A perusal of the literature on housing debates reveals that the term ‘value’ is mostly applied to express the financial value of a house and is dealt with in economic literature. However, an alternative meaning of the word ‘value’ in the housing literature can be found in research into the values underlying housing preferences, applying research methods from the marketing literature. The explicit combination of moral values and housing policy and design is found neither in the academic housing nor in the philosophical literature. However, diving deeper into the housing debate reveals that there are a host of moral values already present throughout this debate that are often not explicitly articulated and explicated, such as inclusiveness, sustainability, autonomy, and security. The aim of this paper is to address the role of values in housing policy and design. By doing so, we apply the Design for Values approach (DfV). We argue that the DfV approach can help to make implicit moral values more explicit, which can improve the housing debate, housing policy-making, and housing design. The paper first explores which values are relevant for housing policy and design and operationalizes those values. Next, the paper describes key debates in housing such as: What is “adequate housing” in times of rapid urbanization and increasing house prices? We argue that by exploring the underlying values of these debates, stakeholders can create a better understanding of the current (lack of) fundamental discussions on housing issues

Various constellations of oil actors—including corporations and nations—have shaped seemingly disconnected and geographically distant landscapes, cities, and buildings around the world over the last 150 years. Corporate, public, and popular media have publicized these cycles of spatializing oil. Together, construction and representation have created what is here collectively identified as a global palimpsestic petroleumscape. Based on archival research and a flourishing literature of secondary sources, this article applies the concept of the petroleumscape to two case studies in Iran and identifies two patterns of spatializing oil. First, in the southern region of Khuzestan, it tracks Iran’s modern transformation under the influence of British Petroleum (BP) (1901–1951), when oil and governmental interests built a complete support landscape. Then, in the capital Tehran, it investigates how US players helped shape the petroleumscape between 1953 and 1979, in line with US styles of consumption, car use, and urban development.

The concept of the Global Petroleumspace is an analytical tool which engages the roles which different oil actors play in the development of new urban ideas and built forms. Coined by Hein, this concept contributes to enriching our understanding of globalization, modernity, and architectural history and their impacts on space through time. Petroleum is modern industry’s fuel par excellence. For much of the world, it is the arrival of petroleum on the local scene that introduces modernity with its attendant spaces, forms, materials, and discourses. To frame this new discourse on urban development and petromodernity, three events were organized: ‘Petroleumscape Roundtable’ held as part of the 17th IPHS Conference at TU Delft, ‘Petroleum Modernism Symposium’, organized at the Illinois Institute of Technology, and ‘The Global Petroleumscape Conference’ held at the Faculty of Architecture at TU Delft. This article briefly recounts and reflects upon the scholarly discussions which took place at these events, in order to outline an emergent discourse on petroleum’s imbrication in architecture and planning.

Oil revenues in the late 1960s enabled the Iranian government to fund several international architecture congresses. Throughout the 1970s, a group of young Iranian architects organized a series of architectural events, among them the second Iran International Congress of Architects (IICA), held in Persepolis-Shiraz in 1974. This Congress resulted in the 'Habitat Bill of Rights', a CIAM-like charter submitted by the Iranian government to the first UN-conference on 'Human Settlements' in 1976. This article reveals the 1974 IICA's instrumental role in shaping the discourse on architectural regionalism in the design for dwelling and human habitats, approaches to the relationship between tradition and modernity, and importantly how the architecture of Kamran Diba aimed to bridge the gap between local culture and internationalism, by forming a novel synthesis of these two approaches. To illustrate the latter, this article examines the design and development of Shushtar-Nou, a new community model designed by Diba in southwest Iran. Implicit within its design is Diba's view on the Congress debates and his goal in developing a malleable environment that accommodated growth and change over time, while preserving its core attributes.

This article examines the growth and change through time of Kuy-e Narmak, a housing neighbourhood developed in the 1950s under the auspices of Mosaddeq’s Modernization Program. The project was designed by a group of young-leading European-educated Iranian architects that collaborated with the government to develop affordable housing solutions in Iran. To design this project, these architects advanced solutions that explored a cross-pollination between the principles of the functional city, and references from vernacular architecture. Over the last 6 decades, the number of households living in Narmak increased dramatically, from the initial goal of accommodating 7500 families, to the 90,000 families that currently live there. This article discusses the extent to which the initial design decisions were instrumental to cope with this extraordinary increase in the district’s density. We have used typological and morphological analysis, combined with site surveys and interviews to investigate the district’s growth and change through time. This article argues that the designer’s critical combination of modernist planning concepts with elements borrowed from Iran’s vernacular tradition resulted in a socially inclusive urban community. The plan’s rigid urban form has become instrumental in defining a neutral background to accommodate the ever-changing social and spatial practices of its inhabitants.