Rasht city center renovation and public library design

The project site is located in Rasht, a city in the north of Iran with high demand of city center renovation due to its recent economical and commercial growth. The Municipality square is set in the historical district and acts the part of the heart of the whole city. It is surrounded by different historical monuments such as the municipality building, post office and hotel “Iran”. Apart from this fact, the location of the bazaar to the south of the square makes it more valuable and remarkable in the urban context. In former times, there existed a pedestrian promenade and the square was accessible for citizens. Being fringed by the most modern buildings in the city, the square attracted a lot of people and was an unquestionable core of the city life. The bazaar’s vicinity worked as an engine, which stimulated people to come that place. Today, after the city became transformed significantly during last decades, this site is only a pale image of its past. The square is squeezed by road traffic and blocked for the citizen. High level of noise, unsatisfactory conditions for public life and lack of urban attractiveness, all these factors cause the site to fade and involuntarily replace the main activities to another parts of the city. The aim of this project is to give a proposal to the city center that faces problems. The project has been approached, on the urban scale, by acquiring the necessary knowledge about the history and the urban evolution of the city of Rasht in general and the Municipality square in particular which has lead us to a fair understanding of the particularity and historical significance of the area subject to study. After studying the project site and taking into consideration all the necessary aspects we have decided to focus on adding more cultural value to the functions of the square surroundings. The existence of the National library of Rasht and the change of function of both municipality building and the post office building to art museum and art gallery respectively has helped to achieve a compromising solution. We offer to renovate the Municipality square and adjacent streets, returning them to their historical pedestrian role and satisfying today’s city’s demands; to design a new public library building which can play a role of a city’s symbol, changing the traditional way of thinking about public buildings and libraries especially. Both the master plan and architectural design reflect in different ways the existing or existed elements and we are sure it will work positively creating a visual link between the city’s memory and its new appearance.