Renegade Cosmopolitans: Iranian Architects, Professional Power, and the State

Abstract

Through migration, professional activism, and by engaging the symbolic terrain of architecture magazines and competitions, Iranian architects have sought to make their profession cosmopolitan. But following decades of isolationist tendencies, factions of the Iranian architecture profession continue to meet resistance from elements of the state. The profession’s institutions have become a battleground for the expression of the power of design professionals. Building on scholarship on relationships between states and professions as well as professionals’ expressions of cosmopolitanism, this paper demonstrates ways everyday professionals leverage their institutions for professional power. It shares accounts from a transnational ethnography of Iranian architects to show how, on the one hand, professional change seeps outside restrictions attributed to political and economic borders. On the other hand, the stories of cosmopolitan professionals show that the state need not be bound by structural sanctions, like those Iran has faced, in its efforts to cultivate an avant-garde.