Arh Daily: Hajizadeh & Associates elaborated a proposal for the entrance of the Gilan University in Rasht in Iran. Basing their conceptual approach on the Iranian notion of access, they created not only a passage or a connection space but a social and cultural area.

In traditional Iranian Architecture, whenever a connection is generated between a building and an adjacent road, to emphasis its access, a plaza is put in place “in such a way that it had a mutual space with the passage or square or it was placed next to them in a way that it would create sufficient attraction and allure”.

In fact, in the case of Gilan, the university is positioned on a main artery, with a significant distance between its entrance and the buildings, making it harder to remain completely true to the basic cultural and historical principals of Iranian architecture. Adding to that the climate’s issue, the architects had plenty of constraints to deal with in order to conceive a modern and contextual gateway.