The published interview following a request from architecture students at the University of Tehran to the Program Head of the Aga Khan Documentation Center at MIT, Dr. Sharon C. Smith.¹  The Iran Architecture Studies Student Community sought information on establishing a digital archive of Iran architecture at the University of Tehran.

Smith's answers were translated into Farsi (Persian)² to be published in koube, the magazine of Iran architectural studies.

The original interview questions are listed here:

1. What are Architectural Documentation Centers and what are the uses of them?
2. Which kind of documents can be archived in such centers? Are books, essays, thesis and dissertation suitable stuffs for document centers?
3. What is the history of architectural documentation centers? Which one was the first and how did they develop?
4. Would you please write about your progress in Aga Khan Center, How did it begin and how did you collect your documents and after all, how is Aga Khan Center now? What does it have, What is it doing, and what are your plans for it?
5. About referring to your documents, how is it possible? How does copyright rules involve documentation centers?
6. How do you evaluate the accuracy and correctness of your documents, for example in cases like heritage plans?
7. How do you evaluate other centers that archive architectural documents?
8. What are the documents selection methods?
9. What are new technologies in documentation?
10. Which ways are the best for easy access and well/easy management to such inventories with that huge amount of data?
11. What kind of detail or data each document should have in an appropriate archive?
12. Does Aga Khan Archive have any rule for archiving documents, such as quality or point of view of picture? Or should there be any kind of rule or disciplines for donated or collected documents?
13. According to Aga Khan’s importance in architecture studies, do you have any plan to ameliorate other countries document centers and inform its proficiency in order to make a worldwide center?
14. There are some architectural centers in Iran, they are not complete and most of them still use paper or hardcopy books and documents. Accessing to their documents is hard and needs physical presence at their place, university recommendation, sometimes with taking money and even worse with a limit for sharing documents. This limit in such cases is 4 paper at most! How do you criticize them and what are the consequences of such acts in your opinion?
15. How do you see the future of archiving in modern world or information era? Is it possible that their importance or their usability reduce?
16. And eventually, what are your guidelines for making a good, useful, appropriate and accurate data center?

Notes:

1.  Original email to Dr. Smith (scsmith@mit.edu) from M.M. Taheri, 3 October 2016.

2.  Farsi translation presented here in PDF.

 

مصاحبهای با شارون اسمیت دربارۀ مراکز اسناد معماری مصاحبه و ترجمه از محمدمهدی طاهری
(Sharon Smith's interview about architectural documentation centers, interviews and translations of Mohammad Taheri)
Written interview, published by University of Tehran, "Iran Architectural Studies Students", December 2016.
Available on-line at http://koubeh.com/sharon_smith/

Courtesy of the Aga Khan Documentation Center at MIT