On January 27, 2022, Tishk International University, Faculty of Engineering, Architectural Engineering Department, 5th-grade students had the final presentation of the Urban Design Project.
As 5th-grade is the last academic year in the architecture department, students were supervised to work on a project on an urban scale. One of the main goals of this project is not just dealing with a single unit or a building; instead, they should be able to connect and unify that single unit to the surroundings and the context to form a street, neighbourhood, and a sector.
The project location was in one of the historical zones in the city center of Sulaimanyah, which was ‘Sabunkaran Street’. The street has so many values and problems at the same time because of the significant changes in the population’s lifestyle nowadays compared to the previous for which the street was initially designed. One of the main problems is car and vehicle circulation because it was designed for pedestrian circulation originally. This has generated crowdedness, traffic jams and difficulty walking through the street. Another problem is the change in the function of the area, that previously it was a residential complex but now its commercial zone.
As the street and most of its buildings have historical backgrounds and values, designers can not demolish the whole structure and build something new instead. These values need to be respected and protected, so this was the primary concern of the students while working on the project. In order to achieve this, lecturers guided the students to use some strategies such as Preservation, Conservation and Redesigning. Also, because the project was on a big scale, students worked on it as a team and in some groups, which will benefit them after graduation in their career life.
