Tehran is a fast growing metropolis. World Bank Data shows a 2.80 annual growth rate. Growth produced in spite a difficult economic and international situation. Future growth might be expected to be higher.
The City needs a Metropolitan vision to be able to address the sprawl risk. The invasion of high quality of the agricultural land of the valley under the pressures of development can be the result. A Metropolitan Plan needs to be designed and implemented. A Plan that will protect environmental valuable land and locate development in accessible and mass transit well served urban land.
The Tehran Metropolitan Matrix Proposal is a project done within the Architectural and Urban Design PhD Programme of DiAP - School of Architecture and Society - Politecnico di Milano http://webdiap.diap.polimi.it/drpau/HP%20dottorato/HP%20presentENG.htm
For further information contact Narges Golkar (na.golkar@gmail.com)
Tehran Metropolitan Site Design Guide (MSDG)
Scales have to be related from 1:50, Architecture, to 1:50 million, the world.
When we deal with metropolitan and urban planning the most important scales to articulate are 1:50.000 (Metropolitan), 1:5.000 (Urban) and 1:500 (Urban design).
The way to articulate them is to establish a mechanism of interrelation that defines the aspects derived from the other scale that some scale has to address.
To do so we have the Design Guide mechanism. Design Guides establish the requirements of the Metropolitan scale upon the specific Site when the latter is relevant to metropolitan issues. Such is the Metropolitan Site Design Guide (MSDG).
- The MSDG defines the elements the Urban Design project has to address, the requirements, the 'Program' for the project established by the relevant Authority. Sometimes as a suggestion, other times as strong statements.
- The MSDG defines the requirements the site has to respond to and solve adequately. The quality of the result (and thus the evaluation in an Academic exercise) will depend on the way the final Design Proposal responds to one and each of those requirements. It will show the professional expertise of the Urban Design.
This document shows the case of Tehran Main Metropolitan node: the place where the urban and metropolitan structures articulate. There is an extreme relevance of Metropolitan functions to be carried out in this site. In this site is where the future functioning of the whole metropolitan structure is at stake, requiring a highly qualified response.
If this site does not reach standards the future of Tehran will be affected, and as part of the role of the Capital plays in the National economy Iran will be affected as well. Such is the responsibility of the professionals involved.