Noureddin Kianouri


Noureddin Kianouri 1915–1999, was an Iranian architect, urban planner and communist political leader. He was an influential member of the Central Committee for the communist Tudeh Party. He acted as the party's General Secretary from 1979 to 1984.
Kianouri was a key figure of the Association of Iranian Architects that theoretically and ideologically laid out the mission of the Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne in Iran. He was one of the research directors of the Bauakademie der DDR under the pseudonym of Silvio Macetti. As a research director of Bauakademie der DDR in Berlin, he designed a new model for high-rise buildings in accordance with socialist urban development concepts differing from East Germany's Plattenbau concept.
After collapse of East Block and German Reunification, Kianouri's architectural and urban planning designs were used as the basis of urban planning in the People's Republic of China.
He died on 5 November 1999, while under house arrest.

History

Kianouri was son of Agha Mirza Mehdi Nouri and Zahra Khanoum Soltani Nouri, and grandson of Sheikh Fazlollah Noori and Sakineh Nouri Tabrasi. He was allegedly a descendant of the Kia'i dynasty of Tabaristan. In the early 1940s, he married feminist and communist activist Maryam Firouz.

Educating [Aachen University] in Germany

Kianouri was educated in Germany, receiving a Ph.D. in Construction Engineering from Aachen University in 1939.

first return to Iran

After returning to Iran together with several other architects, he founded the Association of Iranian Architects in 1945 whose members were put in charge of the design and planning of large-scale housing projects, first in Tehran and later in other cities. He taught at Tehran University.
"A senior lecture on building and construction and fine arts at the University of Tehran’s College of Fine Arts until his arrest in February 1949, Khianuri has been active in the Tudeh Party since 1944. He was elected to Inspection Commission in 1944 and to the Central Commission in 1944 and ran unsuccessfully the XV Majlis in 1947. He was editor of the CUCTU’s newspaper Beshar during 1948. Khianuri was sentenced on 22 April to ten years in Perison."

Accusation of an assassination attempt on the Shah and escape from Qasr Prison Tehran

On 4 February 1949, the Tudeh Party was accused of an assassination attempt on the Shah during an annual ceremony to commemorate the founding of the University of Tehran. The party subsequently was banned and most of its leaders were imprisoned. Following the 1953 Iranian coup d'état and the subsequent banning of the Tudeh Party, after two years in jail Kianouri escaped from prison and fled first to Iraq and then to Italy. There, with the help of the Italian Communist Party, he received a new identity as Dr. Silvio Macetti, a professor of architecture, whose works and writings are still used as references for the theory of socialist architecture. Later he lived with his wife Maryam Firouz in exile in East Germany.

Exile in Italy, Sovietunion and GDR 1955

In 1955 Kianouri moved to East Berlin and was later appointed as one of the research directors of the developing theories of socialist architecture and urban planning in close cooperation with his Russian partner Georgy A. Gradov. Kianouri and his wife were tried by the regime of Mohammad-Rezā Shāh Pahlavi and sentenced to hard labour for life in absentia. He stayed in East Berlin until 1977, when he was selected as the Secretary General of the Iranian Communist Party.

First-Secretary of the [Tudeh Party of Iran]

"Kianuri Born in 1921 is one the youngest members of the Tudeh leadership. He is occasionally mentiond in party propaganda and accompanies Eskandari on trips aboad. Before he fled from Iran in 1956, he was regarded as the party’s leading intellectual and wrote many of its policy statements.".
"The 63-year old Kianuri spent almost 25 years in exile in East Germany. Kianuri has been described by those who have met him as intelligent, dedicated, and very conscious of where he wants to lead the party. He replaced party leader Iraj Eskandari in January 1979 with strong Soviet Backing."

Second return to Iran following the [1979 Islamic Revolution]

The couple returned to Iran following the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the deposition of the Shah. The Tudeh party was reinstituted with Kianouri as General Secretary. Leaving his double identity behind, he returned to Iran in support of the 1979 Revolution, but a few years after, he was arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment, accused of working for the Soviet Union as a spy. However, Kianouri's theories of the socialist architecture and urban planning indirectly found their ways to the Iranian architectural scene. Kianouri's work was widely referred to by others, many of whom were members of the Association of Iranian Architects.

Accusations of espionage for the Soviet Union

In 1983, the Tudeh Party was again banned following accusations of espionage for the Soviet Union. Kianouri was imprisoned and later forced to publicly confess on a televised broadcast. After his release to house arrest in the mid 90s, Kianouri wrote an open letter detailing the torture of himself and his wife while in prison.
Reynaldo Galindo Pohl special rapporteur of the Commission of Human Rights on Iran from 1986 to 1995 reported: "Three former members of the Tudeh Party are incarcerated in solitary confinement: Mr Kianouri, the former first Secretary, one top level cadre and a party member. Only Mr Kianouri agreed to have his name mentioned in the report.
"He strongly denied that he was a foreign agent and had attempted to overthrow the revolutionary government. He confirmed, in the presence of the prison staff and officials, that he had been tortured.
"He showed his half-paralysed arms and broken fingers and spoke of other means of torture. Mr Kianouri, the former first Secretary of the Tudeh Party, condemned the execution of thousands of young people, who he said were innocent."

Some Architecture articles & -books of Noureddin Kianouri in Persian Language