This Blog Post is about finding daily details in Austrian and Iranian lives and how they have designed in different cultures. I suppose the book “die eigenen vier Wände” from Gert Selle has a significant influence on writing this post. This book is about analyzing houses, doors, walls, windows and some other factors and their meanings. For example, doors play a role as a border between two different spaces. People always go through doors and do not make a long pause there. When you enter your home and you close the main door, you enter to a new environment, where could have a total different vibe as outside. In one house, they can also separate different environments from one another and play a border roll. There are some pictures from doors in Iran and Austria placed next to each other for a very simple design and meaning comparison.
Front Door in Austria 
Front Door in Iran 
Front Door in Iran 
Front Door in Iran 
Front Door in Iran 
Front Door in Austria 
Front Door in Austria
As you see in these traditional pictures, the main form and purpose of these doors are the same, however the way they have designed and how people interacted with details differ significantly in both cultures.
Typical window of a house in a small town in Austria. Home in the Austrian city of St Wolfgang in a rainy day. Retro style 
Windows are a view to the outside world. People can stand by a window and observe the outside world meanwhile they are physically inside their own world, better to say, inside the safe area of their homes. One of the most surprising experiences for me was that people in the western world, open their windows and they do not have a fear of getting noticed from people outside in addition, privacy has a total different meaning. As you can see in the right picture from an Iranian window from Qajar historical period, they are closed and just play a small role bringing a little light inside, however these windows also only existed in the inside small garden and not on the street. I can relate this matter to islamic believes and not to let women and family getting seen from the outside. Nowadays we have wider windows and this topic has been changed a lot, but still every apartment has a curtain and people do not open their windows as often as in Europe.
During the search about details, I found an animation movie about two houses. I found the story and technic very nice and the way two houses from two different cities become best friends. This animation demonstrates the concept of the similarity between houses and human beings in a very beautiful way as well as making questions about feeling at home or are we the houses?
