Mohsen Foroughi: Iranian Modernism and the Architect as Government Agent

Mohsen Foroughi (1907-1983) was one of the most important and influential Iranian architects of the modern era. Standing at the intersection between modernism, tradition, and the Beaux-Arts, Foroughi’s work traces the major cultural developments of twentieth-century Iran and the Middle East – from the development of a new Iranian nationalism in the 1930s, to the emergence of a high modernist aesthetic of the mid-twentieth century, and finally to a more locally-expressive and formalist approach in the 1960s and 70s. Published as part of the Bloomsbury Studies in Modern Architecture series, which brings to light the work of significant yet overlooked modernist architects, this book reveals Foroughi’s vital roles as a designer, educator, and politician in Iran’s program of modernisation, and explores a selection of case-study buildings including Foroughi’s branches for the Iranian National Bank, the Sa’di Mausoleum, his Senate House of Iran, and the Maison de l’Iran in Paris. This is the first English-language study of the career of an Iranian modernist architect, offering new and unique insights into the expansion of twentieth-century modern architecture into non-Euro-American global contexts.