A Qualitative Research Illustrated in Understanding Emotional Dimensions of Place: an Underground Space Named Shavadan

In people-environment relationship lived-experience is likely to be a significant component of place
meaning known as phenomenological works that attribute to understanding unconcealed environmental
properties and meanings. In this article a group of selected persons was conducted to find out the
emotional dimensions of a place named Shavadan. Shavadan found as a sophisticated underground space
of Iranian houses in Dezful. It looks like – but really it is not - a segregated part from the whole
configuration of a house. This place with 5-15 meters depth has been excavated completely under the
ground with access to a series of stairs mostly from the courtyard. This study regards to human well-being
and his demands and focuses on the non-physical human needs that mostly are not responded. The main
problem is that while human live in architectural contemporary modern places, the answers to his
emotional demands are totally incomplete. There are different places throughout Iranian traditional
architecture in which dwellers positively might be influenced in interaction with whole space. Throughout
the variety of indigenous house typology in Iran, searching a variety of indoor residential spaces, mostly
the private types, and the case study was selected in Dezful city for its existing residents and special
distinctive properties of Shavadan that cannot be easily found in modern buildings. Shavadan which
means a dark place is used during hot summer days. It has been excavated completely under the ground
with access to a series of stairs mostly from the courtyard. There is a peculiar feature where the walls and
roof are exactly in the form of buried/ dug ground but not an ordinary ground, which looks like an
integrated screen of stony texture. Geologically, Dezful’s earth is sedimentary rock, called conglomerate.
Consequently, among the verities of living spaces, at the time of long hot summer days, even the total
shadowed parts of semi-open space “Iwan” are uncomfortable, and there fore the residents move to
Shavadan till the heat intensity would drop at about sunset. Concerning the non-physical aspects of
Shavadan, the person’s image of being in a living space, taps into a personal experience, never studied
before to understand its nature. To learn about such kind of place that is meaningful to people, a
phenomenological study and 20 semi-structured interviews conducted to find ant the human experiences in
the mentioned place. Here, the research questions are based on two matters of what people do experience
in interaction with place and how they experience it. Two groups of people participated for interviews
inside Shavadan the first group had no experience, so they perceived the place for the first time; and the
second one the local people experience it they lived in the place, experienced it and communicated with it
by their occupation of the space. The feelings and emotions of the member of two mentioned groups were
conveyed through their non-physical interaction with the environment. The qualitative thematic analysis
reveals phenomena such as distinctiveness, tranquility, relief as well as thoughtfulness, etc.