Family and education Kianouri was born in
Nur, Iran Province
Mazandaran. and graduated from the
University of Aachen in 1939. His thesis was on the Healthcare & Hospital Constructions in Iran. After completing his high school education at Dār al-Fonun (q.v.), Kiānuri entered the Engineering Faculty of the newly founded University of Tehran (see FACULTIES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF TEHRAN) in September 1934 (Kiānuri, 1942, p. 52). At the university, he became acquainted with leftist students and briefly participated in a Marxist reading circle, but he was not affiliated with the “Group of Fifty-Three” (Goruh-e panjāh o se nafar), a circle of leftist intellectuals led by Taqi Arāni (q.v.) that gained much publicity after its members were detained by the authorities in 1937 (Kiānuri, 1992, pp. 55–56). In 1935, Kianouri left Iran for Germany to commence his undergraduate studies in architecture at the Technische Hochschule Aachen (Technical University of Aachen). He initially received financial support from his brother and from a cousin residing in Aachen. After two years of study, he was able to secure a scholarship from the Iranian Ministry of Roads (Kianouri, 1992, pp. 58–59). In November 1938, he received his diploma (HArch, 1368a). Shortly thereafter, he was employed by the
Philipp Holzmann Company in
Munich, a German firm commissioned to build a new hospital for the University of Tehran
Imam Khomeini Hospital Complex -before Iranian Revolution called 1000 beds hospital that is the biggest hospital in Iran- (Kianouri, 1992, p. 59). At the same time, he began working on his civil engineering doctoral thesis "Krankenhausbau für Iran, Der heutige Stand und die Neuordnung der Volksgesundheits-und Kranken-Fürsorge in Iran"”. (The Construction of Hospitals for Iran), which focused on the medical infrastructure in Iran. He successfully defended his thesis at the Technische Hochschule Aachen in September 1939 (Kianouri, 1942, p. 52; HArch, 1368b). ===Return from
German Reich to
Imperial State of Persia 1939=== In the early 1940s he married feminist and communist activist
Maryam Firouz daughter of
Abdol-Hossein Farman Farma; at the time he taught structure at
Tehran University. On the political side, he joined the
Tudeh Party in 1942 about a year after its foundation,
Association of Iranian Architects (1945–1955) On 29 September 1941, within a month of
Reza Shah’s abdication, a group of recent graduates from European universities and former political activists announced the formation of an Iranian communist party: the Tudeh Party (the Party of the Masses). Besides their political activities in the form of demonstrations and gatherings, they set out to train and educate the public, specifically the working and middle classes. During 1946 the Tudeh Party extended its activities with a view to mobilizing middle-class, working-class, and intellectuals. The mission resulted in the formation of numerous groups, circles, and clubs as sympathizers of the Tudeh Party or associated organizations, namely Women’s Association, Youth Association, Officers’ Organization, Students’ Association, Writers’ Association, and Association of Iranian Architects. The role of Association of Iranian Architects was quite fundamental; the discourse of domesticity was at the centre of their political programme to mobilize urban society, addressing women (workers) in particular as a forgotten half of the active political mass. Their ideology was influential in the design and construction of mass housing projects in Tehran during the late 1940s and 1950s. The association launched its own journal, Architect, in order to reach a larger audience. It soon became quite popular and were distributed countrywide. later 1956 with the new name Silvio Macetti moved to Moscow and one year later to
East Germany. In the Soviet Union and East Germany more than others he worked with
Josef Kaiser,
Bruno Flierl and
Georgy A. Gradov (Градов, Георгий Александрович), also an architect and an urban planner. He continued that collaboration after moving to
East Berlin, where he became a research director of the (DBA), developing theories of socialist architecture and urban planning and cooperating with Gradov. In 1968 he published
Großwohneinheiten, which included the strip building as a solution for mass residential construction. A few years later, Gradov published
Stadt und Lebensweise (1971). The two never finalized the research project they worked on for decades, and many of the manuscripts proposals were never published. According to Hamed Khosravi, it is not easy to assess how much practical impact their theoretical work had, but it was clear what the essence of the work was: "For Macetti the key to make any social and political change in the society lied in the question of domestic space", less about fulfilling individual necessities, desires, and needs", and more about "the collective mobilization of those lives through maximization of the communal facilities and minimization of the living units to the bare essential infrastructures." Both authors published many journal articles and research reports, a number of which appeared in Deutsche Architektur. However, the joint research project was never finalized: many manuscripts and proposals remained on paper and were never published. Thus, it is difficult to evaluate to what extent such a theoretical project was actually implemented and promoted by the two institutions in planning new settlements and developing architectural typologies for minimum unit and mass housing. However, the migration of the ideas and application of these principles of co-habitation and a new socialist way of living could be traced along with the multi-faceted life of the leading figure.For Macetti the key to make any social and political change in the society lied in the question of domestic space; a space that no more about fulfilment of the necessities, desires, and needs of the individuals, but rather is about the collective mobilization of those lives through maximization of the communal facilities and minimization of the living units to the bare essential infrastructures. The city and the society indeed were the ultimate targets of the project; where political dimension of life can be exercised. He directly refers to the CIAM principles in his book, and suggests that although they are currently serving the capitalist societies however they could instrumentalised for the mobilization of the society: As a research director of Bauakademie der DDR in Berlin, he designed a new model for
high-rise buildings in accordance with socialist urban development concepts differing from East Germany's
Plattenbau concept. His architectural and urban planning designs (
GroßWohnEinheiten) were later used as the basis of urban planning in the
People's Republic of China. He stayed in East Berlin until 1977, when he was selected as the Secretary General of the Iranian Communist Party. , in the left side sculpture of
Nima Yooshij ===Return to Iran after
Iranian Revolution of 1979=== The couple of Nourredin Kianouri and his wife Miriam Firouz returned to Iran following the
Iranian Revolution of 1979. The Tudeh party was reinstated, and for a short period of time the party remained legal; his wife led the
Democratic Organization of Iranian Women.
Arrest 1982, forced confession 1982-90, house arrest 1990-99, and death 1999 In 1982 the Iranian regime received a list of alleged Soviet agents supplied by KGB defector
Vladimir Kuzichkin (who had been the Soviet contact for the Tudeh Party) from
MI6 and the
CIA, possibly so the British could find favor with the Iranian regime. The British also found the repression of the communist party in Iran to be useful. A series of mass arrests followed, including that of Kianouri and his wife; the Tudeh Party was again banned, accused of espionage for the Soviet Union. In February 1983, Kianouri and his wife were imprisoned at the height of the persecution of communists in Iran. The public confession happened in May 1983, when Kianouri and
Behazin, a well-known writer and translator and member of the Tudeh party, appeared on national television, each giving a recantation that was a kind of "history lesson", in which they outlined how communism had betrayed the people of Iran. Kianouri mentioned how he had come to realize that communism was essentially alien to the people of Iran, and that the party was plagued by private jealousies and corruption. Throughout his presentation he kept his hands under the table: it had been broken during interrogation.) His wife, who had fallen ill during solitary confinement, was released on medical ground and placed under house arrest; he joined her a year later, on the condition that he remain quiet to the media. Later, "in an open letter to Khomeini, Kianouri recorded a horrific catalogue of maltreatment and tortures meted out to him and his wife during their imprisonment". He died in 1999. ==Bibliography==