Saghakhane, the Rebirth of a Dead Environmental Design

چکیده مقاله

Within the context of the Iranian community, there are environmental elements that people interact with; among which, is “Saghakhaneh”; an architecturally-built public drinking fountain. Despite the fact that a few of them remained unaffected, from its early days and over time, the functionality of Saghakhaneh has drastically transformed from being a mere public drinking place to a shrine where people visit to pray, whispering their concerns and whishes to God, and then recently, to a mass-produced automatic money-collecting device, ubiquitously installed in cities to supposedly serve people’s desires and requests. The device has different coin slots and a series of selector buttons to be activated based on your request; the greater the request, the more money you need to pay! This paper is broadly concerned with experiences of users interacting with the former and recent versions of shaghakhaneh. This paper also reports on our ongoing investigation into the social and environmental factors contributed to the rebirth of shaghakhaneh to its current technological state.