“The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space.”
— Italo Calvino

Subversive Tehran aims to show how public space works or rather doesn’t work in Tehran, to illuminate what strategies are used to counteract restrictions in the public sphere and to illustrate the way in which they manifest in the city. Fundamental political and ideological changes following the Islamic Revolution in 1979 had severe consequences in the urban fabric of Tehran. Newly imposed restrictions segregated the inhabitants of the city from public spaces, instead of further using them for urban, social and political integration. A conventional public sphere became almost nonexistent. However, in the face of a multitude of exclusions, alternative spaces emerged that have the potential to further enable democratic activity. Activities that normally take place in public evolved very differently in Tehran in comparison with other cities. These subversive spaces require their users to persistently restructure and reinterpret physical space in accordance with the changing conditions. As most of these spaces correspond to a hidden layer of the city, they are volatile, flexible and in constant change, giving them a certain immunity against control. The paper examines these subversive spaces and the way people reclaim their right to the city on basis of a theoretical framework based, among others, on concepts by Henri Lefebvre, David Harvey, Nancy Fraser, and Saskia Sassen, with the goal to understand the underlying relations of hidden spaces that are repressed but essential for the understanding of Tehran. Multiple forms of subversive space are examined, from fixed physical spaces to more fluid counter-publics, concluding with functions of public space being fully moved the digital realm, thus virtually reestablishing parts of the lost participatory nature of the city. This act of hacking the city enables people to interact and maybe gradually unveil the repressive veil that has been put over their city. 

​This Project was done in collaboration with Ivo Pekec.
Subversive Tehran was published in ARCH+ Issue 223, Dichotomy 22, exhibited at the United Nations Habitat III Conference in Quito, the International Biennale of Architecture MBA Kraków 2015 and was a winner of the 2nd prize category of the Planetary Urbanism Competition by ARCH+ in 2015.

http://www.archplus.net/home/archiv/artikel/46,4555,1,0.html
http://www.archplus.net/home/planetaryurbanism-quito/
http://dichotomy.arch.udmercy.edu/dichotomy-22-creep/
http://www.mba2015.sarp.krakow.pl/