Determining Privacy Dimensions in Persian-Islamic Interior Architecture using Analytic Hierarchy Process

Abstract

Privacy is a key notion in Persian and Islamic culture. Nevertheless, it has been seriously challenged with the introduction of Modern Architecture and its open spatial arrangements. This paper attempts to identify spatial arrangements which maintain spatial privacy. To this end, the views of Islamic theologians were collected and analyzed using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). AHP is a multi-criteria decision-making methodology to derive ratio scales from paired comparisons. The inputs for AHP can be obtained from subjective opinion such as satisfaction, feelings and preference. Four key privacy dimensions in the survey include: visual, audial, olfactory, and kinetic. In the first iteration of AHP analysis, the visual dimension of privacy was found to be of primary importance. The second iteration revealed the value of spatial adjacency as the most important factor affecting privacy.