The quarterly publication from the University of Tehran’s College of Fine Arts, NAAM runs in both Farsi and English, responding to the reverberations of globalization and the incessantly blurred boundaries among art and design disciplines. “On the Edge of Architecture” tries to figure out where architecture begins and ends, while also hinting at its boundlessness – editor Arshia Eghbali, author of the excerpted piece, suggests his writing could be interpreted as “a critique on the role of the 'architect' in society, a visionary proposal or just pure fantasy!” Take a stab at it below.

The Island

By Arshia Eghbali

Wherever I go they are behind me like ghosts. They don’t even bother hiding themselves from my sight.Saturday, 2049/09/28

I (if ‘I’ makes any sense) am no one. I have no name… (I have no part in this story) the sole reason for my whole existence, from the very beginning, has been to find this among hundreds of death notices in the countless pages of today’s papers: ‘M. E., the architect of jetties number 6 and 7 of ‘The Island’, died peacefully at the age of 83’.

Now, I have a name…

Tuesday, 2051/09/28 – M. E.’s daily notes

Today is the fifth in a row that three men tail me day and night. Right now, from the window of my study, I can see one of them down on the street, leaning against a wind turbine, smoking a cigarette. By an hour and twenty five minutes he will be off duty, changing places with the next man. During these five days, each of them has shadowed me with complete precision for exactly 8 hours. Wherever I go they are behind me like ghosts. They don’t even bother hiding themselves from my sight. They want me to know… to feel their presence by all my existence… they want me to be frightened…

My time has come. I know that I haven’t got much time on my hands and I am to surrender to a destiny long awaited… I am not frightened of those tailing me, or what they might do to me. I don’t fear death… as I have already felt closest to death … Yet I have breathed through these extra last two years while I shouldn’t have… Ah, if I had died right away two years ago (oh, it was exactly two years ago), when I was given the opportunity – when my chance of survival seemed overly ridiculous – I would have never gone through the agony of this melancholy… but the very thought of god’s punishment sends shivers down my spine and causes me – me, whose best choice is to die – not to have the courage to do so… I am waiting, waiting for them to make me meet my destiny. I don’t understand why they hesitate this much? What are they waiting for? This is the fifth day they are shadowing me, meaning they know it for at least five days… They are right to do anything. As for such an unpardonable sin as mine: I have remembered…

Tonight we will lift Tehran – with its bedrock – and place it in the Caspian Sea.Sunday, 2015/02/20 – M. E.’s daily notes

From tomorrow on, Tehran will no more be! At midnight, when all the people of the town go to sleep (and I know it will be such a deep sleep), we will move Tehran. Everything is calculated carefully. So many hours have been spent by the best architects of the town to perform everything with complete and utter perfection. Tonight we will lift Tehran – with its bedrock – and place it in the Caspian Sea. After that, the whole thing will take place in a blink of an eye according to the plan; the crater which marks the previous location of Tehran will be filled with water and takes the name of ‘Alborz Lake’. From then on, the dislocated city will be called ‘The Island’, never ever mentioning ‘Tehran’ again. False documents are made. Books of history and geography are carefully fabricated. School syllabuses are revised. Thousands of false photos are made up; maps, aerial photos and satellite pictures are fabricated. There is no single hole in the entire plan. There is no truth which is more convincing than this master architectural lie.

The main source of income for The Island will be fishing and trading. Seven jetties will be constructed around The Island, three of them shaping a trading harbor capable of hosting huge ships while four others are fishing jetties only capable of hosting small and medium-sized fishing boats.

I will give life to The Island, wiping away Tehran and all its teething troubles. I am the savior of Tehran!The floating system of The Island consists of a labyrinth of underground tunnels that hold all the infrastructures and balance-water channels, allowing the surface of The Island to be leveled by increasing or decreasing the amount of water inside them.

The creator of all these and beyond is me! I will give life to The Island, wiping away Tehran and all its teething troubles. I am the savior of Tehran!

I am the architect of The Island.

But tomorrow, when we all wake up in The Island, we will remember not a single thing. And all the false documents, books, pictures and memories will teach us how our fathers and we have lived in The Island for hundreds of years. No one is able to remember anything. Even I… Tomorrow I will be no more than the architect of jetties number 6 and 7 of The Island…

Tuesday, 2051/09/28 – continued from M. E.’s daily notes

Now I can see everything as clear as day. I don’t know what time it is… Oh, yes, my tails are changing places, then only less than an hour and a half has passed. But now I understand everything! Though it only adds to my sorrow, but now I can make my decision. Anyway, here is the truth: I am not M. E. … or let me put it this way: we, inhabitants of The Island, are all M. E. … Now I can see. We are all no one until we come across his name by chance and turn into M. E. That is how we acquire a name… We get paralyzed by melancholy and we we suffer from the severe sense of guilt we feel for the service or the betrayal we have done to our city.remember… we remember all of M. E.’s memories and so we suffer from the severe sense of guilt we feel for the service or the betrayal we have done to our city. In this manner, little by little, the whole population of The Island dies out… It takes many years, but it accelerates as time goes by… This is how all of us, so cleverly and perfectly, are heading toward a cruelly programmed extinction. All of us, people of The Island… no… People of Tehran!

Now I know that the men who shadow me (despite the fact that they, themselves, know nothing and are only following vague orders – because they are no one yet), don’t want to hurt me… How naïve I have been… in fact, it is the opposite; they want to make sure that I won’t kill myself… they want to make sure that I don’t figure out this cruel and perfect extinction and I don’t surrender to my pre-determined destiny… But it is late already; I am going to kill myself.

Meh… I can now hear the rushed footsteps of my tail running up the stairs of my apartment…

Wednesday, 2051/09/29

I (if ‘I’ makes any sense) am no one. I have no name… (I have no part in this story) the sole reason for my whole existence, from the very beginning, has been to find this among hundreds of death notices in the countless pages of today’s papers: ‘M. E., the architect of jetties number 6 and 7 of ‘The Island’, committed suicide at the age of 67’..

Now, I have a name…

Screen/Print is an experiment in translation across media, featuring a close-up digital look at printed architectural writing. Divorcing content from the physical page, the series lends a new perspective to nuanced architectural thought.

For this issue, we featured NAAM's On the Edge of Architecture.

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