans, nature, and the built environment. In Urmia, this nexus is manifested in the house-garden as a unit of vernacular architecture and in the garden-city as a macro-scale model of urban landscape. However, the gap between vernacular architecture and contemporary urban planning has led the garden-city identity of Urmia into crisis and deteriorated its historic fabric. Previous studies have mostly focused on the internal structure of the house-garden, while its linkage to the urban fabric and its role in the continuity of garden-city identity have been less examined. The main question is: How can the linkage patterns between the house-garden and the garden-city in the historic fabric of Urmia be re-read, and what approach can be offered for reconciling vernacular architecture and urban planning? The research was conducted using a mixed-methods (qualitative-quantitative) approach. The qualitative phase involved interviews with 15 experts and led to the extraction of 54 codes, 12 axial categories, and 4 selective categories. The quantitative phase used a questionnaire with a reliability of 0.87 distributed among 80 participants, and data were analyzed through correlation and factor analysis. The findings showed that the physical structure of the house-gardens is stable (mean = 4.20), but the reconciliation of vernacular architecture and urban planning (2.50) and the continuity of garden-city identity (2.80) are weak. Garden-city identity had the strongest relationship with reconciliation (r = 0.67) and factor loading (β = 0.71). The proposed approach is three-layered: recognizing the geometry and hierarchy of the house-garden, redesigning access and visual axes based on the sharbagh pattern, and formulating macro-level regulations for institutionalizing vernacular architecture. This approach can serve as a model for other historic cities in Iran.