Blurring Private and Public Lives by Design: Isfahan University of Technology, 1977-2005

Abstract

he history of Isfahan University of Technology (IUT) is more than a case study in modernization or the development of higher education in Iran; it is a way into Iranian social, cultural, institutional, and urban history. In contrast to most universities in Iran, IUT was the product of a long period of design and planning. Furthermore, it was designed to be a self-contained academic community: near to, but apart from, the city of Isfahan, bordering but autonomous from the working-class municipality of Seddeh (aka Homayunshahr, aka Khomeinishahr). The design of the university contained other blurred conceptual borders. Some were intentional; for example, the concentration of a technical elite, insulated from distractions and central government interference, yet also contributing to the governance of the country as a “think tank” for development policy. Some were unavoidable: where was the line between private and professional life if you lived where you worked? Still other boundaries remained unacknowledged and unresolved, such as the socioeconomic boundaries embedded in the hierarchies of academic life itself. As I worked to build the story of this university from its planning documents, from oral history interviews, and from a visit to Iran in January 2005, I was reminded of what the university meant to me. My father was the fi rst chancellor of IUT and my family was among its fi rst residents in 1978; his connection to the university was part of my connection to it. The campus was also part of our history as father and son. Beyond this, my interviews with my father and his colleagues clearly locate the university as a place where personal ambitions became fused with national ambitions. The “public space” of the campus was something into which they projected themselves, reclaiming it for their private lives. The university was a chance for its planners to assert personal control over the course of modernization in Iran, but it was a chance that proved fl eeting, and, in the end, this illusion of control could not withstand the weight of historical circumstances. The university opened its doors in the early days of the Islamic revolution of 1977–79. Its designers had barely settled into their academic paradise when they