Misjudgement of scale is a commonplace practice when it comes to
city design. In his book Touching the City: Thoughts on Urban Scale (2014)
Makower uses the phrase ‘errors of scale’ where he writes about Le Corbusier’s
Plan Voisin of 1925; a ‘demented’ plan – as Alain de Botton puts
it, aimed to plough one of the most important historic fabrics of central
Paris; Le Marais, and replace it with, what the architect himself called it,
“huge” cruciform “blocks of offices” served by vast thoroughfares – mainly a 120 metre-wide
central highway, gigantic parks and low-rise apartment blocks.4 Its
figure-ground plan says it all: the genius architect yet disastrous planner,
did not have a clue about what he was doing to the city. It was a crude
geometry of rationality engendered by the powerful machine of the Modern
against the organic wills of the old city; it was literally an act of sweeping
the problem (of a squalid neighbourhood) under the carpet, rather than actually
resolving it. It was a “car-focused vision” in which the architect “simply
misjudged distances and the proportions of spaces needed to create a
comfortable urban environment.”2 In the following lines,
through a sociohistorical narrative, I would argue that why this wisely-put
phrase of Makower: ‘errors of scale’ fits well with the ongoing colossal urban
planning project that has been shaping some 600 hectares of piece of land in
northern Tehran, Iran’s capital city.
 |
Plan Viosin, Paris, 1925. Source: Foundation Le Corbusier (2018)
|
|
In the eleventh century, Tehran appeared as a small village in
north of the ancient city of Ray which was at the time, the capital of Seljuk
Empire.5 Through centuries, the tiny village witnessed the ruin
of the flourishing neighbouring city. Ray shrank and Tehran began to grow. It
was in 1553 that the village started to realize cityness5; home to
1,000 inhabitants6, built herself a bazaar and a defensive
“square-shaped” city wall with four gates.7 It took the town
more than some 200 years to, eventually, be declared as the capital of Persia
in 1786 under the reign of Qajar dynasty (reg. 1779–1925).
In the nineteenth century Tehran, outside the city walls to the north,
there was an arid village surrounded by gardens of Shemiran and
oases of Dawoodieh, Qasr-e Qajar and Yousefabad.8 The
village lands belonged to Abbas-qoli Khan who was close to the royal court of
Qajar. In the 1840s, Mollah Abbas Iravini (aka. Haj Mirza Aqasi); a close
relative of Abbas-qoli Khan and also Sadr-e Azam (Prime
Minister) of Mohammad Shah Qajar (r. 1834–1848), built in there a garden
compounded with a mansion. It was known later, after his forename, as Abbasabad.
In the late Qajar era, these lands were yet in possession of the elite and
aristocrats, namely Mostowfi ol-Mamalek – the prime minister of Qajar’s last king; Ahmad Shah
(r. 1909–1925) – and, Muhammad Hassan Amin al-Zarb who
was a well-known entrepreneur and one of the richest men9 in
the late nineteenth century Persia.8 In the nineteenth century, the West
wind began to blow in the Iranian plateau. Then, the Modern came along. The
‘foreign’ became even more familiar. The kings of Qajar hallucinated by the wind,
did let the country turn into a playground, or say, battleground of the rival
colonial powers of Russia and Britain. In 1868, when the city’s population was
only a little less than 150,000, Tehran exercised a major transformation.10 The
old walls were brought down and a brand new octagonal fortification
encompassing twelve gates was introduced. With itself, the wind brought
the capital not only “new streets, a bank, an institute of technology, a
hospital, a telegraph house, hotels and European-style shops”11, but
also a socio-political unrest which led to the Constitutional Revolution in the
early twentieth century (1906–1911).
Following the rise of Reza Shah Pahlavi to power (r. 1925–1941)
and in the wake of his ambitious plans for modernization and secularization,
the capital went through yet another major intervention in the 1930s.10 The
Qajar city walls were torn down. The automobile was no longer a strange thing.
The word traffic became a reality as new avenues and motorways were blatantly
tearing the historic fabric of the city apart.10 The capital
was soon introduced to parks and cinemas, secular schools and universities, new
administrative buildings, public landmarks and statues.12 It
was indeed, as Talinn Grigor puts it, “a period of rapid and
radical reform” which resulted in rural-urban migration on massive scale, and
therefore, a substantial population growth: 310,000 inhabitants were recorded
residing in the capital in 1932.
Amid these rapid scenes of change in the early Pahlavi era, Bank-e
Falahat (Agriculture Bank of Iran) acquired ownership of Abbasabad.
In 1952, parts of the lands was devolved to the army. During the 1950s and 60s,
some parts were also distributed between the Plan and Budget Organization
(PBO), Bank-e Rahni-ye Iran (Iran Mortgage Bank, now known
as Bank-e Maskan), and Agriculture Bank’s employees with a share of
200 to 900 sqm plots of lands. In 1969, due to its now, peculiar location in
the city, the Economic Council of the PBO approved the acquisition of Abbasabad lands
by facilitating bonds to be paid to private landowners.8 This
was when the city – now with more than 3 million inhabitants, stretched towards
the north to surround the hills of Abbasabad creating a giant void within a
dense urban fabric.
 |
| Tehran
expansion from 1850s to 1970s, Source: Ali Madanipour (2010)19 |
Eventually, in June 1971, Abbasabad Lands Development
Plan Act passed by both Houses of the National Assembly and the
Senate. Despite its actual existence for almost three years, Abbasabad
Development Corporation was officially established by Tehran Municipality
in December 1974, to implement and oversee the development of the site.8 It
was around that time – only a few years before his reign comes to an end
–– that Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last king of Iran (r.
1941-1979), dreamed of a new urban centre for his capital to be superciliously
named Shahestan Pahlavi (literally means the City of Shah
Pahlavi). Abbasabad Lands was perfectly suited. As a result, in January 1976,
the Abbasabad Development Corporation was turned into Shahestan Pahlavi
Development Corporation to fulfil the aspirations of the ambitious
king.
Ignoring what the 1969 master plan of the capital – drawn up
jointly by Victor Gruen Associates and Abdol-Aziz Farmanfarmaian Planners and
Architects – had aimed for the Abbasabad district, the Shah even rejected the
Tehran Municipality’s plan of 1971 for his dreamland. In October 1973, renowned
architects of the time, Kenzo Tange and Luis I. Kahn were commissioned by Farah
Pahlavi (the then Queen of Iran), to prepare a proposal for Abbasabad.13 They
cooked up two ‘drastically different’ dishes to serve the royal court. While
Tange’s plan, from the top, recalls a giant spaceship in a sci-fi movie just
landed on Mars, Kahn’s proposal remains calm and classic. Kahn dies in March
1974 and Tange carries on incorporating the two schemes. Shah rejects the
outcome. At last, in late 1974, the Shah favours the preliminary concept
proposed by the British planning firm, Llewelyn-Davies International (LDI).13 Upon
its approval, a team of 50 architects and planners gathered under the directory
of Jaquelin T. Robertson, the New York architect, to produce the master plan
of Shahestan Pahlavi; “the largest planned city centre in the
world” made up of five million square metres of floor space on a 554 hectares
of open land.13
 |
| Left:
Tehran Municipality’s proposal for Abbasabad. Middle: Louis Kahn’s
proposal. Right: Kenzo Tange’s proposal. Sourse: Farshid Emami (2014) |
Reading the master plan of Shahestan, it depicts two
boulevards stretching from south to north, erecting blocks of banks, hotels,
shopping malls, museums, government ministries and state departments, and
luxurious apartment buildings.13 The main three-lined King
Boulevard; “a ceremonial parade route”, lined with mostly residential towers,
leads to a vast ‘ceremonial’ plaza, to be called ‘Shah and Nation Square’. It
was to accommodate museums and galleries, the City Theatre, Pahlavi National
Library, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the so-called Pahlavi Monument
which – according to the 1976 “propagandist” consultancy report of LDI, was “a
monument to his Imperial Majesty the Shahanshah, and to the Pahlavi
dynasty, in the form of a 30 metre high freestanding portal” […] “His Majesty
the Shahanshah will be able to review major ceremonial events,
such as national parades” […] “At this monument, visiting dignitaries and VIPs
will be able to pay their respects to Iran’s past”.13
Although the aerial view of the model does not
suggest anything extraordinary and it symbolizes yet another corporate machine
of mass planning, one cannot call it an entirely bad plan; considering its
relatively successful geometrical adaptation to the existing
urban fabric (specifically from the south) and the way it tames the growingly juvenile freeways within
and around the site. However a critic argued that it is nothing but only a “more
proportionate, regularized version of the mediocre plan” proposed by the Tehran
Municipality in 1971.13
The 30-metre monument and the grand ‘ceremonial’ plaza were, not only
architecturally, but also socially and politically scaled. The Shah was
dreaming of building a grand façade to expose a modern, secular and progressive
society while simultaneously, his oppressive SAVAK (Shah’s secret police
founded in 1957) was in full swing. This was also when the actual centre of the
city; the old core, was deteriorating. Ghettos were mushrooming, predominantly
across the southern parts of the town. Many neighbourhoods were suffering from
the poor living conditions. Shahestan Pahlavi was no solution
to this convoluted situation as its agenda, according to the LDI report, was to
address the needs of the residents of northern Tehran who were “much more
affluent than the average Tehrani”.13
 |
| Left: Plan view of Shahestan Pahlavi. Right: View towards the north overseeing The King Boulevard. Source: Emami (2014) |
 |
| Shah and Nation Square. Source: Llewelyn-Davies International, 1976, Emami (2014) |
The dream of the Shahestan never
became a reality. The late 1970s socio-political unrest led to the fall of the
Shah. After the Islamic Revolution of 1979, the LDI plan was halted and,
according to Abbasabad Development Company, “only a 30-hectare parkland” (today
known as Taleghani Park) remained intact on the peak of the hills which is now
used by the public.8 In 1983, the then president of Iran,
Sayyid Ali Khamenei, and Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani (the then head of the
parliament) suggested that part of Abbasabad Lands to be allocated for the Grand
Musalla of Tehran (now known as Imam Khomeni Musalla).8 As a
result, a 63-hectare piece of land in the southern side of the site was
designated for the never-ending construction of Musalla. In addition to this,
141 hectares of lands were dedicated to the Byte Rahbari (Office
of the Supreme Leader), and also 34 organizations and government ministries
enjoyed a share of nearly two hectares.8 In a letter dated
April 26, 1986, addressed the Mayor of Tehran, the then president writes that
he should be informed about “any sort of interference in the lands of the
[Abbasabad] region” and he suggests that the lands “should be allocated for the long-term cultural,
political and also green space developments.”8 The
revolutionary government’s desire for this relatively untouched piece of land,
was no less than that of the late king.
 |
| Location
of the Abbasabad Lands in Today’s Tehran. The octagonal highlight depicts the
19th century city walls of Qajar. |
 |
| Boundaries of Abbasabad Lands, as it stands today within the city fabric. Source: Goggle Map (2018) |
By the end of the gory and grisly decade of
1980s, the country tried to pull herself together. The capital was no
exception. Abbasabad Lands went through four phases of planning getting seven
consultancies involved in the process. Its first post-revolutionary master plan
was drawn and passed in 1998, revised in 2001 and 2004, and ultimately, the
Comprehensive Plan of Abbasabad Lands drawn up by Naqsh-e Jahan Pars was approved
in 2005, under the High Council of Architecture and Urban Planning.8 Allocating the promised 63 hectares of lands for the Musalla, the
master plan gives the authority of ‘559 hectares’ (nearly double the size of
the City of London) to the Abbasabad Development Company.14 But
the hills of Abbasabad did not remain totally untouched while they have been
busy drawing its master plan. During the years, the site was invaded by four
freeways; cut through and around the hills, ‘leaving deep scars’, tearing it apart
from both within and outside. This created seven fragmentary islands surrounded
by a sea of asphalts. As noted, a grand mosque was already decided to be built
in southern part. To the west of the Musalla, a 13.5-hectare piece of land
became a bus terminal (Bayhaqi Bus Terminal established in 1992). Towards the north of the Musalla, a huge chunk have
become home to what is now known as the Imam Khomeini Complex, containing
parastatal propagandistic apparatuses such as Sadra Islamic Philosophy Research
Institute, the Supreme Council of the Quran, Hosseinieh al-Zahra, , Islamic
Culture and Relations Organization and so on. As the official website of the
latter declares, it aims at: “creating and expanding knowledge,
interest and belief in ‘pure’ Islam, the Islamic Revolution, […] and the
Islamic-Iranian culture and civilization in other societies, so as to spread
the light of Islam and strengthen the Islamic, religious and spiritual ties.”15 Abbasabad that once was to become an entity for a
political manifestation in the context of the built form, now became, to some
extent, an actual locus of an ideological power.
 |
Plan view of the model for the 2005 Abbasabad Master Plan designed by
Naqsh-e Jahan Pars. Source: Naqsh-e Jahan Pars (2005)
|
In the meantime, five gargantuan governmental towers – including
The Ministry of Road and Urban
Developments, The Railways of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Bank Sepah, Tehran
Provincial Government, and Ports and Maritime Organization of Iran – were
mushroomed throughout the west parts. Not to mention the construction of the
office blocks belonged to the Islamic Revolution Mostazafan Foundation
which interestingly, still owns 130 hectares of the lands.16 This
was literally the situation: the powerful state agencies and government
organisations grabbed pieces of lands and built in there, whatever they
desired.
As the south of the site became the location of
power, the north parts likely to be used by members of the public. Towards the northeast, one of the seven islands,
covering a total area of 100 hectares – which is nearly a third the size of the
City of London – accommodates six gigantic
buildings with nearly 830,000 square metres of floor space; all served with a
poorly-accessible metro station. The premises include the National Library of
Iran (97,000 sqm), the Academies of the Islamic Republic of Iran (68,000 sqm),
The Islamic Revolution and ‘Holy Defence’ Museum (42,000 sqm), Tehran Book
Garden (65,000 sqm), Garden-Museum of the Central Bank of Iran (106,000 sqm),
and the Atlas Plaza (450,000 sqm17). These buildings dispersed on a
vast land on the top of the hills of Abbasabad surrounded by freeways from east, north and
south, are yet to become the “cultural heart of the
capital”. One could say that the antiquated
notion of zoning cities is yet to be practised in full swing in here. Each and every building project seems like a remote
island. The buildings themselves; a bunch of free-standing, isolated structures
disintegrated by the vast boulevards, barely be able to make a dialogue with
each other. Filling a 100-hectare piece of land with a mere six buildings and
trying to knit them together tirelessly and indeed idly, with the overly-designed
so-called “conceptual gardens” has made nothing but a ludicrous mishmash of the masses and spaces. One
of those “conceptual gardens” (which is now under construction) is Bagh-e
Honar (Garden of Art); a jumble of nine small buildings – ‘small’
according to the Abbasabad Lands dictionary of course – spreading throughout a
47,000 sqm piece of land including House of Poetry, House of Music, House of
Architecture, Artists’ Club, Art Workshops, the Central Mansion (Kooshk-e
Markazi) and so on. Walking between
these buildings is profoundly uncomfortable. One feels lost and weary. It feels like walking through a temporary Expo site,
or perhaps an Olympic Park which should be large enough to host hundreds of
thousands of people within a short period of time. I do not tend to
object to the indispensability of making places of culture and spaces of
gathering; a lack of which, in fact, is what Iran’s capital suffers from.
The fact is that the flâneur, never,
ever comes across these public buildings. And this is actually true for the
whole site of the Abbasabad Lands. Not to mention the destructive role of the
existing highways which practically makes a tranquil accessibility to the site
almost impossible. These buildings are apparently within the city but outside
of it. The spatial organisation of these projects and the way their masses have
been mounted to the site, have produced an out-of-scale environment which has
lost its taste of integrity and connectivity. It utterly neglected the urban
fabric surrounding it. It reminds one the Makower’s words when describing the
Plan Voisin: they “simply misjudged distances and the proportions of
spaces needed to create a comfortable urban environment.” The very topographical nature of the Lands with the
vipers of asphalt lashing around it, suggests no more than two scenarios:
either leave it as it is and plant something on it, or if you will to
intervene, then intervene properly!
 |
| An Expo look-alike site! A view of Tehran Book Garden, looking north. Photograph: Mohammad Shah Hosseini, ArchDaily, 2017 |
 |
| Banal
architecture! Computer Aided Design, aerial view of the Garden of Art. Source:
abbasabad.tehran.ir (2018). |
 |
| A view towards the Garden of Art depicting the under-construction Khaneye Naqsh in the north-west. Source: abbasabad.tehran.ir (2018) |
When the 2005 master plan was born, most of the projects had
either been planned or were under construction. Even a few had been
inaugurated. One can say that it arrived too late. The master plan consists of
a grand south-north visual axis of pedestrianized space that leaves the rest of
the site largely for the public gardens and parks, suggesting that no more than
6.8% of the lands to be built. To integrate and unify the already fragmented
site, it comes up with an absurd solution; it introduces two gigantic
rectangular platforms which are pedestrian overpasses (one roughly four
hectares and the other about one hectare), connecting the Musalla on the south
to the Haghani metro station on the farthest north. Between these two
overpasses it defines a colossal plaza to which the consultancy report refers
as The City Grand Square which has an area of roughly 12 hectares. Its
geometrical effort to be merged into the Musalla recalls the Naqsh-e Jahan
Square of Isfahan – however in a rather disproportionate manner – where the
rectangular maydān meets
the angled Shah Mosque. It seems that Abbasabad desires grandiose. For the site
is too large to be easily tamed. The Grand Square; an extremely enormous open
air public space to be lain within an open land, conveys a manifestation of
taking revenge on a city which is an oasis of cars and a paradise of highways;
a city with a serious lack of public space. The Grand Square, ironically seats
on a large piece of land which is highly significant to the core of Iranian
power (where the Imam Khomeini Complex stands today). It asks – perhaps
desperately – for the demolition and relocation. The point is that the
Abbasabad Development Company has never been powerful enough to be able to
fully implement the approved plan. For
instance, two new projects erected in recent years to the north violated the
plan with consideration to their heights, built-up area and their uses. One is
the abovementioned Atlas Plaza; a colossal mixed-use development with its twin
towers and a massive shopping mall. The other is the
Garden-Museum of the Central Bank of Iran which
has indeed transformed the semantical history of the word ‘garden’ and put
the architectural vocabulary in such pain to describe its style. It was
initially planned to be a place to display the national jewellery treasury of
Iran sitting on a Persian Garden, instead appeared as a huge building erecting
a tall, bulky glass box of offices. In fact what we see here is only the tip of
the iceberg. In recent years, the pseudo-private companies with strong links to
the unquestionable labyrinths of power have become the key role players in the
process of development of the capital. They are literally beyond the government
and the law.
 |
A view of the so-called Garden-Museum of the Central Bank of Iran
towards the Musalla. Source: www.jalkeh.com
|
 |
| A view from the Book Garden towards the National Library, Photo by Amir Hakiminejad, 2018 |
 |
| A car-focused vision! View looking north along the boulevard passing through the Garden-Museum of the Central Bank on the left and the Academies Complex on the right. Photo by Amir Hakiminejad, 2018 |
The architecture of the Big became the
characteristics of the Abbasabad Lands architectural language. One
of the Bigs is Pole Tabiat (the Nature Bridge); an imposing,
ostentatious, monstrous pedestrian bridge spanning over a highway, which
connects two public parks of Abo Atash and Taleghani on
the northwest of the site. The roughly 7,700 sqm footbridge, with a length of
270 metres and a width of 6 to 13 metres, was the result of a 2008
vaguely-processed design competition which asked for a symbolic form of
architecture that is not a mere overpass, but instead, a place to stop, sit and
stroll. One can contend that the controversial statement made by the Dutch
architect, Rem Koolhaas – who is himself a maestro of Bigness – seems to be
a factual statement when it meets the Nature Bridge: “the ‘art’ of architecture is useless in Bigness.”18 Tabiat Bridge
is literally an urban public space floating over a highway. It is indeed, an ironic metaphor of Tehran; a heaven
of cars condemned to hang its most symbolic public space over a freeway.
 |
| The
monster. A view of the Nature Bridge from the Abo Atash Park. Photograph:
Mahsa Alami Fariman, 2017 |
 |
| Massive
inaccessible greenery! A view from the Nature Bridge looking south, putting
Modarres Highway and the Musalla into perspective. Photograph: Mahsa Alami
Fariman, 2017 |
Speaking of Bigness, among many, there is Tehran
Book Garden which is possibly one of the largest of its kind in the world.
Disregarding the interior design of its main hall which has an air of an
airport passenger terminal, one may argue over the socio-political facets of a
project like Tehran Book Garden. Opening a grand book centre in a city that the
written words are relentlessly censored and the books’ circulation has been
abridged to 500, is distracting. In a city in which lamenting over the “lack of
the budget” is a commonplace scene of its local authorities, instead of
creating this extravagant mimicry called Tehran Book Garden – there is a mania
for calling everything a ‘garden’ in this site – the money could have been
spent, for instance, on the regeneration of the Enghelab Street which has been,
for many years, the heart of Iran’s publishing industry.
 |
| The main lobby of Tehran Book Garden with an air of an airport terminal! Photograph: Ali Daghigh, 2017. |
As I write, the official website of the Abbasabad Lands, amazingly
offers a cartoonish three-dimensional map in which it depicts the site of
Abbasabad lying on a grassland on top a huge rock, floating in the sky. It is
perhaps twisting around the planet earth looking for Tehran to land in. This
extraordinary metaphoric visualization of the Abbasabad Lands is
indeed, precise. It genuinely, although unintentionally, shows how
disintegrated it is with the actual being of the city. This is perhaps too late
but worth telling; the whole site could have simply been seen as the Central
Park of the city, with almost twice the size of that of New York; a national landmark
park with an air of a natural woodland – something analogous to the existing
Taleghani Park – rather than being a jungle of banal architecture popping up in
the middle of nowhere with overly-designed phony gardens and parks. Looking
back at the 1975 aerial photograph of the Abbasabad Lands, it depicts an
extraordinary canvas, revealing a carte blanche carved into
the city fabric; a wannabe utopia; a giant vacant urban space destined to
become an utter failure of city design. The urban language of the Abbasabad
Lands conveys, not only how misjudgement or, say, misunderstanding of the scale
may lead to a disaster, but also how the acts of a chaotic and weak urban
management system can painfully be irretrievable for many years and
decades. A city like Tehran with a myriad of convoluted challenges could
have not borne yet another mistake in such huge scale. Trial and error should
have not been on the table for that city. We need to question the authorities,
planners, architects and all those who have been involved in shaping this
essential part of Tehran. We need to ask why those who live in this city and
they apparently are called citizens, have utterly no say whatsoever in the
process. In a word, we need to turn the page and question the Iran’s orthodox urbanism. There should be a political will for a bold and
dramatic change in the obsolete and inefficient urban managerial structure of
this country. This is an absolute prerequisite for any further development.
 |
| Abbasabad floating in the sky! Source: abbasabad.tehran.ir (2018) |
Notes
1. Aristotle (1999) Politics.
Ontario: Batoche Books.
2. Makower, T. (2014) Touching
the City: Thought on Urban Scale. Sussex, UK: John Wiley
& Sons.
3. Morrison, P., Morrison, P.
and the Office of Charles and Ray Eames. (1982) Powers of
Ten: a book about the relative size of things in the universe and the effect of
adding another zero. Redding, Connecticut: Scientific American
Library.
4. FLC: Foundation Le Corbusier
(2018) Plan Viosin, Paris, France, 1925. [Online]. Available
at: www.fondationlecorbusier.fr
5. Lockhart, L. (1960) Persian
Cities. Luzac, London.
6. Tehran Atlas (2018) Atlas-e
Kalanshahr-e Tehran (Atlas of Tehran Metropolis) [Online]. Available
at: www.abasabad.tehran.ir/Default.aspx?tabid=439
7. Madanipour, A. (2011) Sustainable
development, urban form and megacity governance and planning in Tehran. In:
Sorensen, A. and Okata, J. (eds.), Megacities; Urban Form, Governance
and Sustainability. New York: Springer, pp.67–91.
8. Abbasabad Development Company
(2018) Tarikhche-ye Arazi-ye Abbasabad (History of Abbasabad
Lands). [Online]. Available at: www.abasabad.tehran.ir.
9. Shireen Mahdavi, S.
(2011) Haj Muhammad Hassan Amin al-Zarb: His World and His Philosophy of
Life, Middle Eastern Studies 47(2), pp. 379–393.
10. Madanipour, A. (2006) Urban planning and development in
Tehran. Cities 23(6), pp.433–438.
11. Curzon, G. (1892) Persia and the
Persian Question. Longmans Green, London.
12.rigor, T. (2009) Building
Iran. Modernism, Architecture, and National Heritage under the
Pahlavi Monarchs, New York: Periscope.
13. Emami, F. (2014) ‘Urbanism of
Grandiosity: Planning a New Urban Centre for Tehran (1973–76)’, International
Journal of Islamic Architecture, 3(1), pp. 69–102, doi:
10.1386/ijia.3.1.69_1
14. Naghsh-e Jahan Pars (2005) Sanad-e
Rahbordiye Tarhe Jame Araziye Abbasabad, 1384 (Abbasabad Lands
Comprehensive Plan, 2005). Tehran: Naghsh-e Jahan pars Consulting Engineers.
15. Islamic Culture and Relations
Organization (2018) Introduction to the Organization. [Online]. Available
at: www.icro.ir
16. Donyaye Eghtesad newspaper
(2018) Reclaiming 130 hectares of the Abbasabad Lands, Donyaye Eghtesad.12 April 2018, [Online].
Available at:
www.donya-e-eqtesad.com/fa/tiny/news-3375091
17. The official website of the
project’s developer: Iranian Atlas (2018) Atlas Plaza. [Online]. Available
at: www.iranianatlas.ir
18. Koolhaas, R. (1995) Bigness or
the problem of Large, Monacelli Press, New York, 1995.
19. Madanipour, A. (2010) The limits
of scientific planning: Doxiadis and the Tehran Action Plan. Planning
Perspectives. 25(4), pp. 485–504.
