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Ice Houses of Iran: Where, How, Why

Series: Bibliotheca Iranica: Archaeology, Art & Architecture Series 2
Availability: In stock
Published: 2012
Page #: xii + 275
Size: 8 x 10
ISBN: 1-56859-269-8, ISBN 13: 978-1568592695
plates, bibliography, index

 
$55.00 $55.00

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Quick Overview

The traditional Persian ice houses were built at villages on the perimeter of the large deserts on the Central Plateau. Their cone-shaped domes, up to 20 meters high, consisted of mud and mud bricks from the excavation of the deep ice pits protected by the domes. The ice houses served as reservoirs that stored blocks of ice in the winter for further use in the summer. The ice was either hauled in from nearby mountains or produced in open basins at the ice house site. Such local ice production plants were typically supplied with fresh water from qanats, the ingenious water supply tunnels, that brought water for human settlements and irrigation from the distant mountains.

The ice houses, whose origin is believed to go back more than 2000 years, gradually became obsolete with the advent of electricity and the introduction of the refrigerators to the households. Because they were made of perishable materials, most of the ice houses have disappeared and the rest are facing a grim future.

In this book, Dr. Jorgensen, has made a remarkable effort in cataloguing still remaining ice houses and in the process has found other ice houses that are shaped differently. He has developed a typology, described and analyzed the layouts, shapes, dimensions, construction methods, materials, reinforcements, and decorations. He has also studied the operations and origins, and analyzed the preservation aspects.

This book describes the first ever comprehensive study of the ice houses of Iran.

author

Hemming Jorgensen

Hemming Jorgensen obtained his MSc in Civil Engineering from the Technical University of Denmark in 1962, his MBA from Copenhagen Business School in 1974, and his Ph.D. from the University of Copenhagen in 2010. In the period from 1964 to 1978 he worked eight years on various infrastructure projects in Iran and became intimately acquainted with the country, its people and its language. He saw his first Iranian ice house in Kerman in 1966, but it was only in 2007—after a distinguished international career in engineering and project financing—that he was able to return to the almost forgotten Iranian ice houses and write a Ph.D. dissertation that forms the basis of this book.

Preface
Chapter 1. Introduction

Chapter 2. Ice House: Background

Chapter 3. The Investigation

Chapter 4. Ice House, Typology and Distribution

Chapter 5. Domed Ice Houses: Description and Analyses

Chapter 6. Walled and Underground Ice Houses: Description and Analyses

Chapter 7. Domed Ice Houses: Technical Aspects

Chapter 8. Status Today: Preservation

Chapter 9. Conclusions

Notes

Bibliography

Index

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