Travel Map of Shiraz, Iran
Soheil Hajmirbaba, Charles Daubas, Alexandra Arènes
Concours international à Shiraz, Iran, projet Lauréat, 2015
MAIN APPROACH
Our objective is to develop a project on the site that would express the different features of Shiraz history, geography, topography, traditions, arts, crafts and uses. The site is therefore considered as a «condenser» of these features, expressing through a major urban heart gathering public programs and collective spaces. It is aimed to become a major place of gathering for tourists and inhabitants, expressing Shiraz modernity and tradition, through culture, arts, exchange, markets and leisure.
HISTORY AND MODERNITY IN IRAN: THE MYTH OF SIMORGHS
Our project is about building up a modern identity, but not a fake or imported one. It is about designing an identity which is the combination of many features in order to reflect the modern face of Shiraz and Iran, open to the world but faithful to its roots. For this, we borrow the story of Simorgh, which is a story about the search and the discovering of a collective identity. In this story, 33 birds, each one with its own characteristics, are looking for their king. At the end, the realize that they are all a part of what they are looking for, each one bringing a piece of what describes the whole. The project we propose is exactly the same: describing Shiraz through the conjunction of all the features that compose it. Therefore, the idea of the project is to show how the entire Shiraz can gather and sum up in the site. We identified 33 specific characters that all combined express for us Shiraz and Iran specific identity through past, present and future. All those are specific stories, taking roots outside the site and gathering inside it, dealing with history, nature, geography, traditions, economy, culture, urban and collective uses.
