Some Reasons for Importance of Geometric Forms and their Reflection in Historical Architecture and Urbanism

The way of formation of some geometric shapes and forms as ritual signs or symbols, and the reflection of these signs in architectural and urban spaces are the subject of this research. The aim of this paper is paying attention to the reasons of formation of square, circle, triangle, cube, sphere and pyramid as important and symbolic forms, and its second aim is to research about the reflection of these forms in urban and architectural spaces. The questions of the research are: why these geometric forms have become important? And how these forms have reflected in urban and architectural spaces? The theoretical framework of this research is based on the fact that worldview and culture in old societies had important role in formation of meaning for geometric forms. Historical-interpretation method has been used in this paper because the data was historic. The outlook, culture and some environmental phenomena are the independent variables, meanwhile symbolic geometric forms and their meanings, are the dependent variables. How geometric forms became symbols and what are the effective factors on this formation, are studied in this research. The reflections of these forms in the urban and architectural spaces in the historical periods are shown through a few examples. The statistical population is related to Iran, but because of some cultural exchanges between Iran and other countries and the existence of some common phenomena in outlook of the human in ancient civilizations such as the way of thinking about sun and moon and their role as well as the increasing importance of the motifs of circle and sphere, there are some data gathered from other countries. The result of research shows that outlook, culture, nature and some environmental factors and phenomena have important role in formation of geometric symbols which have been reflected in some urban and architectural spaces. It is necessary to pay attention that some geometric signs and symbols may have different meaning in various countries or in different periods. On the other hand, in some cases a sign can have several meaning or even in some cases several signs can have a similar meaning. Another important point is that all geometric shapes and forms that were used in architectural and urban spaces were not used for their symbolic meanings, so that in many cases, applied and functional aspects were the reason of using important shapes and forms. There is an important point to be noted, i.e. in every country there were some special geometric shapes and forms that became more important than the other forms; for example, pyramid in Egypt became more important than the other forms. Some examples have been given so that everybody can see the reflection of important shapes and forms in historical architecture and urbanism. The Taj Mahal in India is one of the best examples that shows how square were used several times in the complex without any functional reason, but it is obvious that they have been used for symbolic reasons.