In-Between Dimensions: Architecture, Digitality and Protest through the Azadi Monument in Tehran
In the fall and winter of 2022, a wave of striking images flooded global media. Women tying up their hair in fierce poses, schoolgirls pulling down their headscarves in defiance, and protestors cutting their hair in solidarity became symbols of resistance. These images marked the beginning of a new chapter in Iranian women’s struggle for freedom and equality, sparked by the death of a young Kurdish woman, Mahsa Jina Amini (1999-2022). Arrested by the “morality police” (Gasht-e Ershad) in Tehran for allegedly wearing a hijab improperly, Mahsa fell into a coma and died in police custody on September 16, 2022. Her death ignited a wave of protests both inside and outside Iran, birthing the “Woman, Life, Freedom” Movement and bringing global attention to women’s struggle in Iran.[1]
The artistic response to this movement was swift and international, with an unprecedented volume and variety of visuals and graphics produced in support of the cause. Less than a month after the protests erupted, The Guardian published an article underscoring the pivotal role of art in the resistance. Prominently featured in the article and widely circulated on social media was a singular spatial marker: Tehran’s iconic Azadi Tower formerly known as Shahyad Tower, marking the western entrance to the city. Historically, this monument has been the backdrop for some of Iran’s most dramatic protest imagery—notably during the 1979 Revolution and the 2009 protests. Over time, it has also been appropriated by the state for sanctioned rallies, has adorned Iranian grocery stores across the diaspora, branded commercial products like the New York-based Back Home Beer, and even etched into the skin of nostalgic expatriates as tattoos. As I have discussed elsewhere, the tower now enters a new phase of its contested symbolism, becoming a site of imagination, interrogation, and discourse (Figure 1).
Figure 1. A compilation of Instagram posts (graphics) collected by the author from September to November 2022. Instagram.
This article explores the tension between the tower’s three-dimensional versus two-dimensional existence, questioning the materiality of architecture and the generation of alternative possibilities and imagined futures through these oscillations. Azadi is a political space in the traditional sense, embodying what Antoine Picon refers to as “practical agency,” through its capacity to define and orient the space around it, and “symbolic expression” through its monumental composition and historical symbolism.[2] However, its practical agency and symbolism is a malleable one, persistently reconstructed in-between its two-dimensional and three-dimensional realization. What new meanings and discourses emerge from the transition between the three-dimensional space and two-dimensional image, and what roles do ambiguity and abstraction play in this process? How does the collective consciousness build on the many renditions of the same space for divergent causes? This exploration also considers how architecture functions differently as a physical space versus an internationally circulating symbolic image, shaping visions of the future that extend beyond the monument’s physical presence in Tehran.
The evolution from the abstract, monochrome technical drawings of the Shahyad Tower to its recent digital representations with clear figural qualities reveals a complex narrative of political agency in modern architecture. Constructed in 1971 as a tribute to Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (the Shah), Shahyad—meaning “Memorial to the King”—stood as the focal point of a vast elliptical square on the western outskirts of Tehran. Designed by architect Hossein Amanat, the structure houses a museum in its underground section. Despite the presence of the museum and various functional spaces within the tower itself, the structure resembles more a colossal statue than a museum building. The use of the fully frontal view of the monument in promotional tourism materials as soon as it was constructed underscores the way in which the monument was essentially an image to celebrate and promote a modern and progressive Iranian identity while spatially functioning as a stage in Pahlavi official ceremonies (Figure 2).[3] The design of the Shahyad Tower, whether through its historical references in form and geometry, or its then cutting-edge, future-oriented building technology—described as “a steppingstone to the future”[4]—embodies conflicting visions of the future.
Figure 2. 1976-77 map of Tehran. University of Chicago Library.
While in 1978 the monument was still in the deserted, dusty outskirts of the city, with new housing development projects emerging in the background, its image had already made its way into protest graphics targeting the Shah (Figure 3).[5] In fact the use of the physical space by revolutionaries followed the use of its image to criticize the Pahlavi regime. It was not until the final months of the revolution that Shahyad Square became the site of mass protests (Figure 4). Although it was not the most popular site of protest until the very end, the image of crowds at Shahyad became one of the most iconic visuals of the 1979 Revolution. This was perhaps due to the sheer scale of the space, which could accommodate large masses against the backdrop of the identifiable monument. In this brief revolutionary moment, the Pahlavi regime’s promotional two-dimensional image of the monument was disrupted. The theater was reversed, with the ceremonial stage—once emblematic of the Shah’s grandeur—mocked in revolutionary sketches as the “great gate of civilization,” now transformed into the physical site of a popular uprising.
“The tower has evolved from merely being a spatial marker in digital images to becoming an active agent.”
Figure 3. Anti-Shah sketch confiscated by SAVAK in Shahrud, Summer 1978. The text above the portal reads “The Great Gate of Civilization” referring to the Shah’s speech during the opening ceremony of Shahyad. Ṭarḥʹhā Va Kārīkātūrhā-Yi Mardumī Bih Rivāyat-I Asnād-I Sāvāk (Tehran: Markaz-i Barrasī-i Asnād-i Tārīkhī-i Vizārat-i Iṭṭilāʻāt, 2008), 56.
Figure 4. Shahyad Square, February 1979. Institute for Iranian Contemporary Historical Studies, Tehran.
Nevertheless, this three-dimensional engagement with the space was quickly flattened back by the revolutionary state’s own attempt at visual hegemony. In posters produced by its various agencies, the multiplicity of voices that had emerged during the course of the revolution was homogenized (Figure 5). Renamed “Azadi” (freedom) after the revolution, in the everyday realm in its post-revolutionary existence, the site functioned as the backdrop of tourist snapshots, a “place-image” celebrating Tehran (Figure 6).
Figure 5. Poster titled “The Rightful is Arriving (in Arabic), Imam (Khomeini) is coming (in Persian)” with an image of the first page of Kayhan Newspaper with the bold title “Iran is preparing for the biggest reception in history,” produced by the planning organization of the anniversary of the revolution, 1984. Poster IR 141.10, Poster Collection, Hoover Institution Library & Archives.
Figure 6. Azadi as the backdrop of memory shots. Omid Habibi in A Testimony of Azadi: Collection of the photographs exhibited in Azadi photograph competition (Tehran: Roudaki Foundation, 2005), 58.
A comparison of this collage of mostly men posing in front of the monument with recent graphics from the Woman, Life, Freedom movement suggests a drastic shift where the tower appears as a symbol of women's reclamation of the space within the revolutionary act of imagining the future through the lens of a new everyday (Figure 7). These imaginations of the future in the two-dimensional realm then, reflect back on three-dimensional physical practices of the future, through ordinary acts of dancing, kissing, and defiance performed and documented (Figure 8). Such interactions with the tower bring the everyday closer to the revolutionary spectacle captured in journalistic photos from 1979 and 2009. Perhaps, in hindsight, the state's use of protest images at Shahyad in 1979 inadvertently forged the narrative of “celebrating at Azadi” as a symbol of triumph, ready for appropriation by any movement.
Figure 7. Left: “To Liberty Tower: a deep wish for the day when your name fits you!” Instagram, October 2022; Center: “The day after freedom, Iran’s refugees.” Instagram@iranianpopart, November 12, 2022; Right: “Woman, Life, Freedom – Queer, Trans, Liberty.” Instagram@iranianpopart, March 23, 2023.
Figure 8. Selection of photos and still shots from videos posted on Instagram from September to December 2022. Instagram.
When referencing the tower, most of the Woman, Life, Freedom movement’s graphics rely on the frontal view of the structure, aiming for clarity and instant recognizability. In a novel form of engagement with the tower, some contemporary visuals overcome barriers to generating journalistic photographs of protests at Azadi by using actual protest photographs from other locations and digitally transplanting them within this iconic space (Figure 9). In many of these graphics, the tower, as the prime spatial marker, symbolizes “Iran” and often serves as a placeholder for the word “freedom,” or even “woman.” In contrast to the 1979 protest images of Shahyad, and echoing the anti-Shah sketches featuring the monument, the tower has evolved from merely being a spatial marker in digital images to becoming an active agent, a statement, and a voice.
Figure 9. Graphic created using actual photograph from September 2022 protests in Tehran. Instagram, November 2022.
These newly imbued meanings seek to challenge the monument’s perceived neutrality, which the state has often utilized as a mere backdrop for revolutionary imagery or a canvas for light projections. The circulation and renditions of the tower’s imagery have become untraceable at this point. Some imaginative engagements with the tower, such as Iran-based artist Jalal Mashhadi Fard’s digital series “Freedom Nightmare,” predate the Woman, Life, Freedom movement.[6] These graphics, however, gained renewed attention during the movement, as they were anonymously shared on social media with hashtags supporting the cause. This circulation spans multiple modalities, creating an exchange not just within dissent but also with the official narrative of the space. For instance, some 2022 protest graphics digitally incorporated imagery from a 2015 official light projection, titled Gate of Words, at the tower (Figure 10). Meanwhile, during the height of the protests in February 2023, as part of the 44th anniversary celebrations of the 1979 Revolution, the municipality incorporated the monument’s image into a fist—a symbol of resistance used a few months earlier in protest graphics—to create a light installation near the square (Figure 11).
Figure 10. Left: “Gate of Words” light projection by Philipp Geist in 2015, showing the Persian word, Azadi (Freedom) projected on the tower. Photograph by Kaveh Nassimi, Tehran, 2015; Right: “Woman, Life, Freedom” digitally generated image with Mahsa’s picture projected at the apex of the arch. Instagram, November 2022.
Figure 11. Left: “Long Live Freedom.” Instagram, December 2022; Right: Tehran preparing for the celebrations of the anniversary of the 1979 Revolution in February 2023. Instagram account of the Tehran Municipality’s Beautification Organization, Instagram@zibasazi_ir, February 9, 2023.
“Recent graphics from the Woman, Life, Freedom movement suggests a drastic shift where the tower appears as a symbol of women’s reclamation of the space.”
Despite its abstract, non-figural design, recent graphics of the tower have imposed figural qualities on it, marking a shift in its symbolism toward literalism. These two-dimensional representations, in their multiplicity, while reminiscent of the postmodern “I am a monument” aesthetics, go simultaneously against the figural clarity in their multiplicity, and therefore indefiniteness. An examination of the individual representations of the monument vis-à-vis its official histories offer a space for the emergence of alternative meanings and comprehension of its imagined futures. The simultaneous accessibility, permanence, and inherent fragility of digital archives (or perhaps “field”)—where posts can vanish as users remove content or accounts are closed out of fear as in the case of the recent movement in Iran—pose unprecedented challenges and opportunities for architectural historians for understanding the present in relation to the many narratives of the past.
It is important to note that Azadi is not the only monumental structure that serves as a spatial reference in protest material or becomes the site of imaginary futures. The Jami Makki Mosque of Zahedan, an Ottoman-style Sunni mosque built in 1974, also became a graphic reference during the 2022 protests after it became the site of a violent clash between the police and protestors.[7] More recently, on December 11 2024, in the midst of yet another clash over a new compulsory hijab law due to take effect in mid-December 2024, an Iranian female singer, Parastoo Ahmadi performed an “imaginary concert” in a historic Caravanserai in Iran without hijab and shared it with the world through her YouTube channel. Anchored in space, the imagined futures are indeed formulated through these oscillations and spatial tension between the two-dimensional and the three-dimensional, the representational and the experiential. In the digital age, protest materials echo the anonymity of posters and wall writings/graffiti from the 1979 Revolution, materializing the collective memory of an otherwise inaccessible space and circulating it internationally. The architectural object, initially conceived as an imaginary entity by the designer, is returned to the realm of the imaginary, raising new questions about the digital materiality of memory sites. This time, however, it is the materiality of the structure itself that is projected into an imagined future.
Citation
Zohreh Soltani, “In-Between Dimensions: Architecture, Digitality and Protest through the Azadi Monument in Tehran,” PLATFORM, March 17, 2025.
Notes
[1] It is crucial to clarify that in this article I am referring to the 2022 movement in Iran. “Jin, Jiyan, Azadi” (Woman, Life, Freedom) originated within the Kurdish activism long before the formation of the 2022 movement. See: Havin Guneser, The Art of Freedom: A Brief History of the Kurdish Liberation Struggle (Oakland: PM Press, 2021), 82-3.
[2] Antoine Picon, The Materiality of Architecture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2021), 138.
[3] Zohreh Soltani, “(Un)Settled Monument: Tehran’s Shahyad Square in the Revolutionary Crucible,” Journal of Planning History 23, no. 2 (2024), 126-149, 133-4.
[4] Peter Ayres, “The Geometry of Shahyad Ariamehr,” The Arup Journal 1, no. 5 (March 1970), 29–36, 29.
[5] Soltani, “(Un)Settled Monument,” 138-9.
[6] The series can be viewed in the artists webpage: https://jalalmfard.com/artworks/0002 Several of the works were shared on the artists social media as early as August 2021: Instagram@jalalmfard.
[7] Some examples of protest graphics depicting Zahedan’s Makki mosque: “Zahedan’s Bloody Friday,” Instagram@azadmahii, September 29, 2023; “Masjid-i Jami Makki,” Instagram@iranianpopart, January 28, 2023.
