TEHRAN (Iran News) –Jahad Metro Plaza in Tehran has won the infrastructure and transport project of the year at the Dezeen Awards.

The project was announced as one of the 50 winners of different categories announced at the awards ceremony last week in London.

KA Architecture Studio has redeveloped the Jahad Metro Plaza. The project was a successful attempt to redefine subway entrances in the central part of the capital city.

The architects wanted to define these entrances as a free and definable platform by users for urban events and the re-creation of unusable points for citizens in line with the general plan of transforming Tehran into a pedestrian-oriented city. They have created a new “democratic open space” around the station that is sheltered by a cluster of barrel-vaulted forms.

“We tried to allocate most of the cost of the project, instead of using industrial materials, to local methods in this part of the city. This decision activates these semi-active workshops around the city of Tehran, where the tradition of making bricks by hand has not been lost,” said KA Architecture Studio. “The main materials we used in this project were 300,000 handmade bricks that were produced by eight workshops around Tehran.”

“This project creates generous public spaces using handmade bricks made from locally sourced materials by local craftspeople. Beautifully crafted, the building makes good use of natural light and ventilation to create a welcoming civic space in what would commonly be a much colder and more utilitarian structure,” judges commented about their selection.

Located on a busy traffic intersection near central Tehran, the new entrance for the Meydan-e-Jahad metro station forms part of a wider initiative to make the city more “pedestrian-oriented” after decades of car-focused development.

“Our strategy in this project started with the definition of a roof with free and unobstructed entry to define the space below it all day and night,” KA Architecture Studio founder Mohammad Khavarian said.

“This roof creates the definition of the space below, and due to the harsh climate of Tehran in summer and winter, it provides a place to centralize the gathering of young people and wandering citizens around the city.”

To the northeast, the corner of the site has been finished with stone paving and low brick benches incorporating planting, creating a flexible space that can be used by performers, street sellers and the public.

The winning projects at this year’s Dezeen Awards have been selected from more than 4,800 entries from 94 countries.

Dezeen Awards celebrates the world’s best architecture, interiors and design. It is an annual awards program identifying the world’s best architecture, interiors, design and sustainability projects, as well as the studios and the individual architects and designers producing the most outstanding work.

Organized by Dezeen, the world’s most influential architecture and design website, Dezeen Awards is now in its sixth year and has become the benchmark for international design excellence and the ultimate accolade for architects and designers everywhere.