The Ghalemorghi Airport, the first airport established in Iran, was opened in 1922 on 300 hectares of land in the south of Tehran and the first ever flight in Iran took place from this airport. When Tehran municipality decided to demolish the walls of this military airport in order to change its function to a public space and theme park, a competition was announced for designing the main entry gate of the project. The aim of this new gate by Ali Ghorbani, Ali Kashfi and Hosein Shirazian is to create a space to establish a strong link with the park away from the traffic and chaos of the nearby highways. This new gate has to correspond to the scale and atmosphere of the park. More images and project description after the break.
One of the important aspects of the design is to establish a strong metaphor with the new emerging Iranian architecture and, at the same time, correspond to current design and architecture in the 21st century. In this sense the project has been defined in terms of its distribution of program based on two main points: first is to define the entry gate and its position as a space next to the highway, which not only invites and attracts people and passersby, but also stands as a monument to represent the city of Tehran and the project itself. Secondly, this gate must be harmonious with what goes on behind it in the theme park,so that when confronted with the space, people would pause and relax before entering the park. Except the VIP, cars would not be allowed to pass through the gate, as it is mainly contributed to the pedestrian.
