Preserving the void : urbanization and farm in Tehran

Tehran, the capital and the most populated city of Iran has been always in challenge with metropolis issues such as pollution, traffic, safety, lack of green and etc. In order to find long term solutions and improvement strategies, Master plan of Tehran has been published with the vision of Iranian origin and Islamic identity, diverse public spaces and safe and stable city which should be driven in all programs and activities of Tehran. Expo of Tehran constructed on 1965 to place internal and international fairs and events. Its permanent site was located in the northern part of city in area of 850,000 square meters. This considerable area has 120,000 sq. Meter indoor exhibitions, 35000 sq. Meter Outdoor exhibitions, 22 hectare of green areas and lots of expo facilities. Now around 50 years after its construction with no fundamental and serious renovation, it has started to cause lots of problem not only in its functions but also for the city which finally its location became a place just to host a few international exhibitions.Heavy traffic and blocked highways by lots of visitor cars during exhibitions, not enough parking areas, air and sound pollution in its neighborhood and old and out of date indoor exhibitions were some of the most important problems that forced municipality of Tehran and urban planners to consider another options for holding expos in other sites and investigate new functions for this area. In the master plan of Tehran, this area has been considered as a new commercial administrative and services zone with overcoming green and open to first of all, transfer it to an active and useful hotspot for its neighborhood and then for the city and state scale. Also with extension in its green areas, it will be able to reduce pollution and improve urban landscape entity. Our all options to cover the changing strategies and re activation programs in this site categorized in three different hypotheses: first of all, have a radical approach and destroying and rebuilding In order to create "a new". The other one was preserving and renovation of the old texture and rehabilitation by adding new functions and the last, changing the existing and adding new functions in terms of keeping the same quality and spatial sense of previous space. These approaches according to abilities, facilities or limitations of each part of the site has been chosen even had the possibility of being mix together to find the best solution. Related to the first approach which mentioned, after analyzing the quality of the former buildings and open spaces, those which were damaged and abandoned removed from site plan and large area of the former site changed to a new courtyard for farming and gardening. According to second one and also to cover up all the required functions building with acceptable quality of space, material and facilities got new functions and for the last one some exhibitions transferred to the new playgrounds for children. Finally similar to all large scale urban strategies, these area needed economic support as well to achieve all aspects of its numerous changing strategy which will be provided by involvement of individuals therefore by adding a new residential complex to the part of its site it was achieved and on the other hand, this new residential complex will bring about high quality and safe urban space for the area.