Noureddin Kianouri

Noureddin Kianouri (Persian: نورالدین کیانوری; 1915–1999) was an Iranian construction engineer, urban planner, professor of Bauakademie der DDR in Berlin, and a communist political leader. He studied first at the University of Tehran until 1934 and later in Germany from 1934 to 1939. Before his return to Iran he practiced architecture as well, though he is mostly remembered as a construction engineer in the Munich office of Philipp Holzmann. About a year after foundation of the Tudeh Party he joined the party with the membership number 444 in May 1942. Later he became one of the influential members of the Central Committee for the communist Tudeh Party, Following the 1953 Iranian coup d'état the party was banned and Kianouri was imprisoned. He fled, and lived in Italy and later East Germany; under the pseudonym "Dr. Silvio Macetti" he was an influential architect and theorist of socialist architecture and city planning.

After his second return to Iran following the 1979 Islamic Revolution, he continued his political activities and acted as the Tudeh party's general secretary from 1979 to 1984. Again he came under scrutiny, and again the party was banned. Kianouri was arrested and tortured (and so was his wife), and read a forced confession on national TV. He was released and placed under house arrest, and died on 5 November 1999.