The concept of contentment in the literature of GolestanSaadi and traditional Iranian architecture

The confrontation between “contentment” and “luxury” is raised in culture,ethics, people's lives, arts and literature. In Persian literature, the virtue ofchoosing contentment over luxury is very visible. One of these texts is a Persianbook titled Golestan Saadi, which has a section on “The Virtue of Contentment”.Today's architecture is also somewhat involved in luxury in interior and exteriordesign, to the extent that some architect designers avoid the simplicity of spacesin order to satisfy their client. They turn to royal and luxurious designs that are akind of eye-to-eye with competing buildings. In this article, with the comparativeresearch method, while referring to library studies and presenting examples oftraditional Iranian architecture, the aspect of contentment in Iranian architecturalart is compared with contentment in the literature of Golestan Saadi, and itsdimensions are also deduced. For example, “the central courtyard” of Iranianarchitecture is compatible with “purity” in Iranian-Islamic literature. “Emptying”is the formal aspect of this adaptation, and “refinement” is its semantic aspect.This research is done with the aim of the relationship between literature andarchitecture. In the end, questions for future researches in the adaptation ofliterature and architecture in terms of form and meaning are presented.