This project concerns the urban regeneration of Oudlajan, an inner-city historic neighborhood of Tehran. This neighborhood was multicultural, affluent and significant in the city's past, housing mostly a large Jewish population. Today, with the migration of its past inhabitants, Oudlajan has become a void in the fabric of the city, despite being surrounded by important destinations in the city, both of a touristic kind and of commercial activity (the Grand Bazaar of Tehran). It is mostly used as the warehouse of the Grand Bazaar, and the residential living space of the disadvantaged.
This projects aims to revitalize Oudlajan by re-directing the massive flow of people that surrounds it into its own area and thus improving the conditions of its locals in the same process. This is achieved by injecting a series of public spaces all over the fabric of Oudlajan. These spaces are aimed at three target groups - tourists, business people and the locals of Oudlajan. These public spaces, along with these three groups of people, form a network of revitalization, in which the spaces are the nodes and the flows of people act as the links. In order to improve the needs of all three groups equally, especially in avoiding an expulsion of the local, currently disadvantaged inhabitants, the development of Oudlajan is seen on a timeline, with slow, non-invasive and flexible changes. In this slow process, a void is given back to the city, and with the injection of new small economies opportunities are given back to its locals to improve their living conditions by transforming their neighborhood.
This projects aims to revitalize Oudlajan by re-directing the massive flow of people that surrounds it into its own area and thus improving the conditions of its locals in the same process. This is achieved by injecting a series of public spaces all over the fabric of Oudlajan. These spaces are aimed at three target groups - tourists, business people and the locals of Oudlajan. These public spaces, along with these three groups of people, form a network of revitalization, in which the spaces are the nodes and the flows of people act as the links. In order to improve the needs of all three groups equally, especially in avoiding an expulsion of the local, currently disadvantaged inhabitants, the development of Oudlajan is seen on a timeline, with slow, non-invasive and flexible changes. In this slow process, a void is given back to the city, and with the injection of new small economies opportunities are given back to its locals to improve their living conditions by transforming their neighborhood.
This project was done in collaboration with Ivo Pekec and won an honorable mention a competition by Tehran Institute for Metropolitan Studies in 2015.
tehran-institute.com
tehran-institute.com