The first and most original social institution in human culture is family and the house as an action and reactions container in relation to one’s own family and others has a major and great significance.
According to the  integral role of family and dwelling unit in Iranian culture, particular characteristics of house has been also emphasized in Islam among which  are inner calm and serenity. Family needs peace in order to function efficiently. The importance of individual aspects of such inner calm as a psychological need is obvious and expected for everyone who lives in the house. Therefore, houses should have a correspondent quality to basic needs of residents in both individual and social scale. An indigenous order in the relationship among human, nature and architecture is the main determining factors in achieving such inner calm.
The ability to generate the aforementioned relationship in the framework of built environment depends on architectural affordance as one of the qualities of space. This quality as one of the innate Iranian-Islamic architectural traditions could be traced historically while it seems to be less considered in modern architecture.
This study, on ‘Shekam Darideh’ room types as common space in most upper-class residences exhibits such spatial affordance. The functional flexibility and diverse perceptual qualities of Shekam Darideh makes it as an outstanding contribution of Iranian architecture within the Islamic architecture heritage.
In this study, the architectural qualities of Shekam Darideh room and the way it affects the temporal mood of space would be discussed. As a hypothesis, it will be proposed that the form of plan (cross or rood) acts as a moderator element in regulating man-man, man–nature relationships and consequently creates numerous combination of mass and space as well as forming its decorative patterns and spatial flexibility.
This study applies a descriptive and analytical research method. According to the knowledge obtained from literature reviews and visual resources. The review includes several architectural theorists namely Jon Lang, Robert Venturi, Herman Herzberger, Ian Bentley, Peter et al, Amos Rapoport, Schneider, Tatjana, Gerard Maccreanor, Jorg Kurt Grutter, John Habraken , Edward T Hall. Ultimately, the theoretical approach by Alireza Einifar on ‘spatial transition’ with respect to changes in circumstances was taken as an analytical model. The model was then employed in environmental surveys to figure out its constructive elements and specifics of space.