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a crucial nexus in the global flows of capital, people, and politics.MUHAMMAD REzA SHAH AND TEHRAN AS EPICENTER
(1941-79)After the Allies forced his father to abdicate during World War II,
Muhammad Reza Shah continued his secular program, fueled by oil
revenues. (Figure 11) In a thriving economy, oil and modernism be-
came coterminous as the Shah engaged in an orgy of building de-
signed to make the capital an international epicenter.Petrodollars in hand, he lured an impressive array of famous Western architects to par-
ticipate in structural and stylistic experimentation. Entire cities were to be built within
and around Tehran. A paradigmatic example was Shahestan Pahlavi, a huge adminis-
trative township intended to centralize governmental bureaus, following the model of
Manhattan under mayor John Lindsey. As they embarked on such grand projects, the
imported architects visited and were influenced by magnificent Safavid architectural re-
mains. Many consequently attempted an architectural vocabulary which paid homage
to that rich tradition, an effort aided by joint ventures with Iranian architects. Another
scheme was Pardisan, an ultra-modern island resort designed as a Middle Eastern Las
Vegas for Gulf shaykhs. This path-breaking global park was to simulate the five climatic
zones of the world and incorporate an animal reserve, museums, a planetarium, cultural
centers, and picnic grounds.
The new Tehran was in one sense a global place where flows of capital, goods, information, and people converged.
Its population had quadrupled by the mid-1970s, reaching 4.5 million. Yet, despite extensive building, the urban in-
frastructure remained feeble; without a modern sanitary sewage system or adequate public utilities, including public
transportation, it was incapable of handling onslaughts of people, commodities, and cars. Further, the city polarized into
a northern half populated by the affluent, secularized classes and a generally poorer, less developed southern area. Be-
neath the modern, cosmopolitan veneer of the global city flowed a latent
religious current, ill at ease with modernity. As is well known, it was the
persistence of certain strains of “local” culture rather than global forces
that ended Muhammad Reza Shah’s reign. After almost a half century of
ambivalently modernizing and globalizing, Iran established the first mod-
ern Islamic state and became, ironically, the global symbol of the rejection
of global forces.
Figure 5: Shamsol Emareh
Figure 6: Reza Shah, Seuvrugran
photoFigure 7: Maydan Sepah